HOW THE WORLD WORKS

Students will investigate how different factors influence the design and construction of structures. They will explore the properties of materials and how these impact function and form. Using the design cycle, they will plan, create, and reflect on their own structures. Through hands-on inquiry, students will develop thinking, self-management, and social skills. Becoming communicators and risk takers, the students will deepen their understanding of how innovation and design shape the world around them.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF IMAGINATION

Students will read a variety of stories to understand how narratives are structured and develop their comprehension. They will use strategies like making connections and summarizing to deepen their understanding. Students will explore story elements such as characters, settings, and plot, and identify how these details create meaning. As they write their own stories, they will apply these insights to structure their narratives and engage their readers, using descriptive language and revising their work for clarity and accuracy.

SHAPE & SPACE

In this integrated maths unit, students will explore 2D and 3D shapes by identifying, drawing, and describing their features. They will learn how shapes connect, transform, and appear in everyday life. Students will use words like flip, slide, and turn to describe transformations and create patterns. They will find symmetry, recognize shape relationships, and follow directions to describe position and movement. Through hands-on tasks, students will build spatial awareness and use geometric language to explain what they see and create.

NUMBER OPERATIONS

In this unit, students will build fluency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They will explore how operations connect and can be shown in different ways. Students will use mental strategies to solve problems when working with facts to 20, use a range of strategies to add and subtract bigger numbers, and conceptually explore multiplication and division. They will double, halve and skip count to solve problems and model equations. Through word problems and hands-on practice, students will develop confidence and flexibility with number operations.

STORIES, EVIDENCE AND IDEAS

In this unit, students will deepen their understanding and production of narrative texts, exploring how structure, events, characters, conflict and resolution work together to construct meaning. Through reading, discussing and interpreting narratives, they will make predictions, connections and inferences, explain relationships between events and characters’ actions, and use textual evidence to justify ideas. In writing, they will plan and produce increasingly developed narratives, organising events logically, developing characters and settings through descriptive language and using dialogue to enrich their stories. Oral language and visual elements will be used to support interpretation, planning and narrative communication.

The settings, events and problems found in narratives may also connect with ideas related to structures, materials, creation and problem-solving, enabling connections with the How the World Works Unit of Inquiry.

DESIGN MOVEMENT AND PERFORMANCE

Students will develop their skills through Ball Skills and Swimming, building greater control, accuracy, coordination, technique, and confidence in both land- and water-based movement. Integrated with the Year 3 How the World Works Unit of Inquiry, students will explore how the design, materials, and properties of different balls and aquatic equipment influence the way they are used, how they move, and how they support performance and safety. They will investigate characteristics such as size, shape, weight, surface, and buoyancy, and consider why particular equipment is better suited to different purposes. As part of their stand-alone PE learning, students will practise bouncing, catching, and throwing while moving, combine locomotor and object-control skills into sequences, perform movements with increasing speed and accuracy, develop swimming technique and water confidence, and demonstrate fair play while solving movement challenges.

STRUCTURES

In this Unit of Inquiry, students will study a variety of famous different and unique structures. They will learn about properties of materials while exploring a variety of attachment techniques appropriate for their age and development. They will also have the opportunity to paper mache their individual structures and create finishing touches that will help showcase their artworks for a gallery display.

Learning Outcomes:

• Create artwork for a specific audience. 

• Reflect on their own and others’ creative processes to inform their thinking 

• Use their knowledge and experiences to make informed interpretations of artworks 

• Become an engaged and responsive audience for a variety of art forms 

SILENT SCENES (PART 1)

In the Year 3 mime unit, students explore dramatic movement, gesture, and facial expression to communicate stories, characters, and emotions without spoken words. Following the design cycle for the first time in Performing Arts class, they use storyboards to plan a solo narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, refining their performance through peer feedback before presenting to an audience of their peers.

Learning Outcomes:

• Express their unique values, beliefs, and/or interests through a dramatic form

• Reflect on achievements and challenges and how they can incorporate these influences in future work

• Make artistic choices about role, situation, and context

• Find appropriate ways to communicate specific meaning using dramatic action