Yr3 Weekly Update – 07/10/16

Central Idea:

Advancements in technology enable people to discover more about Earth’s place in the universe.

 

Unit of Inquiry

Our new unit, How the World Works has kicked off with a celebration of World Space Week. The children have marveled at the images of space, the bravery of astronauts and the mysteries of the space missions. This is an area as vast as space itself and to help children navigate the terminology, we have begun by tuning in to the words ‘technology’ and ‘discovery’ in the context of space. The Discovery Dome was clearly the highlight of the week where they went on a journey through space, almost ‘colliding’ with asteroids and planets as they experienced space in 3D!

Their excitement about this unit is evident as the children have been bringing in books, CDs and facts to share. This has been a wonderful way for them to take action and grow their learning.

 

Maths

An important skill for children as mathematicians is to learn how to estimate amounts. Rounding up and down to the nearest 10 and 100 is one way to do this. Some classes have been practicing this skill while others have also been consolidating data collection in a range of ways. We have been collating information on the mother tongues spoken by Year 3 student and the range of languages spoken is impressive! Some classes have continued to embed the children’s understanding of place value through rich tasks that require thinking of more than one possible answer to a question.

 

Literacy

Continuing with our analysis of what makes good writers, we have been focusing on sentence starters and interesting vocabulary. As children are beginning to edit their work, they are thinking about how they might add details through using interesting words. They are also being made aware of how authors use a variety of sentence starters to have more impact. Our new unit lends itself to non-fiction books. This offers an opportunity for children to identify the features of these kinds of texts with the aim of locating information more effectively.

 

Home learning to share with the children

What technology can your child identify around the home and outside which is influencing his/ her life? In what way is it doing this?

This unit we will also be doing a lot of creating. Can you please send any junk in for the kids to use to create models. Some examples are, tissue boxes, cereal boxes, plastic, water bottles, anything that the kids can glue stick, paint and decorate. Please no metals, glass or toilet rolls.