Welcome to Term 4

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Welcome to Term 4! We trust everyone was able to enjoy a relaxing school holiday break and are ready for the final term of learning in 2021. We were really impressed with students’ readiness and the enthusiasm at the start of Term 4, settling back to Learning from Home. 

This term will see our students transitioning back to face-to-face learning and reconnecting with their teachers and peers. A series of learning experiences and collaborative tasks were planned as part of the GWPS Positive Transition Program, and the Priming stages has already begun. We are all looking forward to seeing the positive impact and connections coming our ways as well as another productive, rigorous and engaging term of learning.

Important Dates

If you have any other queries or concerns, you would like to discuss with your teachers please don’t hesitate to organise a meeting or can send any inquires through an email to your child’s classroom teacher.  

Reading 

The Reading and Viewing curriculum during this term will see students continue to revise and be exposed to a variety of CAFE reading strategies to assist in the accurate reading and comprehension, as well as participating in learning experiences that will help to broaden their knowledge about a variety of topics including disasters. During these learning experiences, the students will learn about the importance of the purpose, structure, language features and the intended audience of procedural and narrative texts.

As part of the Level Three Home Reading program, it is an expectation that students read for fifteen minutes each night, and record this in their diaries. It would be wonderful if you could support your child’s reading and assist them with their comprehension by discussing the book with them. The following questions are a great way to start a conversation: 

• “What emotions is the character feeling? How do you know?”
• “As you’ve been reading, what pictures have been in your mind?”
• “What words or string of words helped you to visualise this image/picture in your mind?”

Speaking and Listening

Every opportunity will continue to be provided this term to encourage the students to further develop their speaking and listening skills in both online and face-to-face settings. This will occur through presentations of their learning reflections, contributions to class/group discussions and also through social situations.  We encourage confident, clear speaking and expect active listening at all times. 

Respect for others thoughts and taking turns continues to be paramount to any speaking and listening learning tasks implemented in the class.  

Writing

When learning about Procedural texts, students will be writing in the role of an expert on a specific topic keeping in mind who the audience is and how much background knowledge they have. They will learn to choose verbs to craft precise instructions and enhance them by adding visual elements. When learning about Narratives, students will explore different story plots such as ‘Rags to Riches’ to deepen their understanding of characters and settings and enhance the structure and engagement of their stories. 

Spelling

The focus for Term 4 will be word families, Latin and Greek words, regular and irregular plurals, contractions and different vowel sounds. Students will continue to utilise Spelling Inquiry to deepen and expand their vocabulary and the ‘Look, Say, Name, Cover, Write, Check’ strategy to learn their personalised spelling words. 

Mathematics

Throughout Term Four, Level Three learners will be completing learning experiences covering a variety of topics: 

Chance: Learners will explore real-life and everyday events involving Chance and use appropriate language to describe the probability of those events. They will also conduct Chance experiments such as rolling 2 to 3 dice and investigate dependent and independent events.  

Geometric Reasoning: Students will be learning about different types of angles and how to use a protractor to measure them accurately. They will also explore and measure angles around the school and home and compare them to a right angle.       

Location & Transformation: Students will extend their understanding of shapes and explore different ways to transform them. They will continue to strengthen their locational language and the ability to use and create maps.   

Pattern & Algebra: This concept will see students accessing their knowledge of the four operations and applying them with flexibility. The learning tasks will involve them identifying patterns and solving the unknown numbers in various form. 

Inquiry

In Term Four, students will explore the question, ‘How do humans react in the face of disaster?’ They will be deepening their understanding of the word ‘disaster’ and analysing the different causes of natural and man-made disasters. Students will compare various disasters and the impact that they have on society. They will also investigate the resources necessary to survive a disaster and the actions humans take to support each other and rebuild in the aftermath.  

YCDI

The focus this term will be re-building positive connections to reconnect with each other, expanding mindfulness strategies to strengthen children’s wellbeing and deepening students’ understanding of gratitude. There will be a series of hands-on and scenario-based learning experiences for students to explore and practise strategies to further develop themselves into a strong and healthy person. 

Introducing our new 3B teacher, Mr. Mark! 

Mr. Mark was originally born in Hong Kong and moved to Australia in Grade 3. He went to Doncaster Gardens Primary School (DGPS) as a child, and after studying to become a teacher at Monash University, he even taught back at DGPS for a year before moving to teach at GWPS!

Mr. Mark loves his sport, especially basketball and badminton. His favourite NBA players to watch are Derrick Rose, Devin Booker and Damian Lillard. In his spare time, he likes to play sports, go hiking at places with nice views, or play board games and socialize with friends. Mr. Mark is very excited to teach at GWPS and looks forward to meeting more students and families!