Middle School

Grades 3 and 4

Thank you to our lovely students

Last Friday was Australia's Teacher's Day. As teachers we were super lucky to a special treat with and from our classes. Mr Webber helped arrange a class party for 3M while Mrs Dibb and Mrs Eastwood were able to have a complementary car wash. It was a fun way to end the week.

Literacy

As part of our procedural writing, the grade 3/4 students watched their classroom teacher making Chocolate Balls. As they followed the recipe, they had to record the materials used and the steps taken. They then had to write their own procedural piece. To test how well they had recorded their recipes we invited Mr Webber to follow our recipes and make some Chocolate Balls. The students loved adding a few extra steps for Mr Webber, like getting dressed as a chef, wearing safety goggles, doing the worm to warm up his body and crushing the biscuits with a rolling pin (don't tell him but we used a blender to chop our biscuits). This has been a fun way to develop our skills in using specific instructions, in a correct order to achieve the desired outcome.

Numeracy - Money and Financial Mathematics

In our Year 3 and 4 money unit, students explore money through fun, hands-on activities that develop their understanding and skills. They’re learning to represent amounts of money in different ways, such as using various coin combinations to make up a specific value, and recognizing that a coin's worth isn’t related to its size. This helps them identify which coins have greater or lesser values. Students practice calculating change from given amounts and using addition to find the total cost of multiple items, strengthening their mental math skills. To solve practical money problems, they use calculators to check their calculations, ensuring accuracy in both finding change and adding totals. Throughout this unit, students are particularly enjoying earning "classroom money," which they can save to purchase privileges later in the term. This incentive has made the learning experience engaging and helps reinforce real-world financial skills that they will use both in and outside the classroom.