Term 4, 2025
Curriculum News - Year 3

Welcome to Term 4! This term we will be completing our final units of inquiry. To begin our How the world works unit, we have an excursion to Scienceworks where students will participate in a STEM workshop to design a marble rollercoaster. Students will then investigate inventions that have shaped our world, explore the impact of new ideas and use the design process to plan and produce their own arcade game to share with others.

In How we organise ourselves, we look further into communities and how they function. As part of this unit, we have planned a hands-on ‘Brickworks’ workshop with Supreme Incursions where students collaborate to plan and build communities using Lego.

Units of Inquiry

How the world works

Innovation affects society and the environment

Lines of Inquiry

Reasons for inventing things
The Design Process
Impact of new inventions

How we organise ourselves

People form communities based on their needs and resources

Lines of Inquiry

Different communities
The way these communities’ function
The way communities depend on each other

Literacy

Year 3 students will continue to build their SMART Spelling strategies looking at various plural rules, adding suffixes to words and graphs and digraphs. They will extend their knowledge and application of specific traits in their writing and continue to build their inferential comprehension skills.

Reading

During our Guided reading sessions, the students will continue to work on various comprehension strategies such as re-reading and using their prior knowledge to infer meaning.

The students will read fiction and non-fiction books during reading sessions and look at the features of each text type. They will continue to complete their weekly grammar and comprehension activities on Literacy Planet to support their reading and writing.

Writing 

During our writing sessions, we will build on our knowledge of information reports looking at organisation and appropriate word choice. We will also be exploring procedural texts and instructional writing on how to play a designed arcade game. The student’s Writer’s Notebook will continue to be a safe place for the students to reflect and experiment with various writing styles, building an endless list of writing ideas.

During handwriting sessions, the focus will continue to be on the fluency of joined writing and letter formation in preparation for students obtaining their Victorian Cursive Handwriting Certificate. We will be introducing touch typing skills to build confidence and speed when using digital technology for word processing.

Speaking and Listening

Students will prepare for an oral presentation by researching an inventor of their choice. They will share their information with their class using a PowerPoint to enhance their presentation.

Mathematics

Number

During Term 4, the students will continue to focus on and revise the four processes. Activities will include number sense games, worded problems, automatic response and formal practice of strategies using larger numbers.

They will use estimation to determine the quantity of objects in collections and estimate to determine the reasonableness of calculations when solving problems. Students will follow and create algorithms involving a sequence of steps and decisions to investigate numbers and describe any emerging patterns.

Space

In learning about space, students will classify collections of geometric objects, make and compare objects exploring key features using different representations, use familiar shapes and objects to build models and compare the suitability of different shapes and objects, interpret and create two-dimensional representations of familiar environments, and locate key landmarks and objects relative to each other.

Inclusive Approaches

Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships

Topic 7 – Gender norms and stereotypes

Topic 8 – Positive gender relations

Cyber Safety Project

Term 4 lessons focus on managing emotion responses, discovering strategies to manage peer pressure, exploring the impact of inclusion and exclusion, developing a plan to manage a healthy digital balance, discover the importance of empathy, exploring strategies to avoid misinterpretation, identifying traits of a good role model and the importance of kindness.

Whole-school Focus on PYP Learner Profile Attributes

October

Inquirers, we nurture our curiosity, developing skills for inquiry and research. We know how to learn independently and with others. We learn with enthusiasm and sustain our love of learning throughout life.

 November

Principled, we are fair, acting with integrity and honesty. We take responsibility for our actions and their consequences.

 December

 Knowledgeable, we develop and use conceptual understanding, exploring knowledge across a range of disciplines. We engage with issues and ideas that have local and global significance