Year 3/4 Mainstream 

Celebrating Learning

Over the last two weeks all 3/4 classes have attended the TarraWarra Museum of Art in Healesville to view artworks in the exhibitions focusing on Industrial Design and Pattern Formation. Students had the opportunity to create art that had been inspired by the surrounding landscape and the works that they viewed. 

Maths:

We have started our new maths unit on subtraction and addition with a focus on subtraction. We are progressing to become fluent in our use of mental strategies and are developing our knowledge of written strategies including:

• Number lines: using a line to help solve problems
• Jump strategy: being able to jump backwards using smaller amounts
• Inverse operation: understanding the connection between addition and subtraction
• Fact families: calculations that use the same numbers

We are developing our abilities to choose efficient strategies that best suit the problem and also our understanding that there may be more than one solution to a problem.

Literacy:

In Writing, students are continuing to develop their understanding of the structure and features of an information report. They are building their confidence with:

• collecting information and identifying suitable sources of information
• note-taking in dot points using words and phrases, rather than complete sentences
• organising their ideas and putting their information into paragraphs with subheadings that make their writing easier to navigate
• peer editing, by identifying one area that they want their editor to focus on when giving feedback

In Reading, we have continued building our reciprocal reading skills, as this will be a focus for the rest of the year. In reciprocal reading, students are building towards working in small groups to discuss a shared text, kind of like a junior book club meeting. They each have a different role, and discuss their knowledge about what they have read once a week in a sharing session facilitated by the classroom teacher. Over the past two weeks, students have been working in their reading groups on just one role all together, and supporting each other to speak about their learning as either the Summariser, the Questioner, the Clarifier or the Predictor.

In Unit Focus, students have been working in mixed groups with students from other classes. We have planted a variety of eucalyptus seeds, and will be investigating the effects of the amount of sunlight or type of soil has on plant growth. Students are taking a science approach and will take notes about what they have noticed while their plants are growing. We also looked into the lifecycle of bees, and how they interact with pollination of plants. Included are some photos of student-made posters on bee lifecycles.

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

• Students will begin writing and reading a range of poetry types in Reading and Writing, and continue working in groups to develop their reciprocal reading skills. 
• Students will continue to build confidence with using addition and subtraction to solve problems!
• Sorry Day is on Saturday the 26th of May, so will be marked at TPS on Monday the 27th. This is also the beginning of Reconciliation Week, with the national theme being “Now More Than Ever”.