Thursday 26 July 2018

Main Focus for Learning in Term 3

                                         English


Reading

During Readers’ Workshop sessions, students will participate in daily mini lessons focussing on a range of strategies to comprehend fiction texts, such as Story Structure, Story Pyramids, Character Traits and Feeling, Character Development, Inferring and Visualising. Students will have daily opportunities to read independently,  work towards their personal goals and make their thinking visible using a range of graphic organisers.


Writing
                                                 

The text types we will focus on this term are writing to explain, writing to instruct and writing to entertain (poetry).  This will include the appropriate structure and language features of each text type. We will also follow the writing cycle of planning, drafting,  editing (proofreading and re-crafting) and publishing written work. Students will regularly conference with the teacher in order to improve their writing and set goals.

Word Work (Spelling)
                                         
Students participate in a 20 minute word work session four times a week. Groups are targeted to students individual needs and involve exploring the range of phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letters) in the English language. This is done through oral and written games.

Maths

Year 3
Place value, addition and subtraction mental and written strategies, time, problem solving and angles

Year 4
Problem solving, extending place value (fraction and decimals), addition, subtraction, multiplication and division mental and written strategies, time and coordinates


Science



Beneath Our Feet
This Science inquiry provides opportunities for students to explore how natural processes and human activity shape their surroundings. Students’ understanding of soils, rocks and landscapes and how they change over time is developed through hands-on activities and student-planned investigations. Students also investigate factors that affect the erosion of soils.


HaSS - Geography - North, South, East, West

Inquiry Questions: How and why are places similar and different?
                               How do people’s feelings about places influence their views about the  
                               protection of places?

Core Understandings: What do we want the students to learn?
A map is a visual-spatial representation of the world that reflects the views of the person drawing it.
Maps can help us to identify location, human and natural features and the distance between places.
People’s feelings and perceptions about places influence views about the protection of these places.
A legend is an essential aspect to reading, interpreting and designing maps.

Skills: What are the skills, knowledge and processes we want the students to learn?
As collaborators we are learning how to share our ideas respectfully when we are working in a group.
As self-managers we are learning how to seek feedback from others to improve our learning.
As communicators we are learning to select the right communication form for the purpose or context.
As thinkers we are learning how to consider how beliefs and culture can influence people’s thinking.
As researchers we are learning how to record the information we gather in efficient and effective ways.

Health and PE
Fresh Tastes - Food and Me - Healthy Foods for Me
Students will review the Five Food Groups and their main nutrients. They will learn about the traffic light food categorisation system and explore cultural variation of lunch boxes from around the world.

Social and Emotional Learning (SELs)
Relationship Skills and Social Decision-Making
- Bullying Behaviours
- Bullying – Keeping Safe
- How Does It Feel to be Bullied?
- Choices and Consequences
- Responding Safely to Bullying Situations 

Physical Education
Tennis - 3/4 MM (week 1-4) 3/4 EV (week 5-10)
Dance
FMS - Dodging, over arm and under arm throwing, catching and running

Technologies
            
Digital Technologies
Students will also be participating in the “Hour of Code” initiative, using the educational game Lightbot, which introduces the principles of programming. Students will use problem solving skills to practice concepts like sequence, conditions, and loops.

During term 2 3/4 students from 3/4RV and 3/4NM will participate in a series of lessons as part of a Little Bits Bag Alarm Design Project. Students will generate, develop and communicate electronic circuit design ideas and decisions using technical terms and detailed diagrams to solve a problem.


Design and Technologies - Food and Fibres

This unit encourages students to investigate how foods and fibres are produced.
It includes sections on foods and fibres we use; how food and fibre are obtained;
their production systems; and technologies and processes used to assist in their
production and the contributions they make to societies.

Sunday 22 July 2018

Welcome Back to Term 3!

Welcome back to another busy and fun filled term of learning in Hogwarts. We hope you all had a safe and happy break. Just a reminder that musical rehearsals begin at 8:15am tomorrow morning for all students in the musical, please do not be late! Also we would love students to begin bringing in their soil and rock samples. Remember that you need about 1 cup of soil in a clear screw top jar (a pasta sauce or jam jar is perfect). Students will also need a small snap lock bag with different rocks that they have collected. Make sure both are labelled with your name and where they were collected. (Please label jars on the lid.)  A note was emailed to all families in the last week of term with the details.

We are excited to see you all back at school tomorrow morning!




What was the best part of your holiday break?

Thursday 5 July 2018

Holiday Learning at Home

With holidays fast approaching we thought it would be a good idea to share some activities that families could do at home if they wished to during the holidays.

English- We are encouraging all of our Hogwarts students to continue reading daily during the holidays. During class time students work on making their thinking visible (writing it down on paper/post it notes) and sharing their thinking with others. We encourage everyone to continue this during the holidays. All students also have a reading goal that they are working on such as chunking words to sound them out, summarising what they are reading, asking questions, making connections to what they are reading or creating images. We would love if everyone continued working on these goals while reading during the holidays.



Maths- All of our Year 3/4 students can continue to use online games to practice their known Maths strategies that they have  learnt in class. https://www.mathplayground.com/

Year 4 students may also like to practice their times tables using the online game Hit The Button. http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button.

Year 3 students may also like to practice their doubling on Hit The Button.  http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button 



Science- When we come back to school next term, we will be starting a Science Inquiry called Beneath Our Feet. We will be investigating soils, rocks and landscapes and how they change over time. We would like all Year 3/4 students to collect  a soil sample (about 1 cup) in a clear screw-top jar, as well as, a small snap lock bag of different rocks that they have collected. Make sure each sample is labelled with your name and where you collected it from. 



We hope that all of our Hogwarts families have a happy and safe holiday break and we look forward to seeing you all next term!