Grade 3/4 News

TALKING CHOCOLATE IN 3/4B - How We Have Been Learning About Direct Speech

This week in the classroom, we have been diving into the world of direct speech, those exact words spoken by a character or person. And what better place to practise than with our mentor text, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. After all, Willy Wonka isn’t short of a few things to say!

Now, if you are picturing students sitting quietly and copying punctuation rules into their workbooks, think again. Instead, we turned our classroom into a buzzing chocolate factory of dialogue with a game called Mingle and Match. Each student was given a strip of dialogue from our fluency reading, complete with quotation marks, commas, exclamation marks, and all the dramatic flair you would expect from Willy Wonka and his friends.

The challenge? Read the line with expression (because punctuation is basically a director whispering stage instructions), then mingle around the room to find the person holding the matching piece of conversation. Once students found their partners, they reconstructed the dialogue, which meant plenty of laughter, lightbulb moments, and a whole lot of “Aha! That’s where the comma goes!”

Not only did this help students understand how punctuation works within direct speech, but it also gave them the chance to move around, something my class loves to do at every opportunity. In other words: a win for learning and a win for movement (and maybe even a win for future stage careers, Broadway, here we come!).

So if your child suddenly insists on adding quotation marks to every conversation at the dinner table, “Pass the potatoes, please,”said Mum, don’t worry. That’s just our direct speech lessons in action.

Important Announcements Camp Forms: Please fill out the camp forms on Xuno at your earliest convenience. This will help us plan for our exciting trip and ensure that all students can participate.

3/4 A Celebrations from the Week

In 3/4A, we have had a delightful time wrapping up our class novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The students have truly enjoyed:

• Exploring new vocabulary words and putting them into practice.
• Learning about word families to enhance their spelling skills.
• Structuring their writing with text connectives, using phrases such as "for example" and "as a result" to make their pieces more fluent and engaging.
• In our Fluid Maths sessions, we have been diving into angles and both 2D and 3D shapes. The focus on vocabulary has been instrumental in deepening their understanding of this subject.