23 Nov 2018

Yr3 Curriculum Update – 23/11/18

Working together to achieve success for every child

 

Welcome to our 7th edition!

In each update, the Year 3 Team will bring you snapshots of what your children in Year Three have been up to every 2 weeks. You will see a variety of learning experiences exemplifying learning which is fun, exciting, challenging, innovative and/or creative…and whatever they are, we know that your child has worked really hard to get there and should you have the chance, you may want to share this newsletter with your child to find out the juicy details and discuss the great learning they have been doing!

 

Transdisciplinary Learning – It’s all connected!

 

How we organise ourselves

 ‘The food we buy goes through a process of change before we eat it. ‘

We are now well into our unit about how our food gets to us before it is eaten. The children have enjoyed watching videos which show the processes that our food goes through. We are beginning to realise that some food are more heavily processed (such as potato chips) than others (such as bananas). This unit is extremely relevant to our lives as we are able to share what we eat and whether our food choices are healthy or not. We are also getting more comfortable with using words that clearly describe the processes that food goes through such as roasting, grinding, slicing and so on.

The children have literally got their hands dirty at the sky garden where one year 3 class has been fortunate enough to be allocated a vegetable patch to cultivate!

 

Literacy

In literacy, we have continued to read books which explain the processes that food goes through. As we read, we are learning to determine or identify the most important parts of the text. This might be through diagrams, headings and keywords. This ability to distinguish the essence of a piece of text (the theme), main ideas and supporting details can be challenging. The children have had and will continue to have, several opportunities to develop these skills.

The children are also continuing to build their vocabulary through unit-related words. These are words that describe the processes involved in changing food, the machines and the systems involved. They have been learning how to use dictionaries effectively to better understand these words. Some classes have been comparing dictionaries with thesauruses.

Previously, we watched videos of the processes food goes through. We have now begun to take notes of these processes by drawing and annotating flowcharts. The children have enjoyed exploring this way of organising the steps and can use this tool in a wide range of applications.

 

Maths

In maths we are continuing to build our understanding of the number system. We have created human number lines. Each child was a number and the challenge was for everyone to put themselves in the right order along a line! This is helping us to build on other vital maths skills such as rounding to the nearest 10 and 100. This helps us to estimate numbers.

 

At home you might like to…

  • explore what meals you are eating and try to discover the many different ingredients contained in them
  • think about the processes the foods have gone through
  • prepare a simple meal together – a wonderful way to look at the maths around us!
  • collect some data on the kinds of foods you buy

 

Chinese Year 3:

In the Chinese classrooms, we continue to focus on the concept of wellbeing and providing different learning opportunities for children to explore their own interests and promote agentic learning. Connections to learning are made using Chinese songs, rhymes, games and stories.

Here is a glimpse of some of our classrooms:

Reminders

A few key reminders for students and parents:

  • Please remind your child to pack his/her school hat for each day, as children who do not bring their hat will not be allowed to take part in snack or lunch play.
  • There are extreme peanut allergies in Year 3, so please make sure your child does not bring nuts to school or eat peanut butter or nutella for breakfast before he/she heads to school.
  • Please remind your child to pack his/her own cutlery as we do not provide extra sets of cutlery at school.

 

Key dates for the Diary

Tuesday, 11 December         Year 3 sports day