Grade 3/4 News

Learning in  3/4 A 

I hope this newsletter finds you well and thriving. 

Important Announcements

• Parent-Teacher Interviews: Next week, I am looking forward to discussing the growth your children have made and the next steps in their learning journey. Please mark your calendars!

   

Celebrations from the Week

• Vocabulary Development: Our students have been diligently working on new vocabulary words and phrases from our mentor text, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Understanding vocabulary is crucial for academic success, enhancing reading comprehension, and improving communication skills. Each day, a word or phrase from our reading is selected, and students learn its meaning, putting it into context. They then reread the passage and discuss Roald Dahl’s word choices, fostering deeper understanding. Through writing lessons, students are encouraged to explain their thoughts using compound sentences.
• Spelling and Phonics: Class 3/4A has successfully completed four weeks of learning to read and spell words with long A and long E sounds. The students have explored all the graphemes for these phonemes and studied homophones like "waist" and "waste." Their confidence in spelling is growing day by day!
• Writing Skills: In writing, we have been revising simple and compound sentences. This week, our focus has been on the conjunction "so." Students are learning to write compound sentences and understand the cause-and-effect relationships that conjunctions express.
• Grammar Lessons: While our grade three students were busy shining in their NAPLAN tests, grade four had an opportunity to review key grammar rules. We focused on the articles "a" and "an," emphasizing that "an" is used before vowel sounds, and "a" is used before consonant sounds. Additionally, students learned about concrete and abstract nouns, classifying them based on whether they refer to physical objects or ideas.
• Mathematics: Students revisited number lines, this time focusing on numbers in the 10,000s. It was wonderful to see how their previous knowledge of numbers in the 100s helped them transition smoothly to this new concept.

BUILDING OUR CLASSROOM COMMUNITY - ONE GAME AT A TIME IN 3/4B

This term in Integrated Studies, the Grade 3/4B students have been diving into the concept of community, what it means, why it matters, and how being part of one helps us all feel connected (kind of like a big, happy family... minus the squabbles over the TV remote).

To put their learning into action, students worked in groups of three to become mini event planners! Each team designed an activity, skill or short game to run for our classroom community, with two key goals: get everyone moving and make sure everyone felt included. Their brief? The activity had to involve the whole class, include some physical movement (because we all know moving our bodies is a great way to keep healthy), and, most importantly, get everyone smiling.

Each group had to carefully plan their session, write an aim, list materials/equipment, set up, and break down step-by-step instructions. Every student had to take on the role of teacher and presenter, ensuring their voice was heard (some may have even discovered it’s a bit trickier to keep a room full of energetic kids focused than it looks - welcome to my world, kids!).

The result? A whole lot of laughter, learning, and some very entertaining activities. Not only did students strengthen their classroom community, but they also walked away with a newfound appreciation for just how much effort it takes to plan and run a lesson. Who knows, maybe I inspired a few future teachers along the way!