Welcome to Week 2 of Home Learning

The Grade 4 team have had many discussions during parent-teacher interviews about the unique challenges of home learning. We would like to once again thank parents for their support during this next round of home learning!

Please read the following overview of the learning tasks for Week 2 of Term 3. The daily schedule, with additional instructions and resources, will continue to be posted on Google Classroom the night before each day of learning.

If your child has completed the day's tasks, they may be interested in completing one of these optional tasks. These tasks are open-ended, inquiry based and hands-on.

English

An overview of tasks for reading and writing this week are as follows:

READING

Students should be completing at least 20 minutes of independent reading a day as well as completing the tasks set by the teacher. Tasks this week focus on building understanding of persuasive texts and include:

Critical reading pre-assessment
Analysing persuasive texts and sorting facts and opinions
Determining the purpose, issue and audience of a persuasive text
Guided reading with teacher in small group Google Meets
Reading for enjoyment - own choice

WRITING

Writing this week will introduce persuasive writing. Tasks this week include:

Persuasive writing pre-assessment
Brainstorming ideas for writing
Planning for writing
Determining audience for writing

While writing, we encourage students to use the writing cycle to ensure they are continuously developing and improving their writing.

The writing cycle consists of five stages:

1. Plan

2. Draft

3. Revise

4. Edit

5. Publish

Note: Not all pieces need to be published. We encourage the students to write many different writing pieces which they revise and edit. At the end of a unit of work we ask students to choose their best piece to publish.

Word Study

Students will continue to practice 30 "codes" of the English language through watching videos uploaded by their class teacher. Grades 4A, 4B, 4C and 4D will be learning Rule 7 from the Write-to-Read program. This rule explains the 5 jobs of the silent final 'e'. 4E will begin to explore Rule 30, a spelling rule which explains when to choose the code "ar", as in "car", or the code "a", as in "fast". The "bootcamp" process allows students to practice the new skill until it becomes "automatic" in their brains.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, students will begin learning about fractions. They are also encouraged to play number games or use Mathletics to continue practicing basic number skills. Tasks for the week include:

Tuning in to the concept of fractions
Brainstorming prior knowledge of fractions
Using models to represent and compare fractions
Choice of maths tasks from three options

Unit of Inquiry

This week, we will begin our inquiry into how people use initiatives to have an impact on environments. Students will engage in the following tasks:

Mind mapping their prior knowledge
Exploring the concept of causation
Conducting a science experiment
Making predictions, observations and explaining their findings
Choosing tasks from an inquiry choice board
Generating and sorting questions into a question quadrant

Wellbeing

Student wellbeing will continue to be a strong focus as we enter into another period of remote learning. This week the students are being asked to create a poster showing lots of different ways they can be kind to themselves. Ideally they will include strategies that support both their physical and emotional wellbeing.

Here are some additional ideas and resources to support wellbeing during home learning:

Reminders

Make sure to check the Specialists Snapshot for learning tasks from the Specialist team.

Grade 4 Team

4A Melanie Davis

4B Andrew Yeaman

4C Phoebe James

4D Nicole Klaassen

4E Heather Jenkins & Zoe Picton

Hearing unit - Amy Chadwick

Grade Four Snapshot 2021 - Term 2

Welcome to Week 2 Term 3 of Home Learning

Issue 12 · 17 Jul 2020

In this issue