Year 3 Term 3 Newsletter

Welcome to Term 3

A big congratulations to all students for their fantastic achievements in Semester 1. This Semester we will revise and consolidate what students were taught in Semester 1 and build new knowledge and skills to progress their learning. This term we will be investigating real life topics such as deforestation and sustainability, which will be informed by our excursion to Healesville Sanctuary in September.

 Specialist Timetable

Important Dates

5/8 Y3-6 House Athletics at Mentone Athletics Track

8/8: Casual Dress Disco

18/8: Book week

19/8: Character Parade

20/8: Special Friend's Day - open classrooms

27/8: Curriculum Day

3/9: Excursion to Healesville Sanctuary

4/9: Father's Day Stall

10/9 Y3-4 Music Concert

15/9 Y3-6 District Athletics (selected students only)

18/9 Special food day (Order via QKR)

19/9: Last Day Early Dismissal

Electronic Rolls

Our electronic rolls are legal documents therefore we must be accountable for any absences. Please assist with this by informing the school by replying to the text message sent by Sentral in the event of your child being away.

Teaching and Learning

English

Reading

This term students will complete their investigation of sounds (phonemes) made by less common combination of letters (graphemes). Students will then investigate how time is represented through the tense of a verb by adding a suffix to the base word, e.g. -ed, -ing, and using auxiliary verbs, e.g. I am baking.  Students will learn when and how to make changes to the base word if required, e.g. doubling the last consonant. Students will apply this knowledge to their reading by removing the suffix to identify the base word when decoding unfamiliar words. To improve reading fluency, students will read short texts, focusing on using punctuation to improve phrasing and expression. 

In comprehensions sessions, students will continue to be taught strategies to help them understand the texts they read. This term our focus is developing skills on finding the main idea of a paragraph or a text, summarising what they have read in their own words, synthesising prior knowledge with new information to inform or change their thinking, and skimming and scanning texts to get a general idea of the content. Students will apply these skills to comprehend good quality picture books. In the second half of the term students will be supported in applying all the comprehension skills they have been taught so far to our class novel. During After Lunch Lunch, the teacher will read a novel for enjoyment and model what good readers sound like and what they do.  

Writing

At the start of this term, students are completing an information report on the history and culture of Indigenous Australians before colonisation. For the rest of this term, students will develop skills in persuasive writing. Persuasive writing aims to persuade the reader to adopt a point of view or take a specific action by setting out the writer’s position and develop a series of logical arguments to support it.  Using The Great Kapok Tree as our mentor text, students will research and write a persuasive text arguing against deforestation. Students will revise the text structure of a persuasive text. They will understand different strengths of arguments and how reasons are used to support each of their arguments. They will develop skills to express their opinions through the use of precise vocabulary and modal verbs and adverbs. During writing sessions, students will continue to practise composing sentences correctly, with a focus on using a range of conjunctions to join two or more ideas, clauses and sentences together. They will also ensure that the subject and verb in their sentences agree and are anchored in time through tense. Students will be encouraged to take more of the lead in revising and editing their own work for structure, grammar, punctuation and spelling.

Speaking & Listening 

Whole class, small group and paired discussions with their peers are fundamental to learning and used across the whole curriculum. We want students to be engaged, active learners and to share their knowledge, ideas and wonderings with their peers and teacher. We will support them to construct understanding together, to express their opinions and to listen respectfully to others. To that end students will be explicitly taught how to have a productive conversation with their peers by helping them develop collaborative behaviours such as sharing their knowledge and ideas, actively listening to points of view of others, asking questions, providing feedback and confirming understanding as an individual and a group. In addition, students will have opportunities to present completed work to the class and respond to their peers' questions.  

Mathematics

This term, students will revise and consolidate addition and subtraction strategies that were taught in Semester 1 before moving on to using the vertical algorithms to add and subtract three and four digit numbers, with and without regrouping. Students use maths blocks and their knowledge of place value to support their understanding of how numbers are regrouped. They apply their knowledge of the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction to solve problems. Strategies for adding and subtracting are applied to money. Students will move on to revising and consolidating multiplication and division strategies. They will be introduced to the vertical algorithm to multiply 2 digit numbers by a 1 digit number, with and without regrouping, before practising dividing 2 digit numbers by a 1 digit number, with and without regrouping. Other maths topics we will cover this term are in measurement and space. In measurement, students will identify angles as a measure of turn and use right angles as a reference to compare other angles in everyday situations. We will also investigate time, reading time to the nearest minute on both analogue and digital clocks, and compare the duration of events. In space, students will compare and classify 3D objects and explain why their features make them suited to their uses.    

Humanities  

In Humanities, our big questions are; "How does the environment support the lives of people and other living things?” followed by "How can people use places and environments more sustainably?" Students investigate similarities and differences in climate across different parts of Australia. They investigated the ongoing capacity of the environment to sustain the lives of humans and other living things and how this is being impacted by human activity. Students will be taught that living sustainably requires a more mindful use of resources and management of waste. A trip to Healesville Sanctuary will bring students face to face with our native animals and they will learn about the challenges these animals face from humans. At the end of this Unit, students will consider one change our community can make to reduce their environmental footprint. 

Wellbeing

Students will continue to participate in wellbeing sessions where we will model and discuss respectful relationships. When possible, we will have Fun Friday where students have an opportunity for free play with their peers to practise and develop social skills.

We continue to support each and every student on their learning journey and help them understand that their abilities can grow through effort. 

CEPS VALUES

COURTESY    RESPECT    CO-OPERATION    RESPONSIBILITY 

We continue to give out awards on a Friday afternoon assembly (now every fortnight) for students who have displayed the CEPS values.

Your child may receive a CEPS raffle ticket for displaying the school values! CEPS Kids are Friendly Kids award winners will be drawn and announced during assembly on Friday afternoons. 

Supporting learning from home

Reading

Continue to help your child develop a consistent habit of reading. This means setting aside some quality screen-free time each day to read. It is recommended that students read for at least 15 minutes a day. Create a space that is comfortable for reading and read books that appeal to you child; it is best if they select the books that interest them (Kingston Libraries have 100’s of books to choose from and the librarians can recommend books that may be of interest to your child, so a trip to the library will help you find some good reading material). When reading, aim to be present and focused on this activity alone. You can; ask your child to read a few paragraphs or a chapter of their book to you to help them practise reading fluently and with expression; read a book to your child that may interest them but they cannot yet access, or listen to an audio book together; participate in shared reading of a book or text where you both take turns reading text. Discuss what they are reading to ensure they are reading for meaning and clarify any unfamiliar vocabulary and concepts in the text. These reading sessions should be enjoyable so aim to be enthusiastic, encouraging and patient.  

Maths

By the end of the year, all students should be able to fluently recall single-digit addition and subtraction facts to 20 and extend them to larger numbers, e.g. 8 + 4 = 12, 28 + 4 =32, 80 + 40 = 120. To help them achieve this, we recommend regularly playing the card and dice games on Google Classroom. Also, students can play online games, such as those found on www.mathplaygound.com and www.coolmathgames.com, to build their fluency. Similarly, students should practise recalling multiplication and division facts for 2’s, 3’s, 5’s and 10’s. By mastering these facts, students will be able to dedicate greater mental effort to problem-solving. Activities are regularly assigned on Mathletics that complement the topics studied in class and can be completed as part of their homework. In addition, a maths problem/ investigation will be posted on Google Classroom every week that students can attempt at home to help them build their problem-solving skills. As in Semester 1, continue to look for opportunities where your child can use maths in everyday life so they understand the importance and relevance of developing solid maths knowledge and skills. 

Writing

Reading provides a foundation to good writing because students become familiar with how texts and sentences are structured and how language is used to engage the reader. This term, we are focusing on persuasive texts. There are many examples of persuasive text in everyday life. Draw your child’s attention to persuasive texts in your travels, e.g. advertisements, and discuss how the text and images are used to persuade the reader to think or do something. In everyday conversations, encourage your child to share their ideas and opinions.  Assist them in persuading you of their position and support them in listening respectfully to other people's points of view, for example, if your child wants to go Luna Park for the day, encourage them to think of reasons to support their position. Children's books that showcase the persuasive genre include The Day the Crayons Quit, Hey Little Ant and Can I Be Your Dog? Again, the librarians at Kingston Library will be able to help you find books that have persuasive writing. 

Homework: In Year 3, Homework is expected to be daily reading routines and completion of assigned Mathletics tasks. From time to time, there will also be tasks provided to consolidate classroom learning. e.g. Maths problems/ Writing /Handwriting / English Orthography. These will be posted on Google Classroom. 

Communication

If you have any queries along the way, please feel free to contact us using our emails listed below, or you can send a Class Dojo. If any more urgent concerns arise, please organise a time to meet with your child’s teacher.

Kate Burman (catherine.burman@education.vic.gov.au)

Bec Crawford (rebecca.crawford2@education.vic.gov.au) 

If you need an important message to be passed onto your child, we ask that you communicate this via the office.  

We use Sentral to communicate School and Year 3 Information and Class Dojo to communicate the following: - 1:1 communication between teachers and families. 

On occasion, we will post photos to celebrate classroom learning.