Year 3 News 

English

Reading 

This term students will be spending the first 20 days learning about the expectations of reading in grade 3. They will also use this time to organise their reading books and continue to build on their love of reading! For the remainder of the term, students will be learning about how to make considered inferences taking into account topic knowledge or a character’s likely actions, motivations and feelings. We will be using a range of fiction and nonfiction texts to practice these skills and also looking at Inferring the main idea of a text.

Writing

In writing this term students will be revisiting how to prepare themselves to be successful writers in grade 3. They will be learning about how to build their love of writing and plant their writing ‘seeds’ in their writer's notebook to prepare them for future writing experiences. The grade 3s will then be looking at the structure and features of a narrative text. Students will be focussing on how to draw the reader’s attention by building on their characters, setting, problem and solution. We will be exploring how to use vocabulary to make our writing more exciting and also practice how to write our stories in simple paragraphs.

 Mathematics

Throughout term 1, the grade 3’s will be covering several units. We will start the year by focusing on Time. Students will have Time goals that they will have an opportunity to practice throughout the term. We will then move onto our Patterns and Algebra unit. Students will practice skip counting patterns, continue number patterns involving addition or subtraction, and explore simple number sequences based on multiples. Later on we will do a unit on Place Value where students will apply their knowledge of patterns and algebra. Students will be building numbers to 10,000 and will be ordering and sequencing these numbers on a numberline. We will end the term focussing on data including collecting data, organising into categories and creating displays.

Inquiry

In Inquiry this term, students are beginning by practicing using core thinking routines, such as Think, Pair, Share and See, Think, Wonder during our Learning to Learn program. Students will use these core thinking routines to strengthen and support their ability to learn and form positive relationships, develop a growth mindset, and recognise and nurture their character strengths. We will then begin our ‘Lets get physical’ unit. This unit will allow students to identify and practise strategies to promote health, safety and wellbeing. Throughout the unit students will investigate how emotional responses vary and understand how to interact positively with others in different situations. Students will unpack how our food choices contribute to healthy bodies and healthy minds and discuss the influences on how we make healthy and safe choices. 

Science

Grade 3 and Grade 4 students have an exciting start to the year in 2023 with Term 1 focusing on Biology. Students will learn that living things have life cycles and that plants and animals depend on each other and the environment to survive. They will be involved in learning tasks based upon: making and recording observations of living things as they develop through their life cycles; describing the stages of life cycles of different living things such as insects and flowering plants; comparing the life cycles of animals and plants; recognising that environmental factors can affect life cycles such as fire and seed germination; investigating the roles of living things in a habitat, e.g. producers, consumers or decomposers.

LOTE – Chinese

During Term 1 in Chinese, Grade 3 will learn about Chinese New Year in first two weeks’ time and then make Chinese lanterns in the classroom. The topic for this term is Chinese Festivals and their food. Students will explored 4 main festivals in China and their related food in English and Chinese. Also they have good knowledge of Chinese zodiac especially 4 animal signs relate to their birth years. 

Art

Welcome to Term 1, Art, 2023! In Art, the Grade 3 and 4’s will revise routines and follow expectations in our classroom environment, including correct use of tools and materials and being safe and respectful inside the Art room. We have started the year creating an ‘All about me’ collage. The students have used various typed of mediums such as magazines, newspapers, glue and scissors to cut out pictures to create a new art piece that represents their personalities and reflects their individuality. The students will then be introduced to colour theory. It will be a messy term in the art room! We will explore warm and cool colours, and students will be printmaking using leaves as stencils, taking into consideration the current season and tones of ‘Summer’ and ‘Autumn’. Warm and cool colours play a vital part when designing, and particularly when painting to create a sense of mood in the artworks. The 3-4’s will be learning to use the colour wheel, identifying where colours sit together in order and colour opposites.

It will be fun to start working with paint this term and to replicate some of the great artists work, such as Vincent Van Gogh and his sunflowers and Keith Haring’s ‘Subway art’. The students will work with mediums, such as acrylic, watercolours, glue and chalk and will learn new techniques.

 I look forward to having fun in the art room this Term with the grade 3 and 4 students.

P.E.

During this term our grade 3 students will be beginning a games-based approach to Physical Education learning by participating in various sports and using the relevant skills and movements in conjunction with problem solving and strategy to achieve success. In term one, grade 3 students will participate in tennis and baseball (T-ball). While playing in these sports the students will continue to develop their fundamental movement skills which include throwing, catching, striking, running, jumping, and dodging. During this term we will take a deep dive into the core skills needed for each of these sports and give the students ample opportunity to demonstrate these skills in game play. Grade 3 students will learn through their movement and will be able to apply basic rules and scoring when they play in these sports, apply creative thinking when playing sports by using strategy, and demonstrate social skills by working with others in teams. I am extremely excited to work with the grade 3 students this year and looking forward to building on the learning that occurred last year.