Year 3/4 Team News

Hello Year  3/4 families,   

We hope you all had a wonderful break and are now enjoying the children returning to school and their term routines. The Grade 3/4s have settled into Term 2 so quickly and have been working hard.

We were fortunate to start the term with a visit from four players from Melbourne Storm who spoke to the Grades 3/4/5/6s about the importance of looking after your bodies which was a great way to launch our Inquiry unit on Health and Well-Being.

Curriculum Focus: Term 2 - Weeks 3 & 4

Literacy: In Reading, we will continue reading our class novel ‘Nim’s Island’. Students will continue practising note taking and summarising as well as developing their fluency by reading the same passage of text three times a week.

In Writing, we are continuing to explore information reports and will be using our knowledge of non-fiction texts to research, plan and create information texts on a famous First Nations person. We will learn to publish these online.

In upcoming weeks students will be working on an oral presentation (3-4 minutes long) about Health and Well-Being, choosing a topic of interest to research. This is a project children will work on at home and then present to a small group/class in Weeks 5 - 7, linking our Inquiry and Literacy Units. More information will be coming home to families about this on Friday.

Numeracy:  

In our unit on TIME students will:

• recognise and use the relationship between formal units of time, including days, hours, minutes and seconds, to estimate and compare the duration of events.
• describe the relationship between the hours and minutes on analog and digital clocks, and read the time to the nearest minute
• Solve problems involving the duration of time including situations involving ‘am’ and ‘pm’ and conversions between units of time 

Inquiry: Our inquiry question in Term Two is ‘How can we care for our health and wellbeing?’. Students will examine the benefits of regular physical activity, including the influence on sleep, concentration and wellbeing, and identifying opportunities when they can be active at school, home and in the community. They will also investigate and apply strategies that contribute to their own and others’ health, safety, relationships and wellbeing.

Willy Kids: Term Two’s topic is ‘Willy Kids are Respectful’. Willy Kids are always respectful and think about others. We are exploring how we can show respect in a range of ways. 

Respectful Relationships: In Term Two, students are looking at personal and cultural strengths. Students will describe personal and cultural strengths and identify some personal and cultural strengths they can use to respond to challenges and opportunities. They will also describe factors that contribute to  positive relationships with people at  school, at home and in the community.

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. 
• 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 to note:

Thursday 7 May - Mother’s Day stall

Thursday 7 May - District Cross-Country Competition (selected students only), 9.00am-12.00pm, McIvor Reserve, Yarraville

Friday 15 May - 3/4B hosting Whole School Assembly

Monday 25 May - Report Writing Day (student free day)

Warm regards, 

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