Year 3 News
Welcome Back to Term 2!
Welcome back, everyone! We hope you all had a fantastic break and managed to enjoy some well-deserved downtime. The coffee machines in the staff room are certainly working overtime this week, but it is absolutely brilliant to see all the bright, smiling faces back in the classroom. The mornings might be getting a little bit chillier, but the Year 3 brains are already running hot!
Here is a peek at what we’ve been up to during our first week back:
Literacy: Tales, Rules and Reading
We kicked off the term by diving straight into our Holiday Recounts. Whether the break involved a grand adventure or simply achieving a new personal best on the living room couch, the students loved sharing their stories and putting their experiences to paper.
In our Phonics Plus sessions, we spent some time knocking off the holiday rust by activating our prior phonic and word knowledge. We’ve also been using our Victorian Lesson Plans to crack the code on the ever-tricky 'y to i' spelling rule (say goodbye to crys and hello to cries!). To round out our literacy block, the students have been hard at work practising their reading fluency, focusing on reading smoothly, accurately and with excellent expression.
Numeracy: Multiplying Our Brainpower
In Maths this week, we’ve hit the ground running with multiplicative thinking. The classroom has been buzzing as the students tackle the 3- and 4-times tables. We're working on moving beyond just rote learning and really understanding how these numbers work together. We've also been doing some rapid-fire number fact retrieval—getting those essential maths facts to the tip of our tongues so we can recall them as quick as a flash!
Cyber Safety: Good Digital Citizens
Navigating the online world is a huge part of the kids' lives, so we dedicated time this week to Cyber Safety. Our major focus was on stepping into other people's shoes to consider the perspectives of others. We had some fantastic discussions about what it means to show genuine integrity in the decisions we make online. It's all about ensuring that our digital playground is just as kind and safe as our schoolyard.
Coming Up Next Week...
The momentum continues! Here is what is on the radar for Week 2:
Literacy: We will be rolling on with the Phonics Plus program. Keep an ear out, as we'll be investigating words with the root 'struct' (think construct, structure, and instruct) and using them to conquer tricky cloze sentences.
Numeracy: We are continuing our journey with multiplicative thinking, but we'll be flipping the script to focus on division. We will be solving division problems by sharing amounts into equal groups—because as we all know, sharing is caring!
Respectful Relationships: Students will be able to describe the influence of people situations and events have on their emotions.