Year 3/4

In the first week of school, the children helped me create a list of rules to keep us safe in the classroom. In small groups, the students brainstormed a list of rules that are important to them. We combined all the rules together and we used this to establish which rules we thought were the best for our classroom. 

Once we had our rules, the students were given the opportunity to create a visual representation of what those rules look like. They created wonderful posters that will be displayed in the classroom all year.

St. Bridget’s had a wonderful basketball clinic that saw the kids practising their dribbling skills. Unfortunately, it was pouring with rain that day so we had to move into the hall. I was very impressed with the way the children were able to dribble while running with both their left and right hands. I'm sure with some practise, it won't take them long to be able to dribble without looking at the ball.

During the clinic there was a mixture of activities such as passing drills and dribbling races. The students had a great time, and are very much looking forward to the next sporting clinic.

The 3/4 students have been learning about narratives in class. For one of our activities, the children planned a story using a prompt. Then using their understanding of orientation, the students planned a story using Who? What? Where? When? and Why?

I was so impressed with the stories the students came up with. I have a class full of such strong imaginations. I also enjoyed reading the stories the children wrote when  writing their our own narratives in class.

During the Term, the students in Year 3/4 went to Siena College to take part in their ASPIRE program. The program is dedicated to teaching primary school students about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). This is a fantastic opportunity for the students to take part in. They had such a great time learning about sustainability and renewable energy. They looked at issues caused by global warming; they did experiments with electricity and even built their own zoo out of recyclable materials. It was wonderful to see how engaged the students were.

On Tuesday February 21st, we celebrated Shrove Tuesday, also called Pancake Tuesday. This is a special day for the children where we talk about Lent and then make pancakes.

In the past, people would give up food like milk, eggs and sugar for Lent, thus, they would use up all these things the day before by making pancakes. 

We also learned about what other countries around the world do on Pancake Day. 

The pancakes we made were delicious. The children were able to have them with their choice of toppings: maple syrup, butter, strawberry jam or chocolate sauce.

Each Thursday during term, the Year 3/4s and the Year 5/6s come together to play class sport. We have been practising the sports that the Year 4/5/6s play at inter school sport on Friday mornings. It has been fun getting outside in the fresh air, socialising with friends and playing some sports they may not have otherwise had the opportunity to play. 

St. Bridget’s has been hosting some new feathered friends during Term 1. We were given some eggs that were incubated and led to the successful hatching of 12 baby chicks. The chickens have been shared around to each class. When it was our turn, we watched them grow and the children took great care of them. They were lucky enough to be able to hold them and give them a pat. However cute they are, unfortunately, I don’t think our classroom will ever smell the same.

In Maths, the children have been exploring division. We started off our topic with an introduction into what division is and when we need to use it.

The children talked about words such as ‘sharing’ and ‘grouping’. The activity in our first lesson was using the method of sharing. The idea was to share imaginary cookies with children in the class. They had a great time solving different problems using their division knowledge. One of the problems they needed to solve using materials was: If we had 42 cookies and we wanted to share them with 7 lucky students, how many cookies would each student get? Maybe next time we might even get to use real food!

Recently, in our Maths lesson, we played a Maths game called Date Maths. It is a lot of fun and the whole class works together as a team. To play, we use the numbers of the date of the day that we play on to make sums that must equal the numbers from 1 to 10. 

For example, when we played on Friday, the date was 31/03/2023. This lets us use the numbers 3, 1, 0, 3, 2, 0, 2 and 3.

Points are given for the sums that are created and more points will be awarded for harder sums.

This is a great game that helps us to practise our Maths skills and our cooperation skills. 

Road safety is very important and we were lucky enough to have someone come and talk to our students about how to be safe when it comes to the roads. The lovely, Tara Watson from Boroondara Council, taught our kids about the ins and outs of road safety. She was so engaging and the children really enjoyed it. At the end of her presentation, there was a quiz and the children did such a great job answering all her questions. 

Kind regards

Mr Tom Brophy

Year 3/4 Classroom Teacher