Dear 3 / 4 Community,

Welcome to another exciting edition of our Grade 3/4 newsletter! It has been a busy and rewarding fortnight filled with rich learning experiences across all curriculum areas.

As always, thank you for your continued support. We appreciate the important role you play in your child’s learning and value the strong partnership we share between home and school.

Reading

Over the past fortnight, students have explored how to read and navigate digital texts, learning to use online features such as search bars, hyperlinks, menus, tabs and videos to efficiently locate and understand information. They investigated websites, discussing how digital texts differ from traditional books and how these features support readers. Students also completed their Reading Learning Assessment Task (LAT), demonstrating their ability to identify the main idea of a text, summarise information using evidence and identify topic-specific vocabulary.

Next week, students will begin exploring Shakespeare’s Macbeth through The Witches’ Spell. They will participate in choral, partner and close reading activities to develop reading fluency, expression and comprehension. Students will also investigate unfamiliar vocabulary, annotate the text to deepen their understanding and create a spooky illustration inspired by the witches’ cauldron.

Writing

Over the past fortnight, students have continued exploring the mentor text Dog Lost by Jan Ramage to learn how authors create engaging and descriptive narratives. By analysing the author’s writing, students identified how carefully chosen vocabulary, descriptive noun groups and personification help bring a story’s setting and characters to life.

Inspired by the bushland setting in Dog Lost, students have planned their own stories using Badger Creek bushland as the setting. They have created writers’ notebook ideas, experimented with patterned sentences based on the author’s writing style and begun drafting their own short narratives with clear beginnings, middles and ends.

Next week, students will revise and edit their narratives using a writing checklist before publishing their finished pieces using Elastik. This will provide students with the opportunity to strengthen their editing skills while developing confidence using a digital writing platform.

Mathematics

This fortnight, students have begun our unit on Time. We started by completing a pre-assessment to identify students’ current understanding before exploring different units of time, including seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. Students estimated the duration of everyday activities, compared their predictions with actual times and learned to read analogue and digital clocks to the nearest minute. They also explored the difference between AM and PM, using daily routines to sequence events throughout a 24-hour day.

Next week, students will extend their understanding by converting between units of time, such as minutes and hours or days and weeks, before applying these skills to solve real-world time problems. They will also investigate elapsed time, interpret simple timetables and complete a range of practical problem-solving activities before finishing the unit with a post-assessment to celebrate their learning.

Inquiry

This fortnight, students have continued investigating Forces by exploring how different forces affect the movement of objects. They have learned that a force is a push or a pull and have begun identifying the difference between contact forces and action-at-a-distance forces through real-world examples.

Next week, students will continue their investigations by creating force posters, categorising different types of forces and conducting a hands-on experiment exploring friction. They will make predictions, test their ideas and investigate how friction affects the movement of objects in everyday situations.

Wellbeing

This fortnight, students have been learning positive strategies to support their emotional wellbeing and build respectful relationships with others. Students explored how everyone experiences strong emotions, such as anger, and discussed healthy ways to recognise these feelings and respond appropriately. They also reflected on the importance of connection to Country, family, culture and community, and how these connections can help us feel calm, safe and supported.

Digital Technologies

This fortnight, students will begin learning the fundamentals of coding using Scratch, a block-based programming platform. They will learn how to log in, navigate the Scratch workspace and complete the Getting Started tutorial. As they explore, students will discover how to make their sprites move and interact by using simple coding blocks.

Throughout these lessons, students will be encouraged to persist when faced with challenges, experiment with different coding commands and support one another as theydevelop their problem-solving and computational thinking skills. More experienced coders will have opportunities to extend their learning by creating their own projects while helping classmates build confidence with coding.

Swimming Program

Last week, our students thoroughly enjoyed participating in our week-long Swimming Program. Throughout the week, they developed their water safety skills, built confidence in the pool and challenged themselves to improve their swimming abilities. The program concluded on Friday with a range of fun water-based activities, providing a fantastic way to celebrate the students’ efforts and achievements.

A huge well done to all students who participated throughout the week. We were so proud of the positive attitudes, resilience and enthusiasm they demonstrated each day. Thank you also to our families for supporting the program and ensuring students came prepared each day.