year3rc

The Edublogs awards are coming up and we think that it would be great to nominate year5rc for their wonderful blog.  Not only have we been able to think and learn about some of the wonderful things which have been going on in Year 5, we have also been inspired by this blog ourselves and learned most of what we know about blogging from them.  Mrs Miller and Mrs Thomas are legends in the way that they have encouraged and helped us all through these early days of becomign novice bloggers ourselves.

It is late on Thursday night and I (Mrs H) have been thinking about the fact that we have a big day tomorrow.  The new girls who are joining our school next year are coming to visit for Orientation Day.  For the current Year 3 girls this will mean an afternoon in Year 4 (with Miss K) and meeting the new girls who will become a part of their group next year.  For the upcoming Year 3s it will mean an afternoon of making new friends and finding out what exciting adventures lie ahead next year.

Then I started thinking about our HSIE unit for this term: Living in Communities.  We have been looking at what a community is and the benefits we get from being a part of different communities.  At orientation last year, we had a group of approximately 2o girls who were coming up from Year 2 and about 15 new girls who were coming to Roseville for the very first time.  Most of them didn’t really know anyone and they were quiet, scared girls.  Here we are, a year later, and this group of girls has become a wonderful community.  They are friends, they look after each other, they play together and work together.  They are a fabulous group of girls!

So, here is my challenge to you: If you are a current Year 3 student, tell us what the great benefits have been for you as a part of the Year 3 Roseville community and if you are one of the girls who is joining us next year, feel free to tell us what you are looking forward to when you come to Roseville next year.

We can’t wait to hear your ideas and we can’t wait to meet the new girls tomorrow!

Mrs H and Mrs W

Welcome back to Term 4!

We hope that you have had a wonderful rest and are ready to come back for an exciting Term 4.  There are so many fabulous things planned for this term and it is sure to fly by.  Before you know it, it will be time to head on to the challenges of Year 4.

Before that, however, we have a term of poetry, The Human Body, learning about communities, Christmas and, of course, camp to look forward to.  Hopefully you are all excited about the fun activities that we will do on camp.  When you get back to school, it might be a good idea to have a chat to some of the Year 4 girls to find out about how much fun they had when they were in Year 3!

Thankyou to all of those girls who have added comments and thoughts to our blog over the holidays.  We have been very pleased with the way in which you are starting to think hard about helpful comments and questions to add to our discussions.

Anyway, keep up the reading, both of books and our blog, and we can’t wait to see you at school on Tuesday!

Mrs H and Mrs W

On Thursday, 26 August, Year 3 decided to hold a Roald Dahl Day Party. Yes, yes, we know that we are a couple of weeks early, but it seems that it is never too early to celebrate the wonderful works of Roald Dahl.

We started the day by all putting on a “Roald Dahl Day Party” badge, just so that everyone else in the school would know what we were celebrating in Year 3.

Our first lesson of the day started with a short video from youTube where it talked about the greatest “swizzfiggler” of them all. We talked about many of the nonsense words which Roald Dahl used in his writing. The girls were then given the task of reading a short passage and locating Roald Dahl’s nonsense words. They had to work out what each word meant and whether it was a noun, verb or adjective, just by looking at the context in which it was used.

Lesson 2 was a Talking and Listening lesson where we all shared our favourite passage from a Roald Dahl book or a Roald Dahl poem. This culminated with Miss F reading the passage from Matilda where Miss Trunchbull calls Bruce Bogtrotter to the stage. Miss F stood on a chair to pretend to be the enormous character of Miss Trunchbull. Mrs H was called to the stage to play the part of Bruce Bogtrotter. As the cook was called in, Mrs W (dressed in the appropriate chef’s hat) entered with a spectacular “Bruce Bogtrotter Chocolate Cake”. Luckily for us all, we were able to share in this cake for morning tea!

After recess we did some maths, but it was a little bit different. We made Blue Bubblers from The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. We had to follow the procedure carefully, measure out amounts and we even worked out that the lemon juice and sugar reacted together to make it all bubble! Check out the photos below to see how much fun we had!

After lunch we did a Roald Dahl webquest and a Matilda wordsearch. This was followed by a fantastic drama lesson where we acted out critical moments from the story of Matilda.

The teachers were exhausted by the end of the day but it was totally worth it to see how much fun and learning was had by all!

We would love to hear if anyone else is celebrating Roald Dahl Day and how. Or, if you were at our Roald Dahl Day, what was the most splendiferous part of the day for you and why?

This term, in Christian Studies, we have been looking at the Fruit of the Spirit. This unit is focusing on the following verse: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:22). We have been thinking about how we can show these attributes in the way we act and how we treat others.

We started the term by looking at love – the way Jesus showed love and the way that we can show love to others. This was followed by a lesson where we thought about what brings us joy and how we can bring others joy. Last week we heard the story of when Jesus calmed the storm and brought peace. We made doves as a symbol of peace.

This week we were up to patience. After watching a youTube clip which was an animated story about a snail who was tempted to be impatient and jump a queue, we talked about the idea that patience means waiting calmly. We also talked about the importance of being patient with others.

The question was posed “What if everyone was patient all of the time?” In response to this question we used a thinking routine from the Visible Thinking website. This routine is called Compass Points. On each of the walls of the classroom we placed a piece of cardboard. Every student was given 4 post-it notes. One piece of cardboard said “E=Excited”. On this we each stuck a post-it note with our ideas about what excites us about the thought of everyone being patient. The second piece of carboard said “N=Needs”. On this sheet we put our ideas regarding what we would need to make this happen. The third poster was entitled “S=Suggestions” and here we posted our suggestions of what we could do to help this happen. Finally, there was a piece of cardboard with “W=Worries” where we stuck any concerns we had about making universal patience a reality.

We were amazed by the fantastic ideas, comments and suggestions that were made! Here are a few of the responses:

E – “no war or fighting”; “the world would be a better world”; “it is good to be patient so you can look forward to exciting things”
N – “how to wait your turn”; “how to be kind to each other”; “we need God’s strength and love”
S – “be kind and wait”; “wait and imagine yourself doing it first”; “love everybody”
W – “no one would do anything and everyone would say “No, you go first”; “it would not be normal”; “after a while it would be boring”

We concluded by talking about times when it was important in the classroom to show this patience which the Bible tells us that we need to exhibit.

What do you think about patience? Do you find it easy or hard to be patient? What do you think the world would look like if we were always patient? Is it possible, or even good, for us to be always patient? We would love to hear your ideas.

From Mrs H

In our maths lessons last week we continued to build on our knowledge of adding three digit numbers and decimals with the help of money.

One of the highlights of the week was putting all our new knowledge into practice. Our classroom was transformed into a shop for the lesson, complete with grocery items and a checkout. In pairs we were given a money bag of coins and shopping dockets. As we walked down the aisle, looking at all the items for sale, we had to each select an item we ‘needed’ and an item we ‘wanted.’ You can probably guess that all the chocolate, ice-cream and biscuits sold out quickly!

During this process we had to estimate whether we would have enough money for the items we wished to purchase, calculate what the final cost would be on our shopping dockets, select the appropriate money to purchase the items and, if we wanted to be really tricky we rounded up our money to the nearest dollar so the checkout operators had to work out how much change to give us.

Aside from the maths knowledge we gained during this lesson we also realised how our parents must feel after doing the grocery shopping, it’s exhausting!!!

Here are some photos of our lesson. If you would like to send us a comment, or have us help you add up your shopping docket, or share any shopping stories you have about dealing with money, we’d love to hear from you.

Miss F

What is the colour of the sky, the colour of the sea and  Mrs W’s favourite colour?  You may think this is simple, however in Art last week Mrs W introduced Yr3RC not just to the colour blue, but a particular shade….Klein Blue. How interesting it was to investigate this colour and learn about how the French artist, Yves Klein, experimented with it.  We looked at the different techniques he used to create these fabulous artworks.  Mrs W’s favourite painting is Klein Blue from his monochrome series.  Year 3 thought this was weird as it just looked like a blue rectangle.  If you are interested in having a look, here is one website where you can find it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrome_painting#Monochrome_Painting_in_the_Spotlight

Our task was to invent our own colour and think about what this colour means to us.  Does it remind us of lying in the grass, does it relax us, does it give us strength, does it just tell us to smile and everything will be OK?

We can’t wait to see what creative colour ideas you come up with!  This week, why don’t you take some time to think about the colour which you created.  Since we have been looking at descriptive writing, adjectives and adverbs this week, you might like to brainstorm some words which can help you to describe your colour and your feelings about it.

Over the past week it has been great to welcome Mrs T and a new student, Charlotte, into our lovely group in Year 3.  Along with Miss F, Mrs T has been teaching us about Roald Dahl and has played some fun maths games with us.  How awesome it is to have so many teachers sharing their ideas and thoughts with us.

Mrs W and Mrs H

Today we have had a fantastic day and have begun to consider some of the places we already know of in Australia.  We named some of these places and used the place names to make this Wordle.

Then we started to look at our Atlases for the first time.  We learned how to use the index and the references to find the places we were looking for.  It is a great start but we realised that we have a long way to go before we feel that we know a lot about the geography of our own country.

The other exciting part of our day was beginning our contracts which are based on the book “Matilda” by Roald Dahl.  We talked about the fact that there are lots of versions of Matilda already in print and that many of them have different covers to attract different audiences.  Then we designed our own front covers which had to give the reader only a hint of what the book is about.

Have you read any other books by Roald Dahl?  He is a wonderful author and he wrote lots of great books.  Tell us about some of the ones you have enjoyed and give us a little review.  It might inspire others to look for them in the library.

What a great start we have made to Term 3.  Keep up the fantastic work, Year 3!

Mrs H, Mrs W and Miss F

Well, we are back at school and excited about Term 3.  It has been fun for Mrs Watts and I to learn how to set up our blog and we are looking forward to sharing this with you.  This is an opportunity for you to share in our learning.  We will talk through the rules on the first day back before you are allowed to be involved and comment on anything you find on the blog.  Mrs Watts and I hope you had a fantastic holiday and you will have  a chance to start the term by writing a factual recount which lets us know what you have been doing.

This term we are joined by Miss Fisk.  She will be with us all term and will be sharing some of the exciting things with you.  I am sure you will all look after her and make her feel very welcome.

Our focus for this term is Australia.  We will be learning all about the country, some important places, the maps, flora and fauna of our fabulous country.  What do you want to know?  What do you think might help us to learn about these things?  Where should we start?  You can comment below and let us know what you think.

Over the holidays, I hope you have taken the opportunity to read “Matilda”.  If you haven’t quite finished reading it, you have until the end of Week 2.  We will start working on some activities between now and then but please make sure that the book is back at school and that you have finished reading it by the end of next week.

Enjoy your first week back and have fun with our class blog.  We can’t wait to hear your thoughts and comments.

Mrs H

Welcome to the Year 3 Blog!

Well, this is quite a new and amazing thing for Year 3.  This is our very first blog and we are going to have to learn about it together.  After being inspired by Year 5, we have decided that it is time for Year 3 to catch up with the internet too and start having conversations online, which can help us to discuss what we are learning in class in greater detail.

We would love this blog to inspire everyone in Year 3.  The best way to learn is to do and we are learning about blogging by exploring and trying new things.  We are hoping that, by seeing the teachers try to learn something new, you will also be challenged to try new things, explore and discover for yourselves!

Well, we think that there were two main highlights of last week.  The first was the concert which the Senior School Orchestra gave for us in the JYA.  It was wonderful to be able to see and hear each of the instruments in the orchestra.  One of the best parts was when Emily became the conductor!

On Friday we had a real treat as Helena brought in her pet lamb!  His name was Lucas and he was 6 days old.  It was amazing to discover that lambs have a gestation of 150 days (which is much shorter than the 9 months for a human baby).  He also learnt to walk within 10 minutes of being born.  That is rather impressive when you think that a human baby takes approximately 12 months to learn this skill.  This tied in beautifully with our Science topic where we are considering cycles, particularly life cycle.  Apart from all of this learning, we just loved being able to pat him and watch him run around the 3G classroom.

Anyway, that should do for a first blog.  Let’s hope we continue to learn how to change and manage this blog and contribute to it.

Have fun!

Mrs W and Mrs H