Year 3 - Middle Unit

It has been an exciting and engaging fortnight in Year 3, with two incursions and a visit to the Carlsruhe Campus. Students have had plenty of opportunities to learn through hands-on experiences and make connections between their classroom learning and the world around them.

Literacy

In Literacy, students have been exploring the structure and word choices of instructional texts. They have used this knowledge to create their own sets of instructions, designed to teach someone how to complete a skill or make something, such as kicking a drop punt or making scrambled eggs.

Students are now turning their written instructions into scripts, which they will use to film their own How-To videos. Students will receive an assessment rubric today outlining what their video needs to include.

Students who would like to film their video at home are encouraged to do so. The completed video can then be uploaded to Google Classroom using the device it was filmed on. Students will be sent home with their Google login details and have been shown how to upload work to Google Classroom to help with this process. If filming at home is not an option for your child, they will also have the opportunity to film their instructional video at school.

Maths

In Maths, students have been learning about fractions and how a whole can be split into equal parts. They have been exploring halves, quarters and eighths through hands-on activities and visual examples, helping them understand what these fractions look like and how they relate to everyday situations. The students are now looking at finding fractions of a collection, for example if a farmer has 16 apples and he sells ¼ of them, how many did he sell?

Inquiry

As part of our unit of work on algorithms, we welcomed the team from Mad About Science for an exciting hands-on incursion. Working in groups, students followed written instructions to build model aeroplanes using motors, LEDs and LEGO-style building blocks. They then used coding pens to program their aeroplanes, making the lights flash and the propellers spin.

Students thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, particularly when they needed to troubleshoot and work out what had gone wrong when something didn't work as planned. The session provided a great opportunity to develop their problem-solving skills, follow a sequence of instructions and explore how coding can be used to control objects in the real world.

Year 3 Teachers

Mark Condon & Kylie Minchew (3MC), Nathan Spilsted (3NS), Louise Safstrom/Emma Beaumont (3SB)