Year 3/4 Team News

Hello Year  3/4 families,   

Welcome to Term 3

We hope you all had a wonderful break and enjoyed the holidays. The Grade 3/4s have returned to school with lots of energy and excitement. We’ve had a busy start to the term with the school celebration of Bastille Day in Week 1, followed by our excursion to CERES in Week 2. 

Bastille Day was a wonderful celebration of all things French and the Grade 3/4s had some wonderful dress-ups and costumes to parade.

Our excursion to CERES (environmental education centre and urban farm) was a terrific day of learning about sustainability. Blessed with wonderful winter sun for the day, the 3/4s participated in three rotations across the day, learning about eco systems and the importance of biodiversity. Students were given a seed to grow their own warrigul greens at home. They wrapped the seed in a small ball of soil and clay which can be planted directly into a garden and needs regular watering to get it started.

A big thank you to our parent helpers who assisted on the day and helped ensure our groups were a manageable size. It was wonderful to have you there to assist us. 

Curriculum Focus: Term 3, Weeks 3&4

Literacy

In Reading this fortnight we will focus on comprehension strategies and features of procedural and other texts. Students will use their inferring skills to answer questions. Reading for fluency continues this term too where students practice reading out loud with expression, tone and volume.

Our class novel is The Barrumbi Kids,  a coming-of-age adventure about two best friends growing up together on Country, and dealing with the dreams and challenges of childhood in a remote Northern Territory community. It is an exciting and funny novel about children moving between Aboriginal and white cultures.

Procedural texts continue to be the focus of Writing this fortnight. Students will be looking at how procedural texts are created for different audiences. They will use the features, conventions and vocabulary of procedural writing and publish one of their procedural texts.

Numeracy — Area and Perimeter and Fractions

In Week 3 students will be learning about Area and Perimeter, understanding that perimeter is the distance around a shape, and area is the space inside it. They will learn to recognise the difference between formal and informal units (e.g. square centimetres vs. tiles or hand spans).

In Week 4 students will begin work on Fractions, recognising and representing unit fractions including 1/2 , ⅓, ¼, ⅕ and 1/10 and their multiples in different ways. They will recognise and extend the application of place value to tenths and hundredths and use the conventions of decimal notation to name and represent decimals. They will find equivalent representations of fractions using related denominators and make connections between fractions and decimal notation.

Inquiry

This term's inquiry question is "What does living sustainably look like in our local community?" Building on the CERES excursion students will learn about ways to be sustainable at home and in the community. Students will also learn about sustainable design and First Nations approaches to sustainability.

Willy Kids

This term's topic is "Willy Kids are Resilient,". Willy Kids learn to be resilient by focusing on managing emotions, being brave, bouncing back, persevering and staying positive.

Respectful Relationships

In Term Three, students are looking at gender norms and stereotypes, developing awareness of the ways that gender stereotypes in media and literature influence gender norms and challenging negative gender norms experienced in their own school or community contexts.

Homework

Homework is a valuable tool in reinforcing what is being learnt at school. We want our students to think of homework as being an important activity that assists in preparation for life-long learning. All students will receive their homework at school on a Monday and it is due back at school on Friday of the same week. 

Homework tasks include:

• Reading – four nights per week for a minimum of 15 minutes. Students are to record the book titles for the week on the homework sheet.
• Maths – playing the number games learnt in class at home to continue building number sense and revising learnt skills. This term there is a focus on learning their times tables (Grade 3s, 2s, 4s, 5s and 10s  and Grade 4s - all)
• Spelling – suggested activities to help practise the words that your child has chosen.
• Writing – a short writing task to be completed in your child’s Homework Book.

All students have a Homework Book in which they are encouraged to complete their tasks. Please contact your child’s teacher if there are any concerns or questions about the homework tasks.

Upcoming Dates

Week 6 - Friday 21 August - Book Week Parade 

Week 8 - Grade 4 Bike Education (4M & 4B - Monday 31 August & Tuesday 2 September. 4S, 4T & 4P - Wednesday 3 September & Thursday 4 September)

Warm regards, 

The Year 3/4 team –  Dianna Lane & Christine Carroll (3/4M), Grace Pante & Kayleen Dumic (3/4P), Alison Standish (3/4S) ,Hayley Thibou (3/4T) & Katherine Buenaventura (3/4B)