Classroom News

Grade 3 & 4

We have made it to the end of Term 3 in Years 3 and 4!! It has certainly been a big term and a very busy finish. Our wonderful students have shown resilience and commitment throughout these past few weeks and we are very proud of them. 

Our intensive swimming program at the end of term has seen many of our students learn new skills, including actually being able to hold themselves in the water and swim small distances! Congratulations to all our swimmers, you’ve done an amazing job, particularly given it is the end of term!

There has been some incredible learning happening this term in Year 3 and 4. 

During ourReaders Workshop we have been reading Extra Time by Morris Gleitzman. The story is told by 10 year old Bridie about her hopes and ambitions for her 14 year old brother Matt’s soccer career. We saw Matt and Bridie and Uncle Cliff head to London to pursue a Premier League career, however they discovered that this comes with a lot of pressure and unhappiness. Our students completed Readers Response tasks and showed deep understanding and insight into the characters’ thoughts and feelings throughout. We have also introduced Reciprocal Reading through our mini lessons as a way to promote discussions on various texts through questioning, predicting, clarifying and summarising. We would encourage you to speak to your child about these roles and try to include them into your nightly reading. 

In our Writer's Workshop we have continued with the Writing Process. Our focus has been learning to write Explanation and Persuasive texts. We have looked at the features of each of  the texts and worked on the 6 + 1 Traits of Word Choices and Sentence Fluency and how these improve our writing. At the end of term we have all written a persuasive piece titled “Everyone should learn to swim”. We have had a good discussion about using high modal words and how these make our arguments stronger. Even though not everyone agrees with our topic we have had fun talking about the importance of learning to swim.

At the beginning of Term 3, we explored the language of probability. Students created chance experiments predicting outcomes and then comparing the actual outcomes. The remainder of the term was focused on Multiplication and Division - and what superstars they have become! Your child has used games, online interactives, concrete materials, rich tasks and a variety of mental and written strategies to improve their number fluency. We have introduced a range of different strategies and your child has learned which method is best for the task at hand and best for them.  Some of the strategies they have learned include: known facts, fact families, skip counting, doubling/halving, creating arrays, vertical algorithms, grid method, lattice method and short/long division. Please ask your child which strategy or strategies they prefer. How would you solve 3 x 99 = ____ ?

We look forward to another busy term next term. We are lucky to be starting the term with an amazingly fun incursion, focussing on the design process and STEM. This will be a starting point to our Term 4 integrated unit on great designs and inventors that have changed the world. 

Wishing everyone a happy holiday!