Year 3/4

English

Reading

During our start up Reading program, the Grade 3/4 students have been discussing and practising the routines and expectations of our reading lessons. Our lessons focused on establishing expectations for independent reading, selecting Just Right Texts for independent reading practise, setting up and taking care of our classroom libraries and understanding and appreciating our varied reading interests. We also established the structures and routines for reading conferences, teacher focus groups and purposeful reading experiences.

For the remainder of the term, the students focused on reading, processing and comprehending a wide range of high quality texts. The comprehension strategy that was explicitly taught this term was Inferencing, using clues from the text to draw conclusions about implied information. 

Writing

To start the year in Writing, the Grade 3/4 students were familiarising themselves with the writing lesson structure and routines. Students have set up and personalised their Writer’s Notebooks, which will be used throughout the year to support their development of ideas when writing. Students have also had the opportunity to participate in both teacher directed and personal choice writing experience using different materials from their classroom writing centres.  Students have been revising narratives and persuasive texts, with a focus on revision of text structure and text specific vocabulary. Before learning to plan and sequence ideas, structure sentences and revise/edit and publish explanation texts.

Mathematics

The Grade 3/4 students began the year familiarising themselves with the tools and equipment that they use to support their learning in Mathematics sessions. Students have completed some simple problem solving lessons during the Mathematics Start Up program, where they have familiarised and practised the routines and expectations of Mathematics lessons and allowed them to showcase their knowledge to their new teachers.   

Our first Number and Algebra unit focused on patterns and place value exploring numbers to 100 - 10 000. For our Measurement units, we investigated temperature with a focus on language such as ‘hot’ and ‘cold’, and read and compared temperature represented on the thermometers.

We then shifted our focus to Time and practised telling time to the minute using both analogue and digital clocks and relate hours, minutes and seconds to common events using ‘am’ and ‘pm’, as well as solving problems involving duration. 

Inquiry

During this term, the Grade 3/4 students have been settling back into classroom environments, helping to establish expected classroom behaviours. They began the term by focusing on our school wide Learning to Learn program to ensure school wide positive behaviours are understood and displayed. These will be regularly revisited throughout the year.

Science

During this term, our Grade 3/4 students have been exploring the difference between living and nonliving things and how to categorise living things. Students have engaged in weekly Kahoot quizzes at the beginning of each session to consolidate their learning from the previous session. They have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the characteristics of living things via matching activities and songs, using the acronym MRS GREN. We explored our school's Sensory Garden to locate and record living and nonliving things. Students participated in the role of a taxonomist by sorting and categorising living things. We also investigated the parts of a living plant and conducted a science experiment, testing the absorption of water inside a plant using dye. 

LOTE 

This term, there has been much organisation and preparation for the Auslan program to commence in Term 2, at Melton West Primary School as our new LOTE subject! Classroom teachers will begin facilitating the learning and will be provided with comprehensive resources and a teaching program from Auslan Education Services. Teachers and students will learn lessons by accessing links to videos including visuals in their classroom environment to support their learning of Auslan. Educators will also be provided with professional learning by members of Auslan Education Services to build capacity and provide the knowledge and skills in facilitating the program. We look forward to our students learning this wonderful skill which will provide many opportunities to communicate with the broader and inclusive community. Notifications will be in our newsletters and social media platforms when learning commences.

Art

During Art this term the Grade 3/4 began by settling into routines and following expectations in our art room environment, including taking care when using art materials and tools and have demonstrated a positive attitude towards art. The topic for this term was Colour Theory, the students have revised any prior knowledge of both Primary and Secondary Colours. Students have had fun mixing Primary colours to make secondary colours when creating their artworks. Students have worked with warm and cool colours and are using this knowledge to create some fun art pieces. Grade 3/4 have shown lots of creativity and have produced wonderful artworks in Term 1.                     

P.E.

During this term our grade 3/4 students have used a games-based approach to their Physical Education learning by participating in various sports and using the relevant skills and movements in conjunction with problem solving and strategy to achieve successful outcomes. I am proud to say we achieved this during term 1. Our grade 3/4 students have participated in football and netball and showed great improvements in both sports. While playing in these sports the students continued to develop their fundamental movement skills which included throwing, catching, striking, kicking, running, jumping, and dodging. In this term there was a clear improvement in skill development which was then seen in the game-based learning activities in each lesson. Students were given ample opportunity to demonstrate these skills in game play which they all greatly enjoyed. They also can now better explain and follow rules for these sports and are now able to apply a scoring system when playing in games. It has been a great start to the year, and I am looking forward to continuing working with the grade 3/4 students in term 2. 

Music

The students in Grades 3 and 4 have made a great start to the music program. They have participated in creating routines and protocols for cooperative and creative learning in the music room and have learnt to name and play a range of percussion instruments. Most of this term’s work has been around exploring rhythm. They have listened to rhythmic music and played along with percussion instruments exploring the beat and rhythm patterns. They have learnt to describe and create rhythm patterns by saying ta to represent the beat and te-ti, for double-time rhythm. They created and performed ostinatos (repeating rhythm patterns) in small groups to the class. The students have been introduced to notation for simple rhythm patterns; crotchets (1 beat), quavers (half a beat) and minims (two beats) and learnt to read these musical symbols to play along with the teacher. They have helped the teacher to compose simple rhythm patterns with these musical symbols. The students have learnt to sing songs in 4-part rounds and developed the quality of their singing voices. The students have explored pitch (high and low), dynamics (soft and loud) and tempo (fast and slow) through listening, singing and creating musical compositions using tuned percussion instruments. They have explored the scale of C major and learnt to play simple melodies. They have identified the letter-names of notes and used these to compose simple tunes. Students began and ended each lesson by listening to a variety of music to build their repertoire of musical experience and to respond emotionally.