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.

The Kindness Tree

In the Dahls, we have started the year with a very strong focus on being kind to each other and performing acts of kindness as part of our everyday lives. Last week, we read the story Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson. Each Kindness is a story with a strong anti-bullying message and reinforces that each act of kindness makes the world a little bit better. 

We have created Kindness Trees in our classrooms. Last week, we brainstormed different acts of kindness that would help our class and Fraser be a better place to learn. We recorded all of these on leaves to help our tree grow and to remind us of all the ways we can show kindness to each other. Every day, students are challenged to be Kindness Detectives. Their job is to spot people performing acts of kindness towards others and secretly report them to the teacher. These acts are then recorded onto 'fruit' which helps make our Kindness Trees healthier.  Each week we will be celebrating these acts of kindness in our classes.

(Eli we have added your peach to the tree!!)

What is an act of kindness that you have done for someone?

Welcome To The Dahls

Welcome To The Dahls!

Welcome to a new year in The Dahls. We are so excited to have you all returning and would like to give a huge welcome to all of our brand new students to Fraser this year. To get us started take a look at the fun Welcome Back Rap we are watching to start off the school year.

Welcome Back Rap

This year we will have five year 3/4 classes and Mrs. Van will continue as our resourcing teacher to support all five classes. Our classes are:

Splatchwinklers - Mrs Evans

Mugglewumps - Ms Robbins and Mrs Burgess

Whoopsysplunkers - Miss Vernon and Mrs Lawson

Phizzwizzers - Miss Murphy

Razztwizzlers - Miss Markos

Great Glass Elevator (Resourcing) - Mrs Van  

We have lots of exciting and fun activities and games planned for our first week back at school and we look forward to getting to know lots of you even better. Our focus to start the year off right is to "Be The Nice Kid", check out the clip we watched about being a great teacher and student.

Kid President's Pep Talk to Students and Teachers

The first class novel that we are going to be listening to this year is The BFG by Roald Dahl.

We are really excited to continue sharing lots of our amazing learning and reflecting with you all this year. Each blog post has a question at the bottom for you to share your thinking, so we look forward to seeing your contributions. Parents and carers, please make sure that you subscribe to our blog by entering your email on the top right where you see, Follow by Email to be notified each time a new post is added to our blog.

We are going to finish our post with a fun clip about what some children want to be when they grow up. Don't forget to answer our question at the end.

Which Roald Dahl book is your favourite and why?