Class 3/4 S  

Mathematics

In Mathematics this fortnight, students have been building bridges between their understanding of Australian money and the world of decimals. Through hands-on exploration with notes and coins, they have strengthened their recognition of Australian currency while discovering how decimal numbers represent parts of a whole. 

Students practised composing and decomposing money amounts in a variety of ways, learning that the same value can be represented through different combinations of notes and coins. For example, $2.65 can be shown in a standard form as $2 + 50c + 10c + 5c, or in a non-standard form using many different coin combinations. This work has encouraged flexible thinking, deepened number sense, and helped students recognise the many ways mathematical ideas are connected in everyday life. 

We also ran a cafe in our classroom! Students had $10 to spend and needed to choose an item from the drinks, mains and dessert menu. They then worked out the total from their order and calculated how much change they would receive from their $10. Once they’d solved and recorded their answers, they were able to actually choose desserts from a real-life menu. 

Literacy

In Literacy this fortnight, students have been learning how to use direct speech to bring greater life and expression to their writing. They practised identifying dialogue within texts and applying the correct punctuation, including quotation marks, capital letters, end punctuation, and speaking verbs such as “said” and “whispered”. As their confidence grew, students created their own conversations inspired by picture prompts, carefully considering how characters might speak and interact. 

Alongside this work, we explored paragraph structure and discussed how paragraphs help organise our ideas and make writing easier to follow. To support this learning, we used Lucy’s acronym TPS I/E (Time, Place, Speaker, Event/Idea), which reminds us to begin a new paragraph whenever one of these elements changes. It has been wonderful to see students becoming more thoughtful and purposeful writers as they experiment with dialogue and learn new ways to structure their ideas clearly for their readers. 

This fortnight we’ve also had the Strings Concert, Sparkle Day, the Lantern Walk and Evelyn’s last days at TPS. It’s been a big end to Term 2! I hope you all stay cosy over the holidays and I look forward to seeing you in Term 3.