NON-CAMPERS

For three days, the students not attending Camp enjoyed a fun-filled time watching a movie (with popcorn!), built Lego robotics, creating and making their own board games, sculptured clay figurines, made slime, participated in Ninja Warrior, outside games, Rock, Paper, Scissor games, Get to know you Bingo... the list goes on and on!

Where ever the Year 3 and 4 students were during Week 9, they had an amazing time with new experiences with lots of stories to share at home.

A very big thank you to all the teachers both on site at school and away on camp for looking after out students and well done to our student cohort for behaving within our school values.

Thank you to Ms Graue for organising programs for both Campers and Non-Campers!

Literacy

During week seven and eight, students applied their understanding of narratives and the features to support their groups in creating their branch of our class Choose Your Own Adventure. They continued to work with their groups to develop their flowchart of how the narrative evolves from the pebble problem, to the rock problem and then lead to two possible solutions as a result of reader's choice. After they had completed their first draft, students reflected on the writing traits to revise their writing to ensure it is smooth and a pleasant reading experience for the reader.

Within our Reading sessions, students have continued to explore the Book Head Heart protocol of reading to support student's comprehension of a text. They engaged in a class read aloud of various texts including Wendy, Rocky and Louie, Our House is on Fire and The Giant and The Sea. During the read aloud of each text, students responded to prompting questions to support them in understanding what the author is trying to tell us, their noticings and how the message of the books connects to their own lives.

Numeracy

Over the last two weeks, Year 3 students have begun to explore fractions. They were introduced to the unit through folding paper strips multiple times to see the different fractions that could be created and identified that a fraction is an equal part of a whole. Students learnt the purpose of a numerator and a denominator and demonstrated their understanding through creating representations of fractions using the area model as well as beginning to identify a fraction on a number line. Year 3 students will continue to develop their understanding of fractions next term.

Students have continued investigating transformations throughout our Applied unit. They extended their understanding of a flip, slide and turn by referring to these transformations as a reflection, translation and rotation. Students have also started to explore measurement through capacity. They are beginning to understand the units of measurement for capacity (millilitres and litres) and estimate how much a bottle or jug can hold.

Literacy

During week five and six, students continued to explore narrative texts and the features to engage a reader. The structure of a narrative was unpacked further to grasp the concept of a staircase plot where a problem evolves from a pebble, to a stone then rock. Students identified the importance of sentence fluency and using various sentence types to make the reading experience more enjoyable. They listened to various settings and used their senses to describe what the setting would look like, sound like, feel like, smell like and taste like. Students explored adjectives that describe a character's physical traits and personality traits. After brainstorming adjectives, students developed their word bank by using synonyms. Following on from this, all students were involved in creating detailed descriptions of settings and characters through selecting powerful adjectives to develop an orientation for our whole class 'choose your own adventure' narrative. Students co-constructed the orientation and pebble problem with the class and then were split into groups to demonstrate their understanding of a flowchart (linking to CBL) to brainstorm how the narrative evolves.

Numeracy

Throughout the last fortnight, Year 3 students continued exploring addition and subtraction. They have developed an understanding of key words to identify operations in a worded problem as well as beginning to use various strategies to solve an addition or subtraction number equation. Strategies include the split strategy, number line, finding doubles and vertical addition.

Students have been investigating symmetry and transformations throughout our Applied unit. They went outside and explored symmetry in the environment, noticing that symmetry can be found all around us. Students identified that some objects have a vertical, horizontal or diagonal line of symmetry and some could have multiple lines of symmetry. They then explored various 2D shapes, identified their lines of symmetry and double checked their predictions using a mirror. Students applied their understanding of symmetry when creating symmetrical patterns using tangram pieces, noticing that to create a symmetrical pattern, tangram pieces required the transformations of flip, slide and turn.

CBL

After exploring and developing an understanding of computational thinking last week, students are beginning to use a flow chart to plan how our class narrative will develop from a pebble problem to bigger problems and involve user choice of choosing their own adventure. This week, students have begun to experiment creating different projects using Scratch Jr linking back to our guiding question of using data through digital systems and the effect of user input.

Literacy

Throughout week three and four students explored narrative texts. They engaged in a narrative gallery walk where they viewed and read a variety of picture story books. Students used their thinking skills to ask and answer questions about what they noticed, including the structure and features of a narrative. They used the strategy somebody, wanted, but, so, then, to identify the structure (orientation, complication and resolution). Following this, students sequenced a variety of texts and were exposed to the effective use of sequencing words and the power of adjectives. This enabled them to write a narrative using some of the features they learnt to enhance their writing.

NUMERACY

In Numeracy this fortnight, Year 3 students have been exploring the relationship between addition and subtraction using fact families. They have noticed how numbers in an addition sentence can be changed around without the answer changing. Students have been developing basic number facts for addition and subtraction and exploring a range of strategies to support in problem solving.

Students have been investigating 2D shapes and 3D objects. They have been identifying the features, naming the number of faces, vertices and edges for a variety of 3D objects. Students then created a 3D city/building to consolidate their understanding of how 2D shapes can be made into 3D objects using nets.

CBL

This week, students have begun to transition into the 'Investigate' phase of their CBL inquiry. They have used Guiding Questions to prompt their learning journey, such as; 'What are the different forms of data represented through a digital system?' and 'How can computational thinking support a digital solution?'

Students have been supported in beginning to develop an understanding of computational thinking and through this, a simple introduction to conditional statements; 'if > then...'. Some classes have navigated an episode of the Netflix show 'Bear Grylls; You vs Wild' as a guiding resource in response to our Essential Question; 'How can user input and a branching mechanism create options for users to make choices in solutions?'

Literacy

To support us with developing our knowledge, skills and problem solving strategies we need when approaching the challenges that we come across on standardised testing, we have been investigating a unit on 'Test Taking'. We have been looking at understanding how to identify the important details in a question, make sense of test passages, vocabulary found on tests and apply these skills to an electronic format.

During this unit, we have focused on developing our ideas for writing in response to a range of prompts. We focussed on developing clear plans, writing within a timed limit and generating our ideas and content for specific structures.

Challenged Based Learning

Across the last two weeks, we have been focusing on the Big Idea of 'Discovery'. We have been introduced to the Essential Question 'How can user input and a branching mechanism (algorithm) create options for users to make choices in solutions?' along with the Challenge; 'Create a digital narrative that sparks a sense of discovery through an interactive adventure that involves user choice.'

This fortnight, we have been exploring different provocations, which include exploring digital applications/websites, a choose your own adventure and games on our devices. We have created a CBL journal to record all our wonderings and explorations in response to the inquiry. We have discussed ways that the websites are presented and focused on answering questions such as; Are there images/videos that we can use to understand the website or any sound? Is it interactive? How is data stored on that website? What is the purpose of the site?

After exploring these provocations, we will generate wonderings to help guide our investigation phase in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned to see where we go with our learning!