Sunday 28 October 2018




Term 4 2018, Volume 13, Weeks 1,2 & 3


  
🎵Give me a home among the gum trees, with lots of plum trees🎵

Time flies when you're having fun...

We can't believe it's already the start of Week 4! What a start to the term we have had! 

This term we have begun our studies into information reports in Writing, time and money in Maths and synthesizing and summarising in Reading. Our inquiry topic this term is Geography and we have already learned about the states, capital cities and the natural and man-made landmarks of Australia and its neighbours.  All of the students have been engaged in their learning and look forward to what awaits for the remainder of 2018. 

On the 7th of December, Mentone Park Primary School will be having their whole school athletics day. As the planning of this is underway, we ask that if there are any Middle School parents available to help out for all or some of this day, that they let one of the Middle School teacher's know.








October
Friday 26th -  Halloween Disco

November
Tuesday 6th - Melbourne Cup Day (PUBLIC HOLIDAY)
Sunday 18th- Colour Run

December
Friday 7th - Whole School Sports Day

WEEKS  1, 2 & 3

In READING we have been looking at a range of pictures and using our skills to predict what we think might happen. We have also been retelling traditional fairy tales from a different characters point of view whilst also entering different characters to see how they might affect the story line. 

In WRITING the students have refined their narrative writing skills by participating in a range of different workshops. They have been refining their understanding of how to best plan and create their characters, setting and plot.

During  MATHS  the students have been focusing on telling the time whilst also creating and interpreting timetables. During week three we also began our unit on money by having students count a range of different amounts of coins and calculate change.

For SPELLING:
WEEK 1
Grade 3 Focus: ‘se’ as in cheese
Grade 4 Focus: r, rr, wr common errors

Week 2
Grade 3 Focus: the digraph /aw/ making the sound or as in saw
Grade 4 Focus: The graph /n/ as in net. The digraph /nn/ as in dinner. The digraph /kn/ as in knee.

Week 3
Grade 3 Focus: ‘our’ as in colour
Grade 4 Focus: m, mm, mb common errors

During our new INQUIRY unit on Geography, the students have been investigating the difference between a state and capital. They have also been exploring Australian neighbors such as New Zealand, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

In ICT, the students have been exploring Kahoot which is a website where students can create and complete a range of Quizzes to test their knowledge on a range of topics.


Coming up...

WEEKS  4 & 5

In READING we will be learning how to identify key points within a block of information in order to write a summary about the information



In WRITING the students will continue their information reports on a state of their choosing. During Writing in week three, the students researched a state and some of the famous landmarks, festivals and local fauna or flora which they will use to write up their report.

During  MATHS  the students will continue their money investigations. They will be using their knowledge and skills they gained in week 3 to complete real life tasks such as shopping.

For SPELLING:
Week 4
Grade 3: ‘eigh’ as in eight and “a-e” in tape

Grade 4: ‘e’ as in garden

Week 5
Grade 3: ending in y plurals

Grade 4: dis- prefix

During our INQUIRY unit on Geography, the students will be looking at what it would be like to live in one of our neighboring countries.

In ICT, the students will learn how to use Google Sheets (Also known as Excel) to create graphs and publish tables of information. They will also begin their Term 4 ICT project which requires them to either plan a party of research the significance of the Australian Coins. 




Middle School Learning