Year 3/4 Mainstream

Celebrating Learning

What we’ve been up to:

This fortnight, students took part in a Shelter Building incursion, run by Supreme Incursions. Although the outdoors session was interrupted with rain, it was replaced with a fantastic engaging wet weather alternative! Students were able to make strong connections between the experience and our Caring for Country unit, then wrote sequential recounts, which explained the shelter building process. 

In groups, students constructed sustainable dwelling models which needed to withstand the test of wind and Lego rain. Students were given limited fake currency to purchase differently priced resources at the construction shop, which encouraged them to make strategic decisions and work well as a team. It was impressive to see everyone’s creativity, collaboration and problem solving in making their unique shelters!  

In addition to the incursion, students have been completing assessments for the reporting period and publishing work samples for their portfolios, which will be viewed in our Term Three student-led parent-teacher conferences. 

Maths

In Mathematics, students have continued exploring angles. They made connections between angles and fractions as they saw them as measures of turn e.g. quarter and half turns. As we developed our understanding, we named angles with their corresponding measurement in degrees e.g. acute angles = 1ess than 90 degrees.

Students then moved onto revising their understanding of place value as they looked to regroup and rename numbers in different ways. They explored the process of what is happening when we multiply and divide numbers by 10, 100 and 1000 and what efficient strategies they can apply to find solutions. Students made connections between multiplication and division seeing how they can apply their understanding of each to support their problem solving.

Literacy

In Reading, students continued to develop their skills in the four roles of Reciprocal Reading. We moved onto the role of the ‘Predictor’, where students made before, during and after reading predictions based on animations and short texts. Practising this role required students to use clues from the text—such as the title, headings, pictures, or the beginning of a passage to make an educated guess about what might happen next or what the text will be about. Practising this role required students to relate what they watched or read to their prior knowledge - thinking about what they already know about a topic from personal experience, other books or classroom learning to enable them to make thoughtful predictions.

In Writing, students have continued with the Writer’s Workshop, with a focus on editing and publishing. Publishing means creating a final, neat copy of their work, either by carefully handwriting their final draft or using digital tools to publish such as Google Slides or Google Documents. During this process, students focused on checking and correcting their spelling, punctuation, and handwriting to make sure their writing is clear and easy to read. Once published, their final pieces are ready to share with their classmates and families. This process encourages students to take pride in their writing and develop confidence in sharing their ideas.

What’s coming up:

• In Reading, students will be practicing all of the reciprocal reading roles and see how this transfers to working successfully in a group.
• In Writing, we will continue the Writer’s Workshop process with an emphasis on publishing our writing in creative ways.
• In Mathematics, students will be exploring fractions and then moving onto decimals.
• Winter Solstice Lantern Walk. Friday 20th June at TPS from 3.30 - 6pm. There will be campfires, singing and stories. Bring a mug for soup. 

Things families can talk about at home:

• Collecting writing ‘seeds’ to use for writing ideas in Term 2 e.g. tickets, photos, drawings, clippings from magazines or newspapers. 
• Practice place value with base ten to build speed and fluency. Here are some online games: https://wordwall.net/en-us/community/place-value/base-ten
• When reading, ask students to make predictions and explain their reasoning for why they’re making predictions.
• Encourage students to consider how the author has published their writing. What format is it? What images, colours and fonts are used?