Term 3

Class Learning Updates

Please see this page for updates on the learning taking place in our Year 3 classrooms!

Week 8 & 9

What a busy couple of weeks it’s been in Grade 3! In Week 8, students took part in the Year 3–6 Concert, Lights, Camera, Aitken!, where they had the chance to perform a dance in front of the school community. We also enjoyed Grade 3/4 Day Camp, filled with outdoor activities and fun team challenges.

In Literacy, students completed the drafting and publishing of their fantasy narratives. In Maths, they continued building their understanding of fractions and worked on reading and telling time. Meanwhile, in CBL, students focused on developing their Playground Model Solutions, applying their learning in creative and practical ways.

camp

reading

In Reading, we learned about inferring emotions and inferring traits. We practised using our prior knowledge and clues from the text to make inferences or judgements about something that is not fully explained in the text. After that, we practised summarising, using the 5 Ws and H (Who, What, When, Where, Why and How). We also did some character response activities where we had to analyse how characters respond to struggle in narratives and what they learn from their problems.

writing

In Writing, we focused on revising and editing our fantasy narrative drafts, using a checklist to make sure we included all the key features. Students gave each other buddy feedback to help improve their work. Revising means improving our ideas by adding detail, reorganising parts, or making sentences clearer. Editing is all about fixing mistakes like spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Both steps help us become more confident and accurate writers. The following week, students published their final pieces.

numeracy

In Maths, we worked on combining fractions to make a whole and practised telling time on both analog and digital clocks. Students learned how to read and represent time in both formats.

challenge based learning

Over the last two weeks, students teamed up to take on the challenge: Design a simple system that serves a purpose. They used everything they’ve learned this term to help shape their playground models. In Week 9, they got to share and celebrate their awesome creations with the class.

Week 6 & 7

In Week 6 and 7, students continued working on their Fantasy Narratives, moving into the drafting stage of their stories. In Maths, we wrapped up our unit on Multiplication and Division and began a new unit on Fractions. In Applied Maths, we started learning about Time, with a focus on reading analogue clocks. In CBL, students began planning for and responding to their CBL challenge, using their knowledge to develop creative solutions.

Reading

In Reading, we focused on identifying key features of a narrative using a rubric to guide us. This helped us understand how to include these features in our own writing. We also practised inferring character emotions and traits, explored how themes like kindness, family, and growing up are shown through the plot, and discussed the messages stories can share. Additionally, we practised making text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections to deepen our understanding of what we read.

writing

In Writing, we began drafting our fantasy narratives, focusing on including a strong beginning with adjectives to describe characters and settings. We wrote action paragraphs to show our pebble, rock, and boulder problems, and finished with a clear resolution.

In Passion Writing (our free-choice writing time), we focused on using adjectives and adverbs, expanding our sentences, and practising 'Show, Don’t Tell'—describing emotions through body language and facial expressions instead of simply stating them (e.g. showing sadness rather than just saying "he was sad").

numeracy

In Maths, we completed our Multiplication and Division unit by using Think Boards to represent worded problems in multiple ways. We then began our Fractions unit, starting by creating posters to show fractions in different forms. After that we practised combining fractions with the same denominator to make one whole.

In Applied Maths, we started a unit on Time. Students practised using terms like ‘quarter past’ and ‘quarter to’ when reading analogue clocks, and learned to tell time to the nearest 5 minutes and the nearest minute.

challenge based learning

In CBL, we explored how gravity and air resistance affect swings, also known as pendulums. We built our own pendulums and tested how changing the string length affected the speed of the swing.

Next, we began working on our challenge: Design a simple system that serves a purpose. In groups, we created action plans to design our own playgrounds using what we’ve learned about forces and materials.

We then started building our prototypes – small practice models of our playground designs. Prototypes help us test ideas and see how well the parts of our system work together. As a team, we reviewed our plans, gathered materials, and began bringing our playground ideas to life.

Week 4 & 5

In Week 4 and 5, the Year 3 students began an exciting new Literacy unit on Fantasy Narratives, where we explored magical settings and characters. In Numeracy, we continued learning about Multiplication and Division, while in our Applied Maths lessons, we explored Mass and Capacity through hands-on activities. In CBL, we conducted experiments linked to our Big Idea of Systems, discovering how different forces and materials interact.

In Week 4, we took part in a Life Saving Incursion, where we learned important skills and tips for staying safe at the beach, including how to recognise dangers and what to do in an emergency.

book week

Week 5 was Book Week! Students took part in fun activities like the Landmark Scavenger Hunt, where they searched for landmark cards hidden around the school and identified the countries they came from. Students also had access to the Book Fair! The week ended with Book Week Dress-Up Day, where students and staff came dressed as book characters.

Reading

In Week 4, we began our Fantasy Narratives unit by exploring the types of characters, settings, and vocabulary commonly found in stories where magic happens and events go beyond the real world. We started reading the fantasy novel Polly and Buster and looked closely at the characters, identifying their internal and external traits through descriptive language. In Week 5, we focused on how authors create vivid settings and how these settings influence the events in a story. We also practised using descriptive clues in a text to visualise the scenes in our minds.

writing

In Writing, we created fantasy character profiles by brainstorming details such as external (physical) and internal (personality) traits, likes and dislikes, wants and needs, and the problems our characters might face. We also practised using the five senses to describe settings in a vivid and engaging way. Once our characters and settings were developed, we began planning our fantasy narratives. We started with the Somebody Wanted But So Then template to outline the main events, and then expanded our ideas using the Pebble, Rock, Boulder strategy to explore the problem in more depth. We mapped out our stories using a Story Mountain to help structure our writing.

numeracy

In Maths, we practised using strategies like arrays, number lines, and number charts to help us learn and understand our multiplication and division facts for 2, 4, 5, and 10. In Applied Maths, we focused on measuring mass and capacity. We learned how to estimate mass and use scaled instruments to measure in grams. We also explored capacity by estimating and measuring how much different containers could hold, including a fun activity where we filled them with sand to test our predictions.

challenge based learning

In CBL we have been exploring materials and forces through hands-on investigations and creative design. We began by learning about how different materials conduct heat, testing wood, plastic, and metal spoons with butter and buttons to see which transferred heat the fastest. Building on this knowledge, students then designed their own heat-safe playgrounds using eco-friendly materials and thoughtful features like shade and safe ground coverings. We also investigated forces like friction by testing how different surfaces affected the movement of toy cars, and explored air resistance through parachute experiments, timing how different objects fell.

Week 1, 2 & 3

Welcome Back to School!

It’s been a great start to the term in Year 3! Students have jumped back into their classroom routines with enthusiasm and curiosity.

Year 3 Sport

In Literacy, we kicked off an exciting new unit on poetry, where students explored rhythm, rhyme, and the creative power of words.

In Maths, we launched a unit on multiplication and division, as well as exploring 2D representations and investigating the concept of Mass in practical, engaging ways.

In CBL (Challenge Based Learning), our Big Idea this term is Systems. We’ve started by diving into a range of fun and thought-provoking activities (called provocations), exploring how materials, heat, and forces interact in our world.

It’s been a busy and exciting start. We’re looking forward to what the rest of the term will bring!

reading

In Reading, we’ve been exploring the wonderful world of poetry. Students practised the skill of visualising — creating mental images as they read — to help bring poems to life in their minds. We looked closely at how poets use onomatopoeia (sound words) and the five senses to create vivid imagery and emotions.

We also analysed rhyming words and learned about different rhyme schemes, helping students understand the structure and patterns in poems. To build fluency and a sense of rhythm, we practised reading poems aloud. Finally, we responded to comprehension questions to deepen our understanding, identify the main ideas, and connect more personally with the texts.

writing

In Writing, we began the term by creating holiday recounts, giving students a chance to reflect on and share their recent experiences. We then went on a "sound hunt" around the school, collecting onomatopoeia words and gathering ideas to inspire our future poetry writing.

Back in the classroom, we brainstormed nouns, sound words, and rhyming words to build a strong vocabulary toolkit. Using Joseph Coelho’s Onomatopoeia poem as inspiration, students had a go at crafting their own poems in a similar style. In Week 3, everyone drafted and published their own original poems.

numeracy

In Maths, we’ve been building our understanding of multiplication and division strategies. Students explored methods such as repeated addition, arrays, repeated subtraction, and fact families, using these tools to help recall multiplication facts more confidently. We also applied these strategies to solve a variety of worded problems, helping students make real-world connections with their learning.

In Applied Maths, we explored 2D representations on maps, where students practised drawing bird’s-eye view maps and using directional language to describe movement and position.

In Week 3, we began a new unit on Mass, learning how to measure in grams and kilograms. Students enjoyed using scales to weigh everyday objects, developing their understanding of metric units in a hands-on way.

cbl

This term, our Big Idea is Systems, and we've had an exciting start exploring how different materials and forces interact in our world.

We began by responding to provocations and brainstorming what we already knew about materials, heat, and forces, recording our ideas on posters. In our next lesson, we learned about solids, liquids, and gases, and worked in groups to sort everyday items into these three states of matter.

From there, we investigated the properties of materials, thinking about why certain materials are better suited for specific purposes. Using this knowledge, students took on the challenge of designing and building a chair for a toy, carefully selecting materials based on their strength, flexibility, and other properties.

In Week 4, we explored changes in the states of matter. Students conducted an engaging experiment using chocolate, cordial, a spoon, and hand sanitiser, observing how each item changed at room temperature, when heated, and when frozen. It was a hands-on and exciting way to see science in action!

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