This year emphasises deepening literacy and numeracy understanding while expanding knowledge across humanities, sciences, and the arts. Students develop stronger research skills, engage with more complex texts and mathematical concepts, and explore their place in the wider world. Year 3 students grow as confident, curious learners ready to tackle new challenges.
English – Students extend their reading skills by engaging with increasingly complex texts including novels, poetry, non-fiction, film, and digital media from diverse Australian and world authors. They explore texts with varied sentence structures, unfamiliar vocabulary, and sophisticated punctuation, using their growing knowledge of language patterns to decode and comprehend meaning. Through speaking, listening, reading, viewing, and writing, students create narrative, informative, explanatory, factual recount, personal response and persuasive texts for specific purposes and audiences, communicating their ideas with clarity and creativity while learning the conventions that enable clear communication.
Mathematics – Students recognise how mathematics helps model situations and solve practical problems in everyday life. They manipulate numbers confidently using strategies based on place value, partitioning, and regrouping, while developing automaticity with multiplication facts for 3, 4, 5, and 10 through games and meaningful practice. Year 3 students learn to choose and apply calculation strategies, recognising connections between addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They use metric units to measure and compare objects and events, work with money values including virtual currency, and identify key features of shapes and spaces when building models. Students undertake meaningful statistical investigations with guidance, collecting and representing data, and develop understanding of chance by describing and comparing outcomes of familiar events using appropriate mathematical language.
Humanities – Students explore their world and community through three interconnected areas. Civics and Citizenship introduces democracy in familiar contexts, examining how decisions are made democratically within communities and understanding local government’s role in providing services. They investigate why rules and laws are created, how they affect daily life, and consider how belonging to diverse groups shapes personal identity and community participation. Geography expands students’ mental map of the world by examining Australia’s location, its neighbouring countries, and comparing natural, managed, and constructed features of different places. They explore interconnections between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and Country across Australia, investigate relationships between climate and vegetation, and learn about sustainability through resource use and waste management. History helps students discover why the past matters to their local community by investigating significant places, buildings, and people. They examine how home life and family structures have changed over time, explore how technological changes have shaped daily life in communication and travel, and develop historical thinking skills through asking questions, examining sources, and creating evidence based accounts.
Health and Physical Education – Students develop personal and social skills including leadership, communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and decision making through health and movement contexts. They explore factors that contribute to their identities, developing strategies for managing physical and social changes as they grow. They refine fundamental movement skills introduced in earlier years, applying these to various indoor and outdoor settings, and combine different skills to create complex movement patterns and sequences in game-like situations.
Science – Students recognise that scientific inquiry leads to explanations for phenomena and solutions to problems. They explore grouping and classifying objects based on similarities and differences, investigating different materials to understand the relationship between form and function. Through hands-on investigations, students learn about forces, energy, and heat transfer, discovering that some interactions result from phenomena that cannot be seen with the unaided eye. They conduct fair tests to answer questions and draw conclusions, using tables, graphs, and standard units of measurement to identify patterns and relationships in their observations.
Social and Emotional Learning – Students deepen their understanding of themselves and others in their changing world. They explore personal and social factors that shape their identities and emotional responses in various situations, developing strategies for managing transitions they may experience as they grow older. Through relationship building activities, students learn the importance of empathy, diversity, respect, and inclusion in initiating and maintaining respectful relationships. They examine how community health messages influence actions and decisions, enhancing their capacity to take responsibility for their own wellbeing.
Technologies – Students create designed solutions across engineering, food production, and materials specialisations, developing ownership of their ideas while considering their communities as consumers. They explore how technologies address needs and opportunities, learning to harness creative approaches to achieve designed products and services. Students clarify ideas using graphical representation techniques like annotated diagrams and 3D modelling, developing time management and collaboration skills while following safety protocols. In Digital Technologies, they explore how digital systems connect and transmit data, create passwords to secure personal information, and understand how data can be represented in different ways. Through creating simple visual programs, students develop computational thinking by defining problems, designing solutions, and implementing their ideas individually and in groups.
The Arts – Students engage with creative expression across multiple art forms. Visual Arts explores artworks from diverse cultures, while creating 2D, 3D, and time-based artworks using various materials and techniques. Performing Arts develops character understanding through improvisation and dramatic play, learning elements like role, movement, and voice to present stories to audiences. Students use their whole body to communicate ideas, exploring movement elements and choreographic skills while experiencing dances from various cultures and times.
Our core learning areas are taught using structured, evidence-based practices aligned with the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 and the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM 2.0). Lessons follow the Mindalk Instructional Model with a clear learning pathway, with explicit teaching, guided practice, feedback, and opportunities to apply knowledge. Teachers differentiate instruction and adjust supports so every student can access and extend their learning. As students move through year levels, their knowledge and skills build in complexity, ensuring strong progression and deep understanding across all core subjects.
Year 3 students continue building independence with their overnight offsite camp experience. Children build on more challenging activities and problem-solving tasks that encourage teamwork and leadership. Through cooperative games, and structured group challenges, students develop greater self-reliance and social skills. This camp strengthens peer relationships and helps students gain confidence in navigating new environments, preparing them for future adventures.
