Christmas activity

Enjoy these photos of an activity with our buddies this afternoon. 

Dance Party and Class Party

Our Dance Party is on Tuesday morning December 11th. Thank you for returning permission slips. All tickets have been issued that were requested. 

Children are invited to wear party clothes for the whole day on Tuesday. Please keep in mind that the children have a sports class in the afternoon so they will need appropriate footwear to play sport. They may bring a change of footwear if they would like to wear party shoes for the morning. 

Just a reminder about our Class Party.

To celebrate the end of year together, we will have a class party on Wednesday, December 12th. This party will be our lunch for the day, so I encourage everyone to bring one small plate of healthy food to share.

                                                               girls - savoury plate

                                                               boys - sweet plate

Thank you

Mrs Harders

Holidays

I can’t believe that two years have passed since most of us began a journey together in your child’s learning. It’s been a fantastic period of my teaching career. I am so proud of what your children have achieved during this time. Everyone has worked very hard to accomplish their personal best. I couldn’t have asked for more from them. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the children and your families over our time together.

I appreciate the support I have received from you as parents. It has been most beneficial for the children that we work together to achieve goals for them.

Summer holidays can be long when children are bored, so I encourage you to make sure they have plenty of books to read. Maybe a trip to the local library would be fun. Keep enjoying Literacy Pro until it gets switched off.

I know that many of you take special outings or even a holiday over the summer. It would be great practice for the children to write about their experiences. Maybe they could purchase a cheap exercise book that they can cover and decorate. I encourage them to use complex sentences and lots of different types of figurative language in their writing, remembering to provide all the details of the experience. The children always re-read and edit their own writing.

They might like to allocate the back of the exercise book to maths practice. Some ideas include times tables practise, addition and subtraction with regrouping, drawing maps, time and money challenges and some fractions practise.

The children will still have access to Studyladder if they would like to do some activities online.

Holidays are always filled with great memories so I wish you all a very special and safe holiday period. I will miss you all very much and hope that you will say hello to me when we pass each other as school resumes in 2019.

All my love and best wishes

Mrs Harders

Reindeer STEM

STEM task - Make a reindeer from all natural materials. Your reindeer must stand on four legs unassisted. Enjoy these photos of our successes.

Literacy Pro Award

Congratulations to the children from Rm 19 for winning the Literacy Pro award at assembly on Friday. So very proud of your reading efforts. Everyone in our class has earnt a certificate. An outstanding effort. 

To this point of the year, Rm 19 children have read 7,290,949 words and have completed 2015 quizzes. 

Enjoy this photo of our trophy with Benjamin who has earnt his silver certificate. Then bronze, red and blue certificate winners around him. Well done!

Thinking Threes earn their name

This week we have been reading a big book together called Fish Head Soup. This story is about Mrs Spatt and her friend Spider. In the story Mrs Spatt saves Spider with her wooden spoon. After we read the story someone in the class remembered a story from Year 1 about Mrs Spatt and Spider. Mrs Harders went to the Library and found the Year 1 text. After reading it we discovered the reason Mrs Spatt and Spider became friends. What a fantastic connection! The children quickly realised that we had made a text to text connection. This is a reading strategy we have learnt where one story helps us to understand another story. It was a very proud moment for Mrs Harders. Well done to the Thinking Threes of Room 19.

 We have also recently studied a story called Harry McFarr’s Clunker Car. As the name suggests Harry’s car is old and falling apart. The children designed a new car for Harry with some amazing features. They wrote a simile for their cars and listed their special features. We have been learning to write complex sentences so the children wrote some about the story. Well done, Room 19. Please enjoy a sample of their work.

Term 4

Here we are in Term 4 already!!

I trust everyone had a wonderful break and are ready to engage in the celebrations and activities that Term 4 provides.

I hope you had a chance to come and enjoy a wonderful celebration of the arts at the Arts Festival on Tuesday night. Music, Art and Drama are such important aspects of a child’s learning and it was a spectacular night, showcasing the talents of our students in many areas. Thank you to those parents who were able to come along and share the evening with your children.

We have begun dancing lessons. We participate in one dancing lesson per week and will do until the end of the term. The children have remembered many of last year’s dances and we have begun learning some new ones for our Dance Party coming up later in the year. I will post more information regarding the Dance Party later in the term.

Swimming lessons for our class have been scheduled for Weeks 7 & 8 as you will already know from the permission form sent home last week. Forms and payment are due Wednesday October 31^st.

Congratulations to Aadidev who was selected to complete in the recent Numero Challenge as a representative of Wattle Grove Primary School. We wish you lots of success in future heats for the remainder of the term.

Rm 19 has been scheduled to perform their item at the Senior Assembly on Friday of Week 8. Please note this date.

As we move into the coming weeks of the term we can expect to cover topics such as;

English

• ·         Reading Strategies – finding information, cause and effect, similarities and differences and predicting. We will be looking at using these strategies in the context of both text and short films.
• ·         Grammar – revising simple, compound and complex sentences and the conjunctions used to write these sentences. Tenses, the use of determiners (a/an), homophones (their/there/they’re, too/two/to, where/wear/we’re, your/you’re, it’s/its) and homographs (bat/bat)
• ·         Punctuation – Revising using commas for a list of items and for a pause, exclamation marks, capital letters, full stops, question marks, quotation marks, apostrophe for ownership. Children will be encouraged to edit many passages, both on paper and digitally on laptops.
• ·         Spelling - phonemes au, ie, sc, or, age, eigh, silent h, silent g, silent u g, silent l m, ou, augh, el, ant, our and c along with some spelling rules. You may notice that some of these are repeated. These phonemes were identified as weak areas across the year group and we have revisited them for consolidation.
• ·         Speaking & Listening – Science presentation
• ·         Writing – Persuasive text and Narrative text

Mathematics

New topics

• ·         Number and Algebra - addition and subtraction within 1000, multiplication and division (facts of 2, 3, 5 & 10)

Revision

• ·         Number
• ·         Measurement
• ·         Statistics and Probability

The Karate challenge has been going very well with 14 students from Rm 19 mastering the 2, 10, 5, 3, 11 and 9 times table. The children will benefit from knowing all their times tables by rote, so I encourage everyone to embrace the Karate challenge and work towards the top belt as quickly as possible.

Science

We have already had our Super Scientist Report Competition. Congratulations to everyone from Rm 19 for an outstanding effort with your presentations. I was most impressed at the high standard, especially with the way that everyone tried so hard to maintain eye contact with the audience. This is something we have been working hard to do each time we present.

HASS

The children are completing our unit on Civics and Citizenship where we have focused on Governments and Democracy and Law and Citizens. We will then complete a unit on Geography in the second half of the term.

Welcome Back

Welcome back to Term 4. I have heard from the children that you have all had a fantastic break, even if that meant just staying home to rest. I have also had a very restful break. It was just wonderful to return to school on Monday to see the children and watch them catch up with each other.

We have a busy term that I know will fly by so here are a couple of things that are coming up to keep in mind.

• ·         Dance classes every Thursday morning.
• ·         Arts Festival – week 3
• ·         Super Science Report Competition – week 3
• ·         Swimming Lessons later in the term
• ·         Our class will host Senior Assembly later this term

You would have received a note regarding the Super Science Report Competition due by the beginning of Week 3. The children have written reports at the end of last term so they are very clear on what they have to do. I have attached the schedule below so that you can see what day your child is rostered to present. Please come and see me if you have any questions regarding this.

Looking forward to a wonderful final term together and continuing our learning with rich experiences and lots of fun.

Mrs Harders

Super Scientist Competition

This semester children are asked to present a short (2 min) report on a topic for the Super Scientist Competition. A report is not an experiment. Reports should be an explanation of a topic from a scientific perspective such as an animal, life-cycle, planet, states of matter or any topic that your child chooses. Children are asked to have their reports prepared and ready to present by Week 3.

Year 3 Teachers

Monday 22 Oct	Tuesday 23 Oct	Wednesday 24 Oct	Thursday 25 Oct
Radhika	Charlotte	Emily	Noah
Tessa	Eisha	Alisina	Sahar
Lachlan	Aadidev	Isabel	Benjamin
Edlyn	Connor	Thomas	Leah
Sarthak	Christian	Han Yu	Danny
Natasha	Kiara	Grace

Learning Journey

Thank you so much to everyone for supporting your children for our Learning Journey. They love to show their work to people. I hope you gained an insight into what their day entails as well. My sincere apologies for being absent due to illness and thank you to Mrs Gordon for hosting the event.

We have had a very busy but wonderful term. The children have experienced a variety of educational opportunities. We’ve had the Life Education Van, Book Week, Science Week and our excursion. We still have our first aid course to complete in Week 10.

Our excursion was a real highlight. The children gained some very valuable insights into waste in our local area from our visit to the Red Hill Waste Facility. I hope you enjoyed the photos shared on our blog and I hope the children have shared some knowledge with you about what they learnt. They have just completed a report on the Red Hill Waste Facility. I was so impressed with the standard of information they have presented. These are on display in the classroom ready for our Learning Journey next week.

Our Learning Journey will be next Tuesday 18^th September between 2pm – 3.30pm. May I extend a warm invitation to you all to come and see what your children have been working on this term. They will have many activities prepared to share with you.

As we move into the final weeks of the term we are wrapping up a number of topic areas.

English

·       Reading Strategies – sequencing, concluding, fact or opinion, summarising and main idea. We will be looking at using these strategies in the context of both text and short films.

• ·       Grammar – revising simple, compound and complex sentences and the conjunctions used to write these sentences. Tenses, the use of determiners (a/an), homophones (their/there/they’re, too/two/to, where/wear/we’re, your/you’re, it’s/its) and homographs (bat/bat)
• ·       Punctuation - Using commas for a list of items and for a pause, exclamation marks, question marks, quotation marks, ellipses, apostrophe for ownership and contractions.
• ·       Spelling - phonemes er, age, ry, est, our, ise, ant, age, e, al, ex, a, I, au, ie along with some spelling rules
• ·       Speaking & Listening – Science and HASS presentation that will be prepared during class time.
• ·       Writing – Poetry, writing a Procedure and Explanation

You will find photos of some of the work produced in Literacy already posted on our blog.

Mathematics

• ·       Number and Algebra - fractions, money, addition and subtraction within 1000, multiplication and division (facts of 2, 3, 5 & 10)
• ·       Measurement - time, mapping and directional language, symmetry and angles
• ·       Statistics and Probability - chance

Our Karate times tables challenge has been a huge success. Many children in the class were challenged with the goal of mastering their times tables at the conclusion of last semester. Everyone has embraced the challenge and are working towards moving their way up the Karate belt ladder.

Science

I hope the children have shared with you their new knowledge from our STEM investigation regarding food and temperatures inside lunchboxes. You would have seen the lunchbox they designed and created. Photos are on the blog in case you missed it. The children have recorded their data on line graphs, table graphs and in written observations. All our investigation experiment record sheets are on display in the classroom. The children will be able to explain them to you during the Learning Journey.

Literacy Pro

You probably know that Literacy Pro has been a big success. Your children have embraced the program and are progressing beautifully. Many children are starting to achieve their Bronze Certificates now, an admirable milestone. We have had the goal of improving our pass rate for quizzes this term. We tried to get our pass rate up to 90%. We did improve by 2% up to 83% with the following strategies

• ·       Read the questions twice
• ·       Read the whole book carefully
• ·       Check for the answers in the book
• ·       Finish all 10 questions

We will be setting a new goal early next term to improve our Literacy Pro statistics.

I would like to wish you all a lovely holiday and look forward to everyone returning for Term 4 refreshed and ready to learn.

Red Hill Waste Facility Excursion

Please find below some photos of our excursion yesterday. What an informative and relevant excursion! The children learnt a lot about waste and how our community is managing it. We observed how the facility is protecting our environment and most importantly discovered ways to reduce our waste through some hands on activities. Please take some time to have a look at these photos with your children and get them to tell you all about some of the processes the facility has in place. It really was quite fascinating.

 House hold drop off site

 Sorting bins

 Closed up waste 'Cell'

 Weighing bridge for incoming rubbish trucks

 sealed ponds with contaminated water

 Rainwater ponds

 Green waste area

 Waste 'Cell' or hole for general waste