Learning Space News
Athol Road Primary School
Year 3/4
What an incredible start to Term 4 in year 3/4!
Year 3 Sleepover
On the evening of Friday, 16th September, excited students came to school wearing pyjamas, ready to enjoy the annual Year 3 Sleepover. They had a great time playing games, watching a movie and having supper, before heading to their sleeping bags in the Year 3-6 building. For some students this was their first time away from home, creating an excellent opportunity for them to spend the night with their friends in a safe, secure environment. All students were well-behaved and had a wonderful time with their friends.
English
Students have commenced an author study, focusing on the disaster series by Jackie French. Each week students use nonfiction texts to learn about a new natural disaster, before engaging with an accompanying text from our feature author. Students will develop their comprehension skills by utilising a variety of strategies when responding to the text, investigating descriptive language and literary devices such as metaphors and similes. They have thoroughly enjoyed using these rich texts to expand our vocabulary and have further explored interesting and challenging words through our morphology and Sounds-Write lessons.
In Writing, students have been focused on planning for and writing narrative pieces, linking their reading knowledge by basing their stories on the disaster theme. After closely studying Jackie French’s craft, students use their acquired knowledge, descriptive language and understanding of text structure towards writing their own narrative pieces. Later this term, students will refresh their knowledge about persuasive writing. They will explore persuasive techniques and devices, build skills, knowledge and understanding to fluently read, comprehend and respond to a variety of short persuasive texts.
Maths
Students are revisiting the four operations- addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They are developing efficient mental and written strategies for solving problems involving addition and subtraction, to recognise and explain the connection between addition and subtraction as inverse operations, to partition numbers and find unknown values in number sentences as well as a focus on developing fast recall of number facts. They will also solve practical problems involving additive situations using mathematical modelling, including problems of a financial nature.
Students have been demonstrating their understanding of maps, giving locations and directions as well as designing layouts of spaces from a top-view perspective.
Inquiry
In the unit on Personal, Cultural and Social Identity, students are exploring what makes a community and how different groups and experiences shape their identities. They will investigate the traditions, symbols and connections to Country that bring people together, considering the question, ‘What makes a community, and how do different groups shape who we are?’
Students will also explore why people choose to contribute to their communities and celebrate the positive impact individuals can have on community life. They consider ways they can actively participate, help others and make a difference in their local and global communities.
SEL
The focus for this term is help seeking and problem solving. Students are developing and practising an extended range of strategies for supporting themselves and others in personal and social contexts, being sure to think critically about the outcomes of their actions. This will extend their emotional awareness through considering the link between emotional responses and social situations. Students are continuing to work through the URSTRONG program, incoporating the key ideas of honesty, kindness and community.