3-4TG

Getting into the spirit of the Paris Olympics!

We are loving the 2024 Paris Olympics! 

The Olympic spirit is well and truly present in 3-4TG. There is a real buzz of excitement and interest about the Australian athletes and also the interesting sports and events underway in Paris. 

Every morning, we adjust our medal tally display to reflect the overnight events in Paris, and each child has a Paris Olympics booklet. This booklet contains tasks linked to our current lessons, as well as other fun activities. We have explored the origins of the Ancient Olympics in Greece and learned about some unique events that appear during the Modern Olympics.

The conversations in our class have reflected the huge interest every child has in watching these amazing athletes persevere, try their best and also deal with the disappointment that is part of being involved in sport. The resilience needed to push though injuries, losses and defeats in pursuit of sporting success is very inspiring. 

We are especially  interested in and inspired by the Paralympics and the Paralympians who made it into the Australian team. In the coming weeks, each student will choose an Australian athlete and will plan and write a brief biography text about their life and achievements. 

The Kaboom “Olympics” incursion was so much fun, and there is still more fun to come this week; bring on the Potato Olympics this Friday!! We have started to name and decorate our potato athletes so the preparation has begun. May the best potato win!

Handwriting- Joining writing

After spending all of Term 1 and Term 2 focusing on perfecting our letter formation on the dotted thirds paper,  we have started practising our diagonal joins. 

Each fortnight, our handwriting focus will change. Many students have found this handwriting transition to be quite simple; perhaps because they already had their ‘flicks’ and ‘tails’ in the correct position in their everyday handwriting. For others.... it's a bit trickier! Hopefully by the end of the year, every student will be able to join their letters beautifully in Victorian Modern Cursive font.

Improving Reading Fluency: “Fluency Pairs”

Every week, the students are presented with a new short text, usually linked with our overall learning focus, covering English and Inquiry. So far this term, we have been learning about early exploration of Australia and we are now learning about the Ancient and Modern Olympics. 

We explore the new text together as a whole class on the big screen first, focusing on any unfamiliar vocabulary. Students are then paired up and take turns reading the text aloud within a set time limit, with their partner listening. 

After the first student reads, the partner gives them some feedback: what they are doing well, and what to work on. (Smooth reading, accuracy, intonation and volume.) Once the first reader receives feedback from their partner, the roles change and the process is repeated.

Not only does this “Fluency Pairs” reading provide opportunity to improve reading fluency, it also allows each student to learn more about the focus topic (Olympics, currently), which supports their understanding in other English lessons during the week. 

Writing: Information Reports

Since our last newsletter contribution, our class researched, wrote, edited and published some amazing information reports. After learning a lot about living creatures on our planet in Term 2, including scientific classifications and features of reptiles, mammals, marsupials, amphibians and many more, it was time to use their knowledge to create something special. 

Each student was able to select any living creature to research. From there, many research and writing skills were utilised and developed: Planning, note taking, paraphrasing, editing, time management, conferencing with a teacher, publishing, design and layout. 

Finally, bringing all this hard work together, students created the most beautiful posters to share their new knowledge. They were very proud of their efforts! We produced fantastic posters with creatures ranging from capybaras to cats, kangaroos to clownfish.... and more!

We sent many photos to our families on Seesaw to show off the finished information reports/projects. We are now ready to take these projects home to show our families in person.