Year 3 News 

What an action-packed, energetic fortnight we have had in Grade 3! Between making waves at our intensive swimming program and celebrating International Friendship Day with our colourful school-wide paper chains, the students have shown incredible enthusiasm and teamwork. We are so proud of how focused, adaptable, and engaged everyone has been across all our daily learning adventures.  

Literacy 

Our young writers and readers have been exceptionally busy flexing their literacy muscles!  

Text Study & Writing: Students worked hard crafting strong conclusions to their exposition texts and stepped into the role of dedicated editors. They reviewed, refined, and finalised their persuasive writing before proudly publishing the completed pieces to their digital portfolios. Alongside this, we explored sentence mechanics—learning how to rescue run-on sentences and stretch simple "kernel" sentences into rich, descriptive expanded and compound sentences using clever questioning and picture prompts.  

Phonics & Word Study: Through our systematic phonics and morphology focus, students investigated the mysteries of "chameleon prefixes" (such as ex-, e-, ec-, and ef-) as well as the prefix trans-, building and defining sophisticated new vocabulary.  

Reading & Fluency: Daily paired fluency reading and retrieval practice have continued to strengthen students' confidence, expression, and comprehension every afternoon.  

Numeracy 

In mathematics, we wrapped up our deep dive into the concept of time and duration. Students mastered calculating the elapsed time of events and applied their knowledge to plan and map out daily schedules based on realistic durations.  

Following our time unit, we shifted our focus to geometric reasoning, exploring 3D objects and discovering the unique properties, features, and classifications of various prisms. Alongside our main topics, our daily retrieval sessions have kept multiplication and fractional thinking sharp and ready for action!  

Inquiry 

Curiosity took center stage during our Inquiry sessions over the past two weeks:  

Conservation & Wildlife: We explored environmental conservation statuses, developing our understanding of endangered species through a fascinating comprehension case study on the Lord Howe Island stick insect (Phasmid).  

Local Legends: Students were introduced to our exciting "Local Legend" project, kicking off their research and digital inquiry pages to spotlight inspiring individuals within our community.  

Cyber Safety & Digital Wellbeing: We navigated the online world together by discussing digital footprints, emotional awareness online ("Feeling Zones"), and setting smart, healthy habits for screen time.  

Well, that about covers everything - all the best!