19 Sep 2016

Yr3 Weekly Update – 23/9/16

Central Idea:

Relationships are affected by the way people communicate.

We have been analysing our relationships and identifying how they are different and why we communicate differently within them. For example, the children have identified that the relationship that they have with their parents is a very important relationship in which they love you and know that you provide for them, care for them, shelter them, tuck them in at night and interact with them in a special and unique way. Therefore, the children communicate with you non verbally, such as hugging and kissing, while verbally communicating with you by telling you they love you, sharing secrets and seeking help when they need it. This is different to how they interact and communicate with their teachers, friends and neighbours. Although, these relationships are important to them, they communicate in less affectionate ways.

We are now exploring the effect of positive and negative communication and what happens if students are are found in a negative situation that may require strategies to restore relationships.

Also this week, the children went into space!!! We transformed the dance studio into a spaced themed area where the children required torches to explore the darkened room and view pictures of space, satellites, the solar system, astronauts and other space related images. This was to get the children excited about the upcoming unit and to find out what they know about Earth’s existence in space. It was lots of fun and the children have so many questions that will drive our planning of the unit.

Maths

As we continue to explore the big ideas behind place value and the number system, the children have continued working on creating large numbers with base 10 materials and renaming them to show their understanding of the relationship of thousands, hundreds, tens and ones.

The skill of collecting and organising data is one that will be used in many instances in Year 3 and beyond. This week we have let the children decide what they would like to find out about by conducting surveys in class. The students have then organised this data into tally charts and presented it in a bar graphs. The next step is analyse this data and come up with summary statements of what they have found out.

Literacy

Good writers have a few key traits in common – six of which we will be teaching explicitly this year. Developed by Sheena Cameron, the first of these traits is, developing great ideas. The children have been continuing to brainstorm ideas, using their own experiences and interests as a stimulus. They are learning how to identify the main part of their idea and how to add supporting details.

We have been reading a lot of picture books that are related to the unit of inquiry. We have been making connections between the text, to themselves and to the world. In particular we have been exploring the relationships within the stories, the way they communicate and the effect of the communication, both positive and negative.

Home learning to share with the children

This week we would like the children to explore magazines, newspapers, the internet or any other literature to collect graphs to bring in and share with the class. Some questions they can ask themselves are:

What is the graph about?

What is an important piece of information it tells me?

What are some of the features of the graph that make it easy to read?

We can display these graphs in our classrooms and ask the children to share what they have found with their peers.

We would also like the children to take responsibility packing their own sailing bag. The necessary equipment list is featured on the letter that went home to parents. Please help with them with this but give ownership to them, to help develop their independence and responsibility.

yr3 yr3-1