From the Year 3 Classroom

Welcome to Term Three. We hope all our Year three students and their families had a wonderful and restful holiday. Students have settled back into our routine and are ready for a busy term with lots of learning and some fun activities along the way. 

Reading-  

We begin our new class novel- The Iron Man. Using our Thinking Stems, we are recording our thoughts, feelings and wonderings to notice our thinking while we read. This helps our students to better understand texts to improve our comprehension. We move into summarising skills later in the week using the acronym SWBST (Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then). We encourage parents to ask their child to use this acronym to summarise their text they read at home.  

Writing 

Our first writing focus for this term will be Information Reports.  Students will be researching and publishing an information report on an animal of their choice. 

Maths-  

In this unit, Division and Multiplication students will learn how to solve word problems using multiplication and division. They’ll review multiplication and division facts, especially for the numbers 3, 4, 5, and 10, and learn how to use the symbols for these operations. This will help them get ready for harder math problems later.  

RE 

This term we our first Religious Education unit is Parables of Jesus.  We will be exploring different parables, looking at their messages and what Jesus was trying to teach through these stories. 

Inquiry 

We begin our new History Unit – The Mystery of Australia’s History, learning about First Peoples and how the oldest living culture in the world lived in Australia before contact.   Our Grade 3 excursion to the Port of Echuca will be on Wednesday 3rd September. Please add this date to your diary. 

Friendly Reminder: The expectation is that all students return their reading diaries each Friday so the teachers can check their home reading from throughout the week.  Students are expected to complete 60 minutes of home reading each week and return their diaries each Friday. The reading can be done over several days, but the expectation is 60 minutes of reading.  Last term the returning of diaries was not the best, with some students not returning their diary all term.  Considering this, in Term Three students who do not return their diary and complete their 60 minutes of reading (without a legitimate reason), will need to catch up on their weekly reading during Fun Friday. 

**Teacher discretion will be used for students who have an excellent track record of home reading and returning their diary if they forget it on the very odd occasion.