Year 3/4 Mainstream 

Celebrating Learning

Last week students came back from a much-needed break over the long weekend ready to make the most of the last few weeks of term. We’d like to congratulate the students on getting through the term, especially with it being so assessment heavy due to reports. They’ve all grown so much throughout the term and should be proud of all their efforts.

Maths:

We have begun a new measurement unit on time starting with identifying what time of day students do different activities. We then moved onto measuring time by the minute and also 5-minute intervals on analogue and digital clocks.

Students have explored different language used to tell the time and made connections to fractions as they renamed times to quarter past, half past and quarter to. We have also examined strategies for calculating elapsed time such as bridging, number lines and T-Charts. Next week we will explore calendars, worded problems, timetables, AM/PM notation and converting between 12 and 24hr time.

We encourage you to talk to your children about reading time at home, especially analogue time as analogue clocks are still used commonly all around us. 

Literacy:

In Writing, students are consolidating their understanding of the writer’s process and, in particular, how a second draft should demonstrate ‘uplevelling’ in their writing skills. As students progress through the year levels, their writing skills consolidate and expand through a more extensive revision and editing process.  

Students have also begun to publish their writing pieces. They are learning about the different ways they can publish that suit different types of texts, such as:

• Information report
• Persuasive/ opinion writing
• Narrative writing
• Poetry (limerick, cinquain, acrostic, haiku etc.)
• Recounts

We encourage you to talk to your children about different kinds of writing that exist and the ones we most commonly come across in our everyday lives.

We will celebrate our published pieces during the last week of term with students participating in a ‘Gallery Walk’ and sharing their favourite pieces with the class. We also look forward to sharing their published pieces via the Three-way Conferences that will be held early in Term 3.

In Reading, students continue to work in their groups on Reciprocal Reading, where they work on a particular role (Clarifier, Summariser, Predictor or Questioner). They are developing their skills in working together and sharing. Students are taking turns at being the captain of the group. At the end of each share time they come up with a new group goal that enables them to acknowledge how they function as a group and to find ways to continually improve! 

In Unit Focus, students are continuing to learn about eucalypts and undertaking a scientific experiment by investigating the antibacterial properties of eucalyptus oil. We have recorded the results and discussed the difference between the mould growth. We also talked about fairness of experiments, and the importance of a control subject. 

What’s to come in the term:

• In Writing, students will continue to publish their writing and add amazing learning pieces to their folios in readiness for the term three conferences. 
• In Maths, we will be learning about multiplicative thinking and how it relates to division and sharing.
• In Reading, students will begin working more independently within their groups, by each taking responsibility for a different role to help one another build comprehension.