Year 3/4 Team News

Hello Year  3/4 families,   

We hope you all had a great break and enjoyed the lovely weather. We are pleased with how the students have settled back into what is going to be a busy Term 2. They have enjoyed sharing their holiday adventures with us and are now recharged – ready to go!

Over the past week, we have been talking about the significance of ANZAC day and completed some learning tasks related to this important day.

Athletics Day:

Today the Year 3’s participated in their first Willy Primary House Athletics Competition/Trials that took place at the Newport Athletics Track, involving all 3-6 students. This not only ran as trials for the school athletics team, but it also ran as a school, house competition!  All students rotated through and earned house points through their participation in every event. The top two students in each event will have the chance to represent Willy Primary, in competition against the other schools in our district during Term 3. Students dressed up in their house colours and cheered on their peers and houses in what was a fantastic day!

Fortnightly Curriculum Focus

Literacy: In Reading, we are revising making text to self, text to text and text to world connections while reading to help with comprehension.

In Writing, we are using a plot scaffold to write a narrative following the 6+ traits of Writing. This involves concentrating on the following: Ideas, Organisation, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Conventions and Presentation.

Numeracy:  Multiplication/Division: We are learning about the connection between multiplication and division to develop an understanding of inverse operations. We are learning to identify what number clues can be used to discover related multiplication and division facts.

Inquiry: This term our Inquiry question is ‘What was life like for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia before and after European settlement?’ We will be learning about the important contributions they have made to Australia and focusing on the concept of ‘Change Makers’.

Child wise/Respectful Relationships:   Problem Solving: Students will describe factors that contribute to positive relationships and identify communication skills that enhance relationships for particular groups and purposes. They will describe characteristics of cooperative behaviour and identify evidence of these in group activities. 

3/4 Homework

Homework is an important tool for reinforcing what is being learnt at school and we provide our students each week with differentiated activities to cater to their needs, abilities, and interests.

Homework tasks include:

• Reading – Four nights per week for a minimum of 15 minutes.Students are encouraged to choose their own "just right" books and record the titles on the homework sheet. They can select books based on their individual interests or reading levels.
• Maths – Playing number games learnt in class at home to continue building number sense and fluency.Each week, students will have two games to play, which can be enjoyed with siblings, friends, or family members. The games will often include extension ideas to further challenge students.
• Spelling – Each week, students are introduced to a new spelling focus and given a list of words with varying difficulty. They are encouraged to choose seven words from the list and to select three personal words—words that they may have misspelt in their own writing.Suggested activities to help practice these words can be found in their Homework Book under the section "Ways to Learn Your Words."
• Writing – A short writing task to be completed in the Homework Book.For more confident writers, we encourage students to expand their writing into longer stories, incorporating complex ideas, paragraphs, accurate punctuation, and enhanced vocabulary.

All students will receive their homework on Monday, and it is due back at school by Friday of the same week.

Reminders:

Year 3/4 Camp: Dates for your calendar: Wed 20th – Fri 22nd August. A deposit for this event is due at the end of this week via Compass. Keep an eye out for more information coming through in the coming weeks.

Warm regards, 

The Year 3/4 team – Rebecca Givogue & Mary Colangelo (3/4G), Katja Morris (3/4M), Grace Pante & Steven Puhar (3/4P), Alison Standish (3/4S) & Hayley Thibou (3/4T)