Term 4 for the Year 3/4 students has started with lots of enthusiasm and fantastic learning opportunities. Here is what has been happening!

Literacy

In the 3/4 classrooms, students have been exploring the book Matilda by Roald Dahl, focusing on vocabulary and narrative writing. Each week, they’ve been exploring new words from the text, discussing their meanings and using them in sentences. Inspired by Matilda's adventures, students are crafting their own narratives, incorporating the rich vocabulary they've learned. They brainstorm character traits and plot twists, encouraging creativity and personal expression. Through the writing process they’ve been working on enhancing their narrative to create imaginative and engaging texts for the reader.

Mathematics

Students have explored fractions and decimals over the past few weeks. They explored what fractions are and how they can be noted in decimal form. The students investigated the ways fractions can be utilised in real life scenarios and how they can help solve problems.

Over the coming weeks, students will be learning about angles. They will investigate what angles are, the different types, and again explore how these can be used to solve real world problems.

Inquiry

Our Inquiry topic this term is a very exciting one for our students! Our ‘Frame by Frame’ topic immerses the students into creative thinking and using digital technology to bring their creative ideas to life. Over the course of the term, students will learn about the different ways to think creatively, how to evaluate and improve their ideas, and design and build characters, settings and prompts. The students will work with a creative buddy to support them with their thinking, working towards capturing and editing their own digital stop motion animation! Stay tuned for our creativity expo towards the end of term where students will showcase their stop motion movies.

Religion

October is the month of Mary and as such, we are learning about Mary as the Faithful disciple. Students have been delving into scripture to learn more about who Mary was and the characteristics that define her as a faithful disciple (such as faith, trust and service). As we are in the month of October we have also been learning about the Holy Rosary as a meditative prayer that helps Catholics reflect on the key events in the life of Jesus and Mary.

Over the coming weeks we will learn about the key events leading up to the birth of Jesus, focusing on the history of the time, the importance of Advent as a time of waiting and how Jesus’ birth is a time of joy and celebration.

Excursion

On Monday 21st October the Year 3/4 students headed to Australian Centre for the Moving Image, in Federation Square. In the cinema, Susan took us through a session ‘Let’s get animated’ where students investigated the science behind animation. They learnt about the history of animation and the wonderful opportunities animation offers for expression, visual engagement, and storytelling. This gave the students lots of inspiration for their stop motion projects. After lunch and some time exploring Birrarung Marr the students explored the exhibition ‘The Story of Moving Image’ navigating the universe of film, TV, video games and animation. The students are really excited to begin their stop motion projects.

Respectful Relationships

This term, we reviewed Positive Coping Strategies and have started to investigate Problem Solving. Towards the end of term we plan to explore mindfulness (stress management).

In our first Problem Solving session this term, we played The Human Knot game. Students made a circle, closed their eyes and randomly grabbed someone else’s hands. This produced a giant human knot! The group had to work together to find a safe way of undoing their knot, without letting go of each other’s hands. It was pretty tricky but so much fun! It is important to help students learn a range of problem-solving skills through applied learning tasks, such as the human knot, so they are able to cope with the challenges they face in the future.

Through mindfulness, we aim to teach students that stress is a normal part of life that can be managed. Coping better with life’s stressors, helps to develop positive mental health and wellbeing. We hope to assist students to recognise their personal signs and symptoms of stress and to develop strategies, such as mindfulness, that will help them to cope.

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