LEVEL 3/4 NEWS

Level 3

Level 3 students have settled back into school and Term 2 with ease. There was shared excitement across the board with students reuniting with friends and having plenty to catch up after the school holidays.

Students have enjoyed engaging in this term’s learning as well as participating in school-wide Cross Country, which saw students achieve personal success on what was a fantastic day! With many more exciting events on the calendar, it is sure to be another busy and wonderful term ahead.

Literacy

In Reading, students have practised the ‘visualising’ comprehension strategy, to help them deepen their understanding of different texts. They have practised using the five senses when reading and applied this strategy during whole class and independent reading times.

Students have started this term’s ‘Word Work’, which involves ongoing practice and implementation of grammar skills and phonemic awareness. Each week’s focus will be incorporated into our weekly homework.

In Writing, students will continue to develop their understanding of the Narrative writing genre. They have practised mapping ideas using graphic organisers as well as captivating their audience by writing ‘Sizzling Starts’ in their individual writing pieces.

Maths

Students have been learning different strategies to solve multiplication problems. We encourage families to continue to practise times tables and multiplication strategies at home. During Maths Specialist classes, Level 3 and 4 students have continued to develop their critical and creative thinking skills and are starting to create their very own Ken Ken puzzles! If you are not yet familiar with Ken Ken’s, please ask your child.

Inquiry

This term, students will continue to engage in enriched, meaningful wellbeing learning throughout lessons implemented from The Resilience Project. There will continue to be a focus of cyber safety and digital wellbeing with engaging lessons run through the Cyber Safety Project, which will be run consistently over this term and the remainder of the year.

For our Unit of Inquiry, our topic ‘Our Community’ will encourage students to investigate how communities have changed over time. Students will be immersed in experiences that will require them to draw comparisons between how life was ‘now’ and ‘then’ and then reflect this learning at end of unit to create their very own ‘Dream Community’ design.

Flora & Fauna

Students have been busy maintaining our beautiful garden beds and veggie patches. The broad bean seeds students planted a few weeks ago are now growing beautifully as seen below. This week, students planted both red and green cabbage and we look forward to being able to cook with these in our Gallery in the coming months. If you can assist on a Tuesday (12-1:30pm) in the Gallery with cooking, please turn up to the office at 12pm to sign in and we will supply the apron! Students are making cinnamon scrolls in the next few weeks so we need some extra help given the oven will be working.

We are all looking forward to another wonderful term in Level 3!

Level 3 Team – Luke, Amber, Steve, Danielle, Vicki and Kiah

Level 4

Level 4 has had a wonderful start to Term 2. With bellies full of Easter chocolate and well rested minds and bodies, the Level 4 students and teachers have hit the ground running with the hustle and bustle of Term 2.

Literacy

Level 4 students have been practising visualising skills. Students are learning to create a picture in their minds as they read or listen to a story being read, by using clues and descriptive details from the text. We have been able to use many different descriptive pieces of texts to put this skill into practise. Below is an illustration created by a level 4 student after hearing the poem, ‘Green Giant’ by Jack Prelutsky.

In Writing, we have been investigating the purpose and structure of a narrative. We experimented using story graphs to help cement the correct structure when planning a narrative. During Writing, we also focused on how authors create problems in their stories and how we, as writers can use these techniques when we write a narrative. We looked at the ‘Pebble, rock and boulder’ of problems in well know picture story books and how this helps build the tension in a story.

Maths

Maths has seen us dive into multiplication and experiment with the various strategies to calculate differentiated sums. We have looked at the tricks and strategies such as doubling, and halving, what happens to the place value of each digit in a number when you multiply it by 10 or 100. We represented multiplication in a variety of ways, for example groups of, arrays, written method, multiplication on a number line, fact families, commutative property and how it could relate to real life situations.

The Resilience Project/ Cyber Safety

We have started the term with our buckets full!!! Students loved writing compliments or small gratitude notes for each other and leaving them on their desks. It is the small things we need to acknowledge sometimes, things that make us feel good on the inside- for example, “I like the way you say good morning to me every day!” “Thank you for lending me your pencil the other day, when I couldn’t find mine.”

In E-Smart we discussed Digital Dilemmas and what we could do if we encounter any of these dilemmas in the online world. Students were provided potential real life digital dilemma cards and were tasked to think how they could overcome them and remain safe and respectful online.

Important dates and reminders:

Excursion to Scienceworks:

Week 3: April 29th - 4H, 4T, 4L

Week 4: May 9th – 4C, 4M

***Students will come in school uniform and will need a packed lunch and labelled drink bottle. Please make sure you arrive to school at 8:45am on your excursion day.

Cardboard bases:

Please continue to bring in cardboard for our model bases as part of our Inquiry unit. Sturdy boxes/ pieces are ideal, pieces that do not bend when raised (ideally not pieces stuck together with sticky tape please). These pieces of cardboard can be roughly 1m x 1m.

District Cross Country (selected students from Levels 3-6):

Tuesday 30th April

House Athletics Carnival:

Friday 3rd May

Mother’s Day Stall:

Friday 10th May

Reading Heroes