Grade 3 team Term 4 Newsletter

This Term Newsletter will provide you with information about your children’s upcoming teaching and learning experiences in the new term. To find out what other year levels are doing, please refer to the school’s website. There is also plenty of additional information provided via Compass throughout the school year, so please make a point of touching base regularly.

GENERAL
Term 4 is upon us already and we’re sure it’s going to fly by. The Grade 3 team would like to thank you all for your support during the latest bout of remote learning. This seemed to be one of our most challenging times yet, however, our students have done a magnificent job staying positive and staying engaged. We know everyone did their absolute best no matter their circumstances. We have everything crossed that we will all be onsite at school throughout Term 4 and are able to see our students in person.

The teachers have tried to secure some excursions and incursions to enrich our students learning this year, but due to Covid guidelines, they have all been cancelled and unable to go ahead. We will endeavour to find ways to deliver these experiences virtually to our students and look forward to a time where Covid will no longer get in the way.

Term 4 will no doubt be a busy 11 week term. There are a few postponed events we are hoping will go ahead such as: Footy Pie day, Book Week celebrations and dress up day, however will we have to wait and see how next term’s Covid restrictions affect these plans. Keep an eye out on Compass for confirmation of key dates and activities as this is our preferred method of communication.

Whether we are onsite, or working remotely, we will be continuing to focus on the wellbeing of our students by helping them to identify their emotions and any triggers that may cause changes to their emotions, good or bad. We will also continue to support our students to find strategies to cope with these emotions and recognize people who they can seek out for support.

We ask for continued support in Term 4 on our return to the classroom, to ensure students are completing a minimum of 80 minutes of home reading and 40 minutes of Maths each week, then also handing homework tasks in on time. A friendly reminder that if your child is displaying cold and flu symptoms, that they will need to stay at home until feeling better.

LITERACY
This term, we will continue to encourage our students to develop their love of reading and emphasise the importance of selecting ‘Just Right’ books to enable them to practice the comprehension strategies as well as their personal reading goals. We will continue to link reading with writing by analysing different author’s texts to see what skills they use to influence their readers. We will also continue to Student Reading Journals will continue to serve as a tool to track their individual goals and daily reading, while the Reading Response section will enable students to provide evidence of how they are working on our class learning focus.

In Writing, the students will continue to explore the Writer’s Workshop and emphasise the importance of using our Writer’s Notebooks to develop and stretch our ideas. We will continue to build our knowledge of the 6 traits of Writing and use what we have learnt about Ideas, Voice, Word Choice and Sentence Fluency, within our writing focus of Organisation. We will continue to investigate the importance of fluent sentences which express our precise meaning as an author and how these sentences fit together to create well organised texts of differing genres. We will continue to encourage students to find authentic purposes for their writing and encourage them in working towards publishing their writing efforts.

A reminder that the following resources are available for home reading support:
Epic: https://www.getepic.com/
Your child’s teacher will have sent home your class Epic code.
Sunshine online: https://www.sunshineonline.com.au/
Your teacher will send our log in details for Sunshine Online early in Term 4 as our subscription has changed.
Kids News: https://www.kidsnews.com.au/

NUMERACY
In Mathematics this term, the children will learn about a range of concepts, skills and strategies with a specific focus on Time, Money and Capacity. We will also be revising various concepts learnt throughout the year. Students will be encouraged to use their problem-solving strategies to build a toolbelt of skills to help them solve a range of mathematical problems. Students will also continue to focus on recalling basic number facts quickly and accurately (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). It would be appreciated if you could help your child to learn these facts at home in addition to their homework. Families can also support at home by encouraging your child to play games involving counting and number facts.

A reminder that the following resources are available for home reading support:
Hit the Button: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
Essential Assessment: https://www.essentialassessment.com.au/
Your child’s teacher will have sent home the log in details for this, if it has been misplaced, please email your child’s teacher.

INQUIRY
During Term 4, students will be working collaboratively on our topic, ‘Special Places’. As part of this unit, students will develop the following understandings:

• Different parts of Australia have a special significance to indigenous people
• Natural landmarks have a special meaning to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
• Oral traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were used to describe Country/Place
• Australia was (and still is) divided into many Aboriginal Countries and Torres Strait Islander Places

At the end of this topic, students will make an informative resource to educate Grade 3/4 students about a natural, indigenous landmark within Australia.

Students from 34R will be doing a combination of key learning from the ‘Special Places’ inquiry topic and the Grade 4 ‘Celebrations’ inquiry topic in Term 4.

DEVICES
A reminder that Department of Education policy stipulates that phones, watches or other devices with communicative ability cannot be carried by students while on the school premises during school hours, without Principal approval. For further details please refer to the policy documents on Compass and the Lara Lake PS website.

KEY DATES:
Wednesday the 20^th of October – Geelong Cup Public Holiday (pupil free)
Friday the 5^th of November – Curriculum Day (pupil free)
Wednesday the 15^th of December – Students’ last day (3:20pm finish)
Thursday the 16^th and Friday the 17^th of December – Curriculum Days (pupil free)

We look forward to continuing the connection between school and home in Term Four. Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s teacher. Compass continues to be our main form of communication. Alternatively, you can contact the office directly for more urgent matters. We ask that if you need to speak with your child’s teacher, that you organise a phone call at a mutually appropriate time. The team will endeavour to reply to any queries as soon as possible.

Mrs Hall, Mr L. Robinson, Mrs Dowling, Mr A. Robinson.