Year 3/4
Term 1
Welcome to the 2020 school year! Our school theme for this year is “BELONG” and this links strongly with our Term One inquiry unit, where students will explore the different ways they belong and can contribute to our community. We are all very excited to be back for the year and looking forward to watching your children grow and achieve their best in 2020.
Tom Jackson and Kellie Cumming will be the teachers working together in the 3/4 learning area this year. Our team will be supported by Cheryl Apostolopoulos who is the Learning Support Officer for our level. Monica O’Shannassy will be teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), Physical Education and Sport.
Religious Education/Inquiry Learning
This term our Inquiry unit “Ourselves and Others” will be relating to the Health and Civics & Citizenship curriculum. Students will begin by exploring the school values and expectations, to ensure we all understand how to treat others at St John’s. Students will investigate how they and others belong to various social, cultural or religious groups and the sense of belonging that this creates.
Many of our Year Three students will be supported in preparing for the sacrament of Reconciliation, by examining scripture, including the Creation story and Prodigal Son parable while reflecting on the four step process of reconciliation - Admit, Say Sorry, Forgive, Make Up.
The unit will also cover some Health related topics such as identifying and practising strategies to promote health, safety and wellbeing. Students will suggest ideas and explore ways to make our classroom and playground areas happy, safe and active places.
ENGLISH
In reading groups, students will engage in a range of comprehension, spelling and handwriting activities. We will be further utilising Reading Eggspress through weekly comprehension tasks individually set for students to complete during reading rotations. We will be rotating focus group activities where students will be improving their comprehension skills by making predictions, improving vocabulary, developing meaning of words in context and making inferences. They will critically analyse the text, using prior knowledge to form opinions and discussing a particular point of view.
In writing students will engage with a range of mentor texts to be used as models, to enhance their own writing experience. Students will plan using guided templates to improve structure and construct texts to entertain, including narrative and texts that persuade the audience.They will enhance their writing through the writing process of rereading, gaining feedback from peers and teachers, editing and checking their work for spelling, vocabulary and meaning.
MATHEMATICS
Through independent, small and large group activities students will explore the following concepts;
Place Value
Recognise, model and order numbers to at least 10,000.
Understanding that the position of the digit determines the value of the number.
Understanding that numbers can be written in numeric, words and expanded notation.
Length and Perimeter
Estimate, order, compare and measure lengths using scaled instruments. Convert between units of millimetres, centimetres and metres. Calculate the perimeter of regular and irregular two dimensional shapes.
Data
Investigate and interpret data by posing a question, collecting information, representing the information in a graph or table and analysing the results.
Addition and Subtraction
Develop increasingly efficient mental strategies for addition and subtraction facts for single digit numbers including friends of ten, doubling and near doubling.
Demonstrate the connection between addition and subtraction.
Solve problems using efficient written strategies such as the use of number lines, breaking numbers into parts and compensation.
Use estimation and rounding as a way of checking if you are close to the exact answer.
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
This term in SEL our 3/4 students will be exploring the links between their emotions and behaviour. Students will learn to recognise and name different emotions in themselves and others by identifying the body language and facial expressions often displayed when you are feeling a certain way. They will name positive and negative emotions and discuss how these can have different effects on us. Students will explore ways to interact positively with others in all different types of situations.
Home Learning
The Year 3/4 students will be receiving a fortnightly home learning sheet containing tasks relating to the areas of learning covered at school. There will be some compulsory Reading and Mathletics tasks and some free choice activities. Students are also encouraged to read nightly at home, both independently and aloud to a family member, recording this information in their diary. When reading together, we encourage parents to initiate discussions about the characters and plot of the story, to build connections and deepen their understanding of the text.
Timetable
Performing Arts, Visual Arts, PE and Italian are on Thursdays.
Library and Sport will be on a Monday.
Students may wear sports uniforms on Mondays and Thursdays only.
In order to keep our school uniform clean it would be appreciated if all students could bring an art smock to school please.
Communication
Effective communication between family and school is an important factor in students’ learning. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, comments or concerns.
We will endeavour to respond to emails within 24 hours, during weekdays.
Term 1 Yr 3/4 Dates (Please refer to newsletter for whole school dates.
The calendar is also on the Skool Bag app)
12/3 - 7:00pm - First Eucharist Parent Information Session
18/3 - Summer Sports Gala Day (all Yr 3/4 students)
19/3 - 6:30pm and 7:30pm - First Reconciliation
21/3 and 22/3 - First Eucharist Commitment Ceremony and Mass Booklets Presentation
6:00 pm and 9:45 am
Contact Details
Download the 'Skoolbag App' to your phone from the App Store to receive communication updates.
Tom Jackson tjackson@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au
Kellie Cumming kcumming@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au
Monica O’Shannassy moshannassy@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au