Yr3 Curriculum Update – 15/11/19

Working together to achieve success for every child

Welcome to our 5th edition!

In each update, the Year 3 Team will bring you snapshots of what your children in Year Three have been up to every 2 weeks. You will see a variety of learning experiences exemplifying learning which is fun, exciting, challenging, innovative and/or creative…and whatever they are, we know that your child has worked really hard to get there and should you have the chance, you may want to share this newsletter with your child to find out the juicy details and discuss the great learning he/she have been doing!

 

Transdisciplinary Learning – It’s all connected! 

Transdisciplinary theme:  How We Organise Ourselves

 Central idea: The food we buy goes through a process of change before we eat it. 

Lines of inquiry:

• Where our food comes from (form)
• Processes food goes through (change)
• People and systems involved in food production and distribution (connection)

 

As we delve deeper into our unit about food and the changes it goes through, Year 3 is exploring many different areas such as, what is the journey of a carrot, what information would we find on a food package, how much juice could we squeeze out of an orange and does store bought juice taste different? If it does, why is it different? The children are realising that all food originates on a farm. This realisation        will become all the more exciting next week when we visit the Organic farm!

Literacy

We are lucky to have excellent resources to help expand our knowledge of the food around us. Books from the library as well as online resources such as Epic are invaluable. Children enjoy reading and sharing what they have learned with one another. They are beginning to notice how the information is presented and this will help them both as readers and as writers

Some Year 3 buddy classes from Year 6 have been showing them interesting websites to help build their vocabulary. One such website is visuwords.com where a search for a word provides a brainstorm of similar words and other associations in a flash!

 

Maths

Understanding the concepts behind our place value system are so important to building a strong foundation in maths. For this reason we have continued to explore the Base 10 materials in fun and engaging ways. We are always looking for maths in our environment and its relevance in our lives.

Exploring the Base 10 materials in different, open-ended ways to better understand our number system.

An important mathematical skill is the ability to estimate large amounts using different strategies. Students were given a range of materials to estimate and then count to see how close their estimate was. They learned how to group materials and work systematically.

 

We need your help

For our food unit, we would like to gather empty and washed food containers for children to look at and gather information.

If you have any spare cardboard, cereal boxes or small containers that we can use in our junk modelling area, we would love it if they could be brought to school.

Please note to only bring in items that are clean and stain free, as the children will be using their creativity to make things with these objects.

 

Reminders

A few key reminders for students and parents:

• Please remind your child to pack his/her hat for school each day, as children who do not bring their hat will not be allowed to take part in snack or lunch play.
• There are extreme peanut allergies in Year 3, so please make sure your child does not bring nuts to school or eat peanut butter or nutella for breakfast before he/she heads to school.
• Please remind your child to pack his/her own cutlery as we do not provide extra sets of cutlery at school.
• Your child this week have home readers to read at home daily for up to 5-10 minutes. Please let your child’s class teacher know if the level is too hard for your child.
• Your child’s weekly timetable have been placed in their school diaries, should you have questions around the days and times they should wear their PE uniform to school.
• School Bag: Please ensure your child has a backpack for school, not a wheelie bag. Bags with wheels are not safe for our stairs and cause trip hazards for others;
• Shoes: Black shoes with school uniform or white shoes with sports uniform. Please do not send your child with shoes that are a bit black and a bit white.
• Jewellery: Many children coming with necklaces, wrist bands and other adornments. The only jewellery permitted is a non wifi watch, and religious adornments that are to be worn inside the uniform.

 

Key dates for the Diary

Monday, 18 November                     3I Farm Visit

Tuesday,19 November                     3A Farm Visit

Wednesday, 20 November               3K Farm Visit

Friday, 22 November                        3J Farm Visit

Friday 22 November                         Y1-3 Assembly &  Library Workshop for Parents and Helpers

Monday, 25 November                     3L Farm Visit

 

Home learning

Some suggestions to reinforce the learning taking place in school are:

• Keep a daily food diary of what you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. What do you notice about your choices?
• Take a peek into your kitchen cupboards. Make a list of what you see. Is there anything that surprised you?
• Numbers in a supermarket! How many different uses for numbers do you see?