What's happening in our classrooms? 

The Grade 3 students have had an extremely busy first half of Term 2. Our classrooms have been a hive of activity as we have been busy participating in Athletics Day, Better Buddies Day, Walk to School day as well as the very important NAPLAN assessments. The students have worked extremely hard and we are very proud of the amazing work and efforts that the students have put in. 

English

During English we continued to develop our skills on exposition text types. The students displayed their learning by using their skills and knowledge to write their own exposition text, “Everyone Should Learn to Swim”. We have also started to learn about the structure and features used in narrative texts. We were fortunate enough again to welcome Stephen Graham back into our classrooms. Stephen Graham is Mackellar's literacy consultant and the students are always excited to work with him. He began to work with the students  to create a factual narrative text. We were pleased to see so much enthusiasm and energy from the students to participate and complete their task. We will continue with factual narratives and look forward to hearing the students’ stories. 

We have also continued with our weekly handwriting lessons of Victorian Modern Cursive. The students concentrate on improving letter position and formation, using the correct starting points and pencil grip. 

Mathematics

This term, students are focusing on place value, addition and subtraction as well as reading and recording length. We were lucky to start the term with a visit from our numeracy consultant, Kathy Palmer. We had lots of fun as she taught us how to represent numbers in many different ways by playing a number matching game. 

We then continued our work on place value, ensuring that we are “experts” in working with numbers up to 10000. We have really enjoyed learning about rounding numbers, placing numbers on number lines and learning that numbers can be represented in many different ways. Here is an example of a problem we have been working on. Can you work with your child to find the answers?

Represent the number 5382 in as many ways as you can? HINT: 5 thousands, 3 hundreds, 8 tens and 2 ones. How many more can you make?

We have been learning to use rulers and tape measures to measure things using formal units such as centimetres and metres. We had fun finding things around the room that were between 10cm and 30cm and measuring the length of a bean bag throw. 

Inquiry 

Students have continued to work on School Wide Positive Behaviour values lessons in our classrooms as well as exploring the history of Australia. We are learning about celebrations and commemorations that are observed in Australia. We have studied the lives of first Australians as well as the arrival of the First Fleet. We looked at the changes to Australia over time and how and why these changes have occurred. We enjoyed reading the stories of people who migrated to Australia and the way they have influenced the rich and diverse way we live today. Some students were able to share their personal stories of parents and grandparents who migrated to Australia.

National Sorry Day

We commemorated National Sorry Day, learning all about the significance of this very important day. We watched the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd's speech and discussed its importance in Australia's history. We reflected on how the families of the Stolen Generation would have felt and why. The Grade 3's talked about why an apology was so important and what we can learn from this. 

Parent Expo Night

What a wonderful night we had sharing our amazing work and playing games with our families. We were so very pleased with the amount of parents that came to share in the exceptional work that the students have been doing in the classroom. There was lots of smiles, laughter and even a little bit of competitive banter as students played against their parents. The feedback from parents about the students achievements was extremely positive. We are all so proud of the very high standard of work produced in Grade 3. 

Can you spot your family in the pictures below?