North Melbourne Primary School

Year 3 Teaching Team

Curriculum Overview Term 2

The Year 3 team are looking forward to providing another term of learning and development for your child. Below is a summary of the topics we will explore with the students in Year 3 in Term 2. 

Literacy

Reading:

In Reading this term, students will be further developing their reading skills in a range of areas. We will be exploring asking and answering questions, visualising events/descriptions, inferring deeper meaning/character motivations, and identifying the main idea of a text. We will also be continuing to practise monitoring and self-correcting (cross-checking, confirming and re-reading), as well as analysing and responding to texts orally and through writing. Students will engage in reading conferences to develop these skills and work towards achieving their individual learning goals. 

Writing:

In Writing this term, students will continue to develop their writing skills through daily Writer’s Workshop sessions. They will learn to express and link their ideas by varying their sentences, organise their writing clearly with attempts to include paragraphs, use descriptive vocabulary to engage their audiences, accurately spell high-frequency words and apply a range of strategies to attempt spelling unknown words. Additionally, students will engage in weekly writing conferences to consolidate their individual learning goals.

Speaking & Listening:

Students will have regular opportunities in all curriculum areas to share their learning and actively listen to others. They will be encouraged to collaborate with peers to develop social skills and understand the various English language contexts, allowing them to understand specific and appropriate vocabulary. Our Australian History unit will enable students to share their research with their peers and work together. Towards the end of the term, they will learn to plan and deliver short presentations that provide critical details in a logical sequence and use appropriate tone, pace, pitch, and volume. 

Numeracy

In Year 3 Numeracy, students will continue to explore a range of problem-solving strategies as they develop their proficiencies in Number & Algebra, Measurement & Space and Statistics & Probability. In Term 2, students will learn about multiplication and division of one- and two-digit numbers, develop their proficiency with multiplication facts for 3, 4, 5, and 10, and link this with division facts through skip counting. They will study Fractions and their multiples and combine fractions with the same denominator to make a whole number. Other Numeracy topics students will learn this term include Measurement (capacity, mass and volume of familiar items) and Chance events (e.g. describe possible outcomes and use chance language such as certain and impossible). Later in the term, Year 3 students will develop their proficiency with money by exploring real world problems using addition and subtraction.

Students will have ample opportunity to extend their thinking through open-ended questioning and provocations. Students can challenge themselves by manipulating numbers to suit their capabilities. They will continue to develop and consolidate their maths skills through the DoodleMaths and DoodleTables apps.

Other Learning Areas (OLA)

Wellbeing:

In Term 2, we will continue to reinforce positive behaviours through our School-Wide Positive Behavioural Support approach. This term, our fortnightly RISE awards will be dedicated to one of the positive behaviours, focusing on themes such as the children’s readiness to learn and their demonstration of safe behaviours in the classroom and the playground. These behaviours are linked to our School Values.

The students will continue their morning circle routine, during which we share celebrations and announcements, run through our day and acknowledge Country. This is an important part of the day which allows the class to come together as a community – as such, it is crucial for students to arrive at school on time. 

Lastly, our students will continue sessions with the Respectful Relationships, Rights and Resilience Wellbeing program at NMPS. These sessions help students to further establish themselves as young individuals while strengthening their ability to connect with others in a safe and respectful way.

Technology:

This year, students will use educational iPad applications to support and enrich their classroom learning. Some apps we will use include Doodle Maths, Doodle Spell, Doodle English, Epic, Book Creator, SeeSaw, ReadWorks, Sketches and Keynote. Students will use iPads to research topics, represent their learning, and strengthen skills. 

History:

In OLA, students will be focussing on Australian history. They will identify and describe the changes that have occurred in Australia, before, during, and after European settlement. Students will explore the diversity and longevity of Australia’s first peoples and the significance of Country to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. 

Home learning: 

Year 3 students are expected to read for 20 minutes per night to improve their reading ability and, in turn, their writing acquisition. There will be times when explicit home learning tasks are set, and students will be expected to complete these activities. These tasks will generally be open-ended and project-based. Your child’s iPad will continue to have new school apps added to it. Many of the numeracy and literacy apps will support the learning we do in the classroom. 

To support your child’s learning at home, here are some things you can do: 

• Encourage reading every night – including short periods of read-aloud. We cannot over-emphasise how important reading every day is. A student who reads less than a minute per day outside of school reads only 8,000 to 21,000 words per year. However, a student reading 20 minutes daily outside of school reads almost 2 million words yearly!

• The Doodle Learning apps (Maths, Spell, and English) are programs that families can download the app or access the website from their iPads/computers so their child can log in to their personal MAP, lessons, texts and literacy games from home. Students are encouraged to access these apps for roughly ten minutes a day.

• Use real-life opportunities such as shopping and cooking to discuss money, addition and other mathematical concepts.

• Write at home – it can be about anything. The more short pieces your child can write, the better writer they will become.

• Encourage random acts of kindness. This could be anything from using manners to writing a card to a grandparent. Students can play www.freerice.com to build global perspectives and empathy for those less fortunate.

Kind regards,

Ailis, Georgina, Hannah, Sally, Esther and Joe