Grade 3/4

What’s Happening in Term 1 – 2024

Reading

In reading, students are learning about what successful readers do. They are establishing classroom reading routines and are building their reading stamina. Students are encouraged to read their take home readers for a minimum of 20 minutes per evening and completing their Reading Journals. In small teaching groups, they are focusing on showing understanding of all directly stated information and retell what they have read, through recalling and sequencing main ideas from the text and answering literal reading comprehension questions. Later in the term we will focus on the comprehension strategy of reorganisation where students will need to connect multiple pieces of information across a text to answer questions. Students will work in guided reading groups using a range of fiction and nonfiction texts, including class book sets, clips, picture story books and multimedia.

Writing

In writing, students are learning to refine their skills as writers through explicit teaching and learning around sentence construction. During this time, students will learn to craft a variety of sentences, including simple, compound and complex sentences. They will also learn to make careful choices about powerful sentence beginnings and precise vocabulary. Students will then have the opportunity to apply this learning when using visual stimuli to write short descriptive paragraphs within narrative and persuasive texts.

Maths

In number and algebra, students will show their understanding of place value by expanding, rounding and renaming whole numbers. They will also identify number patterns through skip counting, sequencing and applying additive thinking when using hundreds charts and number lines. Students will be encouraged to justify their mathematical thinking through conversations with teachers and peers.

In applied mathematics, students will learn about different methods of data collection, representation and interpretation. Students will first choose a suitable topic to investigate statistically, then evaluate the effectiveness of and practice various methods of data collection and methods of representing these collections (digitally and non-digitally). Finally, they will learn to evaluate their data collections and draw conclusions regarding their initial investigation question.

Inquiry and SEL

In term one of inquiry, students will learn about cyber safety. They will engage in classroom discussions and activities exploring the challenges of sharing and viewing information online. Learners will be given real-life examples of how to manage cyber safety issues and will practice being cyber smart through positive and healthy interactions when using the internet and devices. Our civics and citizenship focus will allow students to identify, understand and explain how to be inclusive and respectful. Students will also learn to identify and explain the fair use of rules and laws.

In term one of social and emotional learning (SEL), students will engage with the principles of GEM; gratitude, empathy and mindfulness through the Resilience Project. Students will practise gratitude by noticing the positives around them. They will show empathy through being kind and compassionate towards other people. Students will be mindful by paying intentional awareness to that which is helpful rather than unhelpful.