Australian Curriculum Overview
English
In Years 3 and 4, students communicate with peers and teachers from other classes and schools in a range of face-to-face and online/virtual environments. Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read, view and interpret spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is to entertain, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These encompass traditional oral texts including picture books, various types of print and digital texts, simple chapter books, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction film, multimodal texts, dramatic performances, and texts used by students as models for constructing their own work.
Mathematics
Understanding includes connecting number representations with number sequences, partitioning and combining numbers flexibly, representing unit fractions, using appropriate language to communicate times, and identifying environmental symmetry. Fluency includes recalling multiplication facts, using familiar metric units to order and compare objects, identifying and describing outcomes of chance experiments, interpreting maps and communicating positions. Problem Solving includes formulating and modelling authentic situations involving planning methods of data collection and representation, making models of three-dimensional objects and using number properties to continue number patterns. Reasoning includes using generalising from number properties and results of calculations, comparing angles, creating and interpreting variations in the results of data collections and data displays.
Science
Over Years 3 to 6, students develop their understanding of a range of systems operating at different time and geographic scales. In Year 3, students observe heat and its effects on solids and liquids and begin to develop an understanding of energy flows through simple systems. In observing day and night, they develop an appreciation of regular and predictable cycles. Students order their observations by grouping and classifying; in classifying things as living or non-living they begin to recognise that classifications are not always easy to define or apply. They begin to quantify their observations to enable comparison, and learn more sophisticated ways of identifying and representing relationships, including the use of tables and graphs to identify trends. They use their understanding of relationships between components of simple systems to make predictions.
History
The Year 3 curriculum provides a study of identity and diversity in both a local and broader context. Moving from the heritage of their local area, students explore the historical features and diversity of their community as represented in symbols and emblems of significance, and celebrations and commemorations, both locally and in other places around the world.