Grade 3 News

Dear Grade 3 families

Welcome to Term 3! 

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday break. The start to this term has been amazing and we really enjoyed meeting each of you for Parent/Teacher Interviews to talk about your child’s learning. 

Below is a snapshot of the learning so far, as well as what happened at the end of last term. At the very bottom is some extra information, reminders and important dates.

English

In our English block, the students have continued to practise reading fluently each day. We have focused on reading smoothly, pausing at punctuation, and finding ways to add expression to our voice. The students are using books that they have chosen from the school library. When reading with your children at home, this is the perfect thing to practise with them.

We have also learnt how to write different sentence types, especially complex sentences, by using subordinating conjunctions. These are words like ‘because’ or ‘if’, e.g.

• I am going to stay inside because it is raining
• I will go to the park if the weather is nice.

Last term in Literature we focused on writing information reports. To end the term, the students researched, planned, drafted and published an information report about Vikings. Here are some examples of how our published reports looked.

In Morphology (where the students learn how words 'work'), we have focused on the following prefixes and suffixes:

Prefix inter- which means between or among, e.g. ‘international’

Suffix -ness which means having the quality of, e.g. ‘happiness’

Prefix mid- which means middle or halfway through, e.g. ‘midday’

Prefix out- which means better or more than, e.g. ‘outlast’

Mathematics

At the end of Term 2 and then the start of Term 3, the students have been learning about fractions. They learnt about unit fractions (where the numerator is 1 e.g. ½) and non-unit fractions (where the numerator is greater than 1 e.g. ⅗).

They compared fractions and then used this knowledge to help put fractions in order from smallest to biggest. Everyone did a great job of putting fractions in order when the denominator was the same e.g. putting ⅖, ⅘ and ⅕ in order. If you would like to practise some fractions at home, ordering fractions with different denominators would be great e.g. putting ⅘, ⅔ and ¾ in order.

We have also started a new Time unit. The students are learning how to read analogue and digital clocks to both 5 minute intervals and to the minute. They have been practising to use skip counting by 5s to help identify how many minutes have passed. The students are also going to learn to be precise when drawing the hour and minute hands. Here are some examples of our learning so far.

Along the way, we have also been learning how to apply different problem solving strategies. The students have been presented with open ended problems to solve, that have no clear answer. Some students have drawn pictures to better understand the problem, while others have broken the problem down into smaller parts. 

Humanities

This term, the students have begun a new unit of work called ‘Journeys Around Australia’. Each week, we are researching and learning about a different state or territory, with a focus on it’s capital city, famous landmarks and flaura and fauna.

To end the unit, each student will create their own travel brochure for a state or territory of their choosing. In our next newsletter, we’ll include some photos to show you how they turned out.

Information / Important Dates

• Every student has been given a diary to record their home reading. These are checked each Friday.
• Each Tuesday and Friday are the days to change take home readers, so please make sure your children are bringing their satchels to school on these days.
• This term we are continuing to go the school library. 3A and 3B go on a Wednesday and 3C go on a Thursday. Each student can have 4 books borrowed at a time. Please help your children to return their books on the correct day.
• Later this term, the Grade 3 students are able to take part in the swimming program. At the moment, this will happen each day in Week 8 (Aug 31st - Sept 4th). If you would like your child to attend, please fill in the form on Compass. 

Thank you so much as always for the amazing support that you have been giving to your children. 

Regards

Mr Francis, Miss Schaumann, Ms Cook and Ms Arya.