Happy Holidays!

It’s been a very busy term.

We’ve enjoyed celebrations such as Australia Day and Harmony Day. And we have our ANZAC ceremony to commemorate in the last week of the Term. This has fit perfectly into our HASS theme where we have been looking at the difference between celebrations and commemorations in countries from around the world. We have specifically studied some Australian celebrations and commemorations.  The children have been working on an inquiry project to present details of a festival from around the world.

Our class has been working very hard to prepare for the NAPLAN testing in May. We have concisely covered the content in Literacy and Numeracy outlined in my initial post for the year. As I have completed assessments over the term, I have noticed considerable improvement in achievement. You should be so very proud of your children. They have maintained a focused approach to their learning and are enjoying the results. I couldn’t ask for more from them. I’m tremendously pleased with their efforts.

We will continue to revise areas that could use a little further consolidation over the coming weeks. We are also learning test taking skills, such as timing ourselves throughout an assessment and how to answer multi-choice questions. Further information regarding NAPLAN testing can be found below.

Thank you for your support with talk homework. This has been a new initiative for our class this year and has had a great impact on your children’s writing. I have noticed an improvement in depth of information included in stories. We have been practising narratives for the second half of this term. All children have a goal that they are working towards. These goals are individual, set according to an area of weakness in their writing. Children must achieve mastery of their goal five times before moving onto a new goal.

Finally, I would like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday break. If your children get bored get them to read and do a quiz or maybe write a narrative story. Remember there are always books the children can read online in their Literacy Pro Library. They can do a quiz on any of these books.

Take Care

Mrs Harders

NAPLAN

Testing will be held in May.

Students are assessed using common national tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and Numeracy.

NAPLAN is not a pass or fail type test. Individual student performance is shown on a national achievement scale for each test.

The performance of individual students can be compared to the average performance of all students in Australia.

NAPLAN Planner has been used in Term 4 2017, and Terms 1 2018

Students have many opportunities to get used to test language, content and format.

Sample questions and a sample writing tasks can be accessed on the NAP website:

www.nap.edu.au.

Some work by Room 19 Term 1

Poerty - Main Idea

 Enjoy a sample of HASS inquiry projects. 

Children were asked to investigate a festival celebrated in another country.

Harmony Day

Talk to Teach Task

 

Talk to Teach

This term, we will be focusing on giving and following clear oral instructions. As part of our Speaking and Listening activities, students will give a short (3 min) “Talk to Teach” presentation. Your child will teach the class how to make something simple.  They will need to bring in the item they have already made, and then physically demonstrate and explain how to make a second one of the same item, showing each step of the process. 

Some ideas are as follows:

·       Teach a craft:  a card, mosaic, cartoon drawing, plasticine object, bead necklace, ‘Beado’ creation, easy ‘Lego’ creation, easy ‘KINEX’ creation, easy ‘MOBILO’ creation, very simple origami, cardboard box creation, egg-carton creation…etc.

·      Teach a simple cooking creation, eg. icing biscuits, making a funny face sandwich, a fruit kebab…

·        Teach a special talent you have.

·        Teach another language that you know.

It is important that the item being made is very simple so that your child will be confident to teach the class without the use of notes. We will discuss this in class beforehand.

This task is to be presented during Week 7 of this term. A roster is included.

Please mark this date on your calendar at home, and help to remind your child to be prepared for their talks. If you require further information do not hesitate to ask.

Kind regards,

Year 3 Teachers

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Christian Aadidev Grace Leah Danny	Han Yu Noah Sarthak Lachlan Natasha	Emily Charlotte Tessa Benjamin	Connor Alisina Kiara Edlyn	Isabel Eisha Sahar Thomas

Parent Information Slides

For those parents/caregivers that couldn't make it to our parent information night, or if you'd like a refresher, please find the information slides by clicking on the link below.

Parent Information Slides

Writing - Talk Homework

As part of WGPS commitment to improve our Literacy results we follow a program called VCOP

V – Vocabulary C – Connectives O – Openers 

P - Punctuation.

You will find a writing stimulus in the top section of the Practice Sheet each week. We write a text every Wednesday, so please discuss the stimulus with your child and get their ideas flowing on Tuesday night. On the stimulus will be some sample questions. The following day, they will share their discussions with the class before they begin writing.

The point of this exercise is to talk and build ideas and vocabulary.  Students may write key, words or phrases but SHOULD NOT bring a whole text back to school.

Welcome back

Welcome back everyone!

It’s been wonderful to see the children again after the holiday break and reconnect with many of you again at the parent information night.  We’ve had a great start to 2018, getting straight into covering our content for this term.  As you know, Year 3 is a NAPLAN year so we are working hard to prepare the children.  You will find more information about this below.  I’m looking forward to working together to achieve great educational outcomes for your child.

Term 1

English

·       Reading Strategies such as predicting, self-questioning, creating images, connecting, summarising and main idea

·       Grammar - revision of pronouns, conjunctions, simple and compound sentences, adjectives, verbs and adverbs

·       Punctuation - full stops, question marks, exclamation marks, quotation marks, proper nouns, contractions and commas

·       Writing - narrative and persuasive text

·       Spelling - blends, diagraphs, vowel diagraphs, trigraphs, suffixes and prefixes

Maths

·       Number

Number sequences - counting by 2s, 3s, 5s, and 10s

Addition and Subtraction - problem solving

Multiplication and Division - Arrays, repeated addition, multiplication on a number line, sharing and word problems

·       Measurement

Money - finding change, counting collections of dollars and cents, word problems

Time - reading a calendar, telling time, duration of time

2D and 3D objects

Mapping - Interpreting simple maps, using directional and positional language

Location and Transformation - flip, slide, turn and half / quarter turns

·       Statistics and Probability

Reading and interpreting data, pictographs, tallies, bar graphs

Stem

We will be doing an investigation that will integrate all learning areas.  You’ll hear about that real soon!

NAPLAN

Testing will be held in May.

Students are assessed using common national tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and Numeracy.

NAPLAN is not a pass or fail type test. Individual student performance is shown on a national achievement scale for each test.

The performance of individual students can be compared to the average performance of all students in Australia.

NAPLAN Planner has been used in Term 4 2017, and Terms 1 2018

Students have many opportunities to get used to test language, content and format.

Sample questions and a sample writing tasks can be accessed on the NAP website:

www.nap.edu.au.

http://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/parent-carer-support
/parent-carer-support.html