Year 3/4
Overview of Learning
Year 3
We hope everyone had a restful break- the Grade 3 team are looking forward to another great term of learning with our students and working in partnership with our students and families.
Our Grade 3 teaching team consists of:
3A - Leah Telford
3B - Mel Farmer (Grade 3 Team Leader, Wed - Fri) and Liz Lamers (Mon-Tues)
3C - Gareth Harrison
3D - Anne Spencer (Classroom Teacher) and Elle Neave/ Dan Anderson (3D Teachers of the Deaf)
Important Notes:
Term 3 is the swimming term for Grade 3's. Swimming will take place for five sessions over a two week period. Swimming dates are: Monday 20/7, Wednesday 22/7, Friday 24/7, Monday 27/7 and Wednesday 29/7. Please make sure that your child wears their bathers under their school uniform and brings their swimming bag with them to school on these days.
Digitech is integrated through different areas of the curriculum, please continue to ensure that your child brings their laptop to school fully charged each day.
Year 3 Curriculum Foci
Literacy
In Reading, students will continue their daily reading routine with their fluency pair partner. Students will also track text and take turns to practise fluent reading aloud as we read our class novel 'The One and Only Ivan' by Katherine Applegate. Students will explore development of characters and learn to infer about characters thoughts and feelings as they read. Our novel study will be complemented by our Knowledge Based Literacy exploration of our science topic 'Friction and Gravity'. Students will read texts on Forces to develop their vocabulary and comprehension of knowledge in this area.
In Writing, we will continue to use The Hochman Method to revisit and continue to develop student sentence level writing skills, particularly focused around writing compound and complex sentences. Students will also continue to practise these skills through explicit teaching of this and other writing strategies during our Writer's Notebook sessions. Our next stage of the Hochman Method instruction is teaching the structure and working towards writing Single Paragraph Outlines (SPOs). We will be teaching this structure alongside the content of our Knowledge Based Literacy focus on 'Friction and Gravity'.
Students will continue to develop their Speaking and Listening skills through a range of classroom activities. During our hands-on science investigations and collaborative learning tasks, they will work as a team to share ideas, discuss observations and solve problems together. Students will have regular opportunities to build confidence by presenting during our morning routine and reporting back on learning activities. They will also strengthen their communication skills by asking and responding to questions through our Turn and Talk routines and by contributing to class discussions.
Maths
As part of Maths learning, students will continue to undertake a Daily Review; reviewing topics previously taught at the start of every Maths lesson.
Students will also continue to undertake daily maths fluency activities - linking into multiplication facts and related division facts for 3's, 5's, 10's and extending to other multiplication/ division facts, depending on each student's fluency level. Fast and accurate recall of multiplication and division facts is an essential skill as we move into the upper primary years.
In Term 3, students will undertake a term long unit on Multiplication and Division. Students will learn multiplication and division facts and develop conceptional knowledge of representing multiplication and division through arrays, as well as learning how to solve problems with and without regrouping and solving worded mult/div problems.
Our applied Mathematic topics in Term 3 are Shape and Data Investigations. In our Shape unit, students will develop their understanding of 2D and 3D shapes, their properties and how to classify and describe them. In our Data unit, students will pose questions, collect and represent their data and interpret what it means.
Science
Our Term Three unit is titled 'Friction and Gravity'. In this unit, students apply the technical knowledge and vocabulary they acquired in our Knowledge Based Literacy unit to science experiments on forces. Students will undertake a variety of experiments relating to friction, gravity and other forces such as push and pull, magnetics and electrostatic forces. Students will work in teams to conduct experiments, predict results, closely observe and record their findings on their experiment observation sheets.
Year 4
We hope everyone had a lovely break. This term we are saying welcome to our new Teacher of the Deaf in Year 3 and 4, Elle Neave. Please make her feel welcome as she begins her journey here at RGLPS.
Our Year 4 teaching team in 2026 is comprised of:
4A -Jackson Dunstan (Room 2)
4B - Kendall Wilson (Class Teacher Monday, Thursday and Friday) and Kerron Worsdell (Class Teacher Tuesday-Wednesday) (Room 1)
4C - Claire Waring-Dallwicz, Elle Neave (Teacher of the Deaf Monday-Tuesday) and Dan Anderson (Teacher of the Deaf Wednesday - Friday and Team Leader) (Room 7)
Year 4 Curriculum Foci
Reading
This term, students will continue developing their reading comprehension skills through our class novel, The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. Students will explore characters, settings and key events while using strategies such as predicting, visualising, questioning, connecting and summarising to deepen their understanding of the text. They will also learn to identify literal and inferred meanings, analyse authors' choices and support their thinking with evidence from the novel.
Writing
In Writing, students will use a range of Writing Revolution strategies to strengthen their note-taking, sentence construction and paragraph writing skills. Through our Science topic, students will create informative texts that explain food chains, habitats and the relationships between living things. Students will focus on organising ideas clearly, using topic-specific vocabulary and editing their work to improve meaning, structure and clarity.
Spelling
Students will continue participating in the Spelling Mastery program. This term, they will explore spelling patterns, prefixes, suffixes, homophones and multisyllabic words. Students will develop their understanding of how words are constructed and apply these skills to improve their spelling accuracy and confidence across all areas of learning.
Speaking and Listening
Students will build their speaking and listening skills through class discussions, collaborative learning tasks and presentations. They will learn to distinguish between facts, opinions and feelings while sharing their ideas respectfully with others. Students will also practise delivering structured presentations using an appropriate speaking voice, clear organisation and confidence when speaking to an audience.
Mathematics
This term, students will continue developing their mathematical understanding across a range of areas. A major focus will be on building fluency and confidence with multiplication and division strategies, including recalling multiplication facts up to 10 × 10, identifying number patterns and solving increasingly complex problems using efficient mental and written methods.
Students will investigate data and statistics by collecting information, creating graphs and interpreting results. Through probability activities, they will explore chance by conducting experiments and discussing possible outcomes.
In Measurement and Space, students will learn about perimeter and area, develop their understanding of location and mapping skills, and apply their knowledge of shapes and spatial reasoning to practical tasks. Throughout the term, students will be encouraged to explain their thinking, solve real-world problems and use a range of strategies to communicate their mathematical understanding.
Science: Sustain the Chain
This term, students will investigate how living things depend on one another within ecosystems through our Science unit, Sustain the Chain. Students will learn about producers, consumers and decomposers and explore how energy moves through food chains. They will examine habitats, animal adaptations and the important role plants play in supporting life.
Students will also explore environmental factors such as climate, vegetation and natural resources, and consider how human actions can impact ecosystems. Through 'hands-on' investigations, discussions and research activities, students will develop a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of living things and the importance of caring for our environment.