Grade 3 News

📅 Important Dates & Reminders

Upcoming dates/Important Info

Friday 27th March: House Athletics

Thursday 2nd April: Happy Hat Parade

                                     Last Day Term 1 - 2.30pm dismissal

Hats - As per our school's SunSmart policy, all students are required to wear hats till the end of April 2025.

Icy Poles will be sold outside the senior school Monday & Tuesday lunchtimes

Learning Reflection

📖 Literacy

This past fortnight we continued reading Matilda. In the story, Matilda plans and carries out a prank by putting a newt in Miss Trunchbull’s jug of water. Later, Miss Trunchbull is teaching the class maths and picks up two students by their hair and ears when they answer incorrectly. The chapter finishes with Matilda confessing to Miss Honey that she was responsible for tipping the newt into the jug and then showing Miss Honey her special powers.

Our writing focus at a sentence level has been on the different sentence types: statements, commands, questions and exclamations. We looked at how we can identify the difference between them based on the punctuation used. Students then had a go at writing four sentences, providing an example of each type. As we move toward the end of the term, our text-level writing focus is persuasive writing. We have begun by looking at sentence-level features such as topic sentences and supporting details, and discussing how the two are different.

Persuasive writing is our new focus for text-level writing, and students will be persuading us that books are more powerful than screens. This week, students were introduced to rhetorical questions and chose one they would like to include in their writing. We then looked at the structure of an introductory paragraph, which includes a general statement, a specific statement and a thesis statement (GST). We planned these together and then wrote our introductions.

Preview:

Next fortnight, we will finish reading our novel and celebrate by watching the movie Matilda. Students will continue to plan and write their persuasive pieces, aiming to include emotive language, a clear topic sentence, supporting details and a concluding sentence. Students will also continue to develop their understanding of topic sentences.

➗ Maths

Over the last fortnight, we have been exploring different aspects of time, including estimating and comparing durations using formal units such as seconds, minutes, hours and days. Using stopwatches, students estimated, recorded and measured the time taken to complete a range of activities. Students have also been using calendars to calculate the time between two given dates.

To consolidate learning in this unit, students worked in groups to design a class event that everyone could participate in. Each group contributed their idea, which we then combined to create our very own class Olympics. Students estimated how long they thought each activity would take, then measured and recorded the actual time. Some examples included timing how long it took to write the alphabet and to read a chapter of Matilda.

Preview:

Over the next fortnight, we will be focusing on multiplication and division. Students will use arrays to represent multiplication, and to write corresponding multiplication and division equations, as well as repeated addition equations.

Wellbeing

Last week in Friendology, our focus was on “Mean on Purpose”. Students explored why name-calling is considered mean-on-purpose behaviour, why it is never acceptable, and how to respond appropriately by using a quick comeback and seeking support from a trusted adult. They also developed their understanding of the difference between Friendship Fires and mean-on-purpose situations.

Students reviewed when to use the Friend-o-Cycle and when a quick comeback is the most appropriate response. They also practised creating a clear and safe plan for responding to mean-on-purpose behaviour.

This week, we had our second Circles session of the term and celebrated Harmony Day, recognising and celebrating the many cultures within our school community. As part of this, students created a self-portrait that will be included in a whole-school display outside the Grade 2 classrooms.

NAPLAN

Over the past fortnight, students completed the four NAPLAN assessments in Writing, Reading, Conventions of Language and Numeracy. Congratulations to all students for their effort and focus in demonstrating their skills and thinking.

Homework Options

Grade 3 Team,

Miss Manning, Miss Egorov and Miss du Vallon