Fine Motor

Three times every week each of the classes in The Dahls participate in fine motor rotations, to help us to build strength and coordination in in our fingers and hands in preparation for formal handwriting later in semester two. We participate in lots of different activities including scissor skills, using chopsticks, tweezers and pegs to move objects, balancing small objects, building, weaving, threading, tracing and colouring. Take a look at just some of the different fine motor activities that we get to work on.

 

What kinds of activities do you do at home, that help you to work your finger and hand muscles? 

(e.g. Lego, puzzles, using chopsticks)

Monday Afternoon Rotations

Every Monday afternoon each of the Year 3/4 classes have the opportunity to participate in a range of different learning experiences. Each class currently rotates through a range of dance, PE, STEM, coding and art activities. 

In PE and dance we are focusing on coordination and fundamental movement skills, during coding and STEM we are working on our problem solving skills and in art we are exploring lines using warm and cool colours.

What is something new or interesting that you have had the opportunity to try or learn during rotations?

Parent Information Session - Thank You!

A huge thank you to all of our wonderful parents and carers who were able to attend our parent information session on Tuesday morning this week. We hope that you all found it useful and any questions you had were answered. In case you were not able to attend or you missed grabbing a handout, we have posted below the front page with lots of important dates and reminders for all of our families. 

You can subscribe to our blog so that you receive notifications when we put up new posts, by clicking on Follow By Email on the top right side of the blog screen.

This one is for the parents and carers!

What is something you learnt, found interesting or a question you still have after our information session?

Parent Information Session Tomorrow!!

What's happening in Term 1....

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', 'BME' and 'SWBST'. As well as non-fiction texts, such as ‘topic, sub-topic, detail’, ‘Questioning Web’ and ‘Tic, Tac, Toe’. 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 entertain and writing to persuade.  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

Students participate in a 20 minute word work session four times a week.

Mrs Evans - revision of long vowel sounds, prefixes, suffixes, derivations, mnemonics

Miss Markos - revising long vowel sounds, split digraphs and alternate spellings of graphemes 

Miss Murphy & Merriel - revising short vowel sounds & double letter phonemes (ll, ck, ss, ff) 

Mrs Van Audenaerde - revising single letter sounds, using their knowledge of the letter sounds to blend and sound out words and segmenting words.

Miss Vernon, Miss Robbins and Mrs Burgess - split digraphs and alternate spellings of graphemes through activities such as sound sorts, silly sentences and spelling bees

Maths

Year 3

Problem solving, numbers in context, place value, addition and subtraction strategies, 2D shapes, transformations and patterns

Year 4

Problem solving, numbers in context, place value, addition and subtraction mental and written strategies, multiplication and division mental and written strategies, data collection and graphing

Science

Why do balls roll? Why do apples fall from trees? Why do some things slide across ice but not on carpet? What makes our bikes stop when we brake? We use all types of forces including friction, gravity and pushes and pulls when we exercise, ride bicycles and drive cars. Engineers and scientists use their knowledge of forces and motion to design things for our homes, work and school. 

The Smooth Moves unit provides students with the opportunity to explore forces and motion. Through hands-on activities students identify forces that act at a distance and those that act in direct contact and investigate how different-sized forces affect the movement of objects.

HaSS

Civic and Citizenship - Why are rules important?

This inquiry encourages students to examine rules in society, understand why they exist and who makes them. It is hoped that students will begin to perceive rules as needed and necessary, in small and larger communities to protect people's rights.

History - Our Fleeting Past

Students will explore the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, their connection to place and their contact with other societies. Through a study of navigation, exploration and trade, students come to learn about Australia’s early colonisation and develop understandings about contact between societies and its effects on people and their environments.

Inquiry Questions

• ·         Why did the great journeys of exploration occur?
• ·         What was life like for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples before the arrival of the Europeans?
• ·         Why did the Europeans settle in Australia?
• ·         What was the nature and consequence of contact between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and early traders, explorers and settlers?

Health and PE

Health - Fresh Tastes - Food and Me

Students will review the Five Food Groups and their main nutrients. They will learn about the traffic light food categorisation system.

Social and Emotional Learning (SELs) - Self-Awareness

·        Acts of Kindness 

·        Exploring My Values

·        Values and Manners Online and Offline         Life Education visit

·        Values and Social Rules

·        Values in My Community

·        Perseverance and a Growth Mindset

Physical Education

Tennis - 3/4 KE (week 2-7) 3/4 EV (week 8 - term 2)

Dance

Cross Country

FMS - Dodging, kicking, forehand strike, 2-hand side arm strike

Technologies

Digital Technologies

Students will be using problem solving skills to create and develop animations using the computer coding program Scratch. We will be using code to add sounds, movement and backgrounds to their animation projects before moving on to more complex tasks such as scoring and navigation when developing games.

During term 1 3/4 students from 3/4 EV and 3/4KE will participate in a series of lessons as part of a STEM Little Bits Torch Design Project. Students will generate, develop and communicate electronic circuit design ideas and decisions using technical terms and detailed diagrams to solve a problem.