Grade 3 News
Important Reminders
LIBRARY DAYS
- 3KA and 3S: Wednesday
- 3RH and 3D: Thursday
Please refer to the whole school newsletter fortnightly to see upcoming ‘Important Dates’
Learning in Action
Literacy:
This fortnight the students have started reading our novel study text Matilda by Roald Dahl. Through our class novel students have focussed on character traits and how we can infer character traits from what is happening in the text. Students have explored characters' dialogue, thoughts, feelings, and actions and are gaining a deeper understanding of how these elements shape the narrative.
The year 3’s have been reintroduced to the Narrative Hill and have focused on creating a narrative plan using this structure. With a renewed focus on this technique students have been actively engaged in creating narrative plans that provide a solid foundation for their storytelling adventures.
The students are enjoying building their reading stamina each day during independent reading. We have begun our fluency pairs when students read with a partner to improve their fluency by focusing on accuracy, expression and rate when reading and giving peers feedback.
Our students are eagerly embracing the opportunities offered by the chromebooks, from navigating Google classroom and practising their touch-typing skills.
Preview: Next week students will continue to read Matilda and apply the Narrative Hill structure to what they have read, and will deepen their understanding of how characters drive the plot of the story. Students will continue to focus on their grammar and sentence structure as they learn about the different types of verbs and how we can create grammatically correct sentences.
Library:
In Grade 3, students have been learning about junior fiction genres and how to identify them. This fortnight they collaborated with peers to record different characters, settings, titles and authors that fit into different genres. Some of these genres include; animal fiction, sports fiction, humorous fiction, historical fiction and fantasy fiction.
Maths:
This fortnight the Grade 3 students have focused on the number concept of place value. They have used a variety of materials, including MAB, to make and represent 2, 3 and 4 digit numbers. Additionally, students have learned how to record numbers in expanded form. For example recording the number 2345 as 2000 + 300 + 40 + 5. Students also learned about the properties of odd and even numbers.
In our applied sessions, our Grade 3 students have pretended to be paleontologists, measuring dinosaur footprints. Students have decided on the appropriate measuring tools, such as unifix and rulers.
Preview: Next week, the students will be extending their knowledge of place value by focusing on 0 as a place holder in numbers. They will also be consolidating their understanding of length by measuring objects with a ruler and recording results in centimeters.
To find out more about what will be covered in Year 3 maths click here.
Inquiry
This term our Inquiry topic focuses on rules and understanding how rules can provide equity. We began by asking students to think about the following questions;
- Why are there different rules for different people?
- Who gets to make the rules and why?
We discussed this as a class to gain an understanding of what students know at the beginning of the unit, and we will come back to these questions to reflect on our learning at the end of the inquiry unit.
In week 2, we explored the purpose of rules as well as the rules we know in familiar places such as home, school, the local pool, sporting clubs etc. Students created venn diagrams to share their learning.
Preview: Over the next fortnight, students will look at sports and how the rules for different sports and games can change depending on who is playing in order for it to be inclusive and fair for everyone.
Wellbeing
This fortnight we began our new routine of a brief Mindfulness activity after lunch each day. Each day we will do a variety of: 5 -10 min meditation, affirmations, belly breathing, gratitude list, yoga stretches or student shout outs. Throughout, they learn a range of skills to add to their wellbeing toolkit. To ascertain what students already know about friendships and how to make and keep healthy relationships, they completed a Friendology pre assessment on the Chromebooks. They were then introduced to session #1 Inner Ninja and being your own best friend.
Preview: As we continue with Friendolgoy and Resilience Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR), some of the material will be familiar to them, but we will go into more depth in the Grade 3 program. Making friends and Emotional Literacy will be the focus.
Have a great weekend!
Grade 3 Team
Susanne Stokol 3S
Amanda Rosewarne/ Emma Huxley 3RH
Alex Kent/ Peta Alexander 3KA
Emily du Vallon 3D