Year 4 Term 1 Newsletter

Meet The Teaching Team

4A - Sarah Lazzaro (PLC Leader)

4B - Robyn Apostolopoulos and Rebecca Robinson

Welcome to Term 1

Welcome to Year 4 and 2026!

We warmly welcome all our Year 4 students and families to a new and exciting year of learning. We are looking forward to working closely with you to support each child’s growth, confidence, and wellbeing. We have been delighted with how the children have already settled into their new classes, enjoying getting to know each other. Together, we hope to make Year 4 a positive, engaging, and rewarding experience for all students.

 Specialist Timetable

Important Dates

16/02: 4-6 House Swimming

17/02: Whole School Photo Day

23/02: Curriculum Day

27/02: Community Picnic

9/03: Labour Day—Public Holiday

10/03: District Swimming for selected students

tbc: Divisional Swimming for selected students

23/03: African Drumming Incursion 

27/03: House Cross Country

02/04: Last Day of Term 1- 2.30pm finish

Electronic Rolls

Our electronic rolls are legal documents therefore we must be accountable for any absences. If you haven't logged the absence ahead of time, please assist with this and inform the school by replying to the text message sent by Compass in the event of your child being away.

Teaching and Learning

Reading and Viewing 

This term, students will engage in independent and whole class reading to build their fluency and comprehension. They will explore a variety of texts to develop their reading skills and read for enjoyment. Students will participate in activities that will explicitly teach them to make inferences, summarise and self-monitor their reading. They will be exposed to new language to expand their vocabulary. As a class, we will be reading Roald Dahl's 'Danny, The Champion of the World'.

Writing

Students will be exploring narrative writing, with a focus on understanding text structure and organisation. Using high-quality mentor texts, they will investigate the techniques skilled authors use to engage their readers and will have opportunities to practise and apply these techniques in their own writing. Throughout the unit, students will work through the full writing process — planning, composing, revising, editing and publishing. They will use a range of planning strategies such as word webs, story graphs and the SWBST framework to help develop and organise their ideas. We look forward to celebrating students’ final published pieces together. As part of our ongoing study of English Orthography, students will also continue investigating how the written word works, building their understanding of spelling patterns and conventions.

Speaking and Listening

Through a range of activities, across all areas of the curriculum, students will listen for key points in discussions. They will contribute actively to class and group conversations, varying language according to context. Using our class novel, ‘Danny, The Champion Of The World’ as a springboard, students will be encouraged to share and justify their thoughts and ideas about characters and events. We will also be having regular discussions about Learnership, with the understanding that everyone is on a different learning journey, but we should all be aiming to find our individual learning zones, where we might feel uncomfortable as we learn new skills.

Mathematics

Our program this year will continue to help students build strong foundations in key mathematical concepts. Lessons will include explicit teaching supported by worked examples, and provide time for students to practise independently or work in small groups with the teacher. Daily reviews and fluency tasks will help all learners grow confidence and strengthen their understanding of numbers. Student progress will be monitored regularly to guide learning and celebrate achievements. In Term 1, we will focus on the following units: Addition & Subtraction, Fractions, Time, and Multiplication & Division.

Humanities

Our Humanities inquiry focus question this term is, "What makes a great community?" Students will investigate the importance of rules and laws, whilst exploring the difference between the two. Students will consider the purpose of creating rules for groups and how rules and laws affect them. Students will also explore how individuals participate in their community, how cultural diversity is displayed, and how belonging to different groups can shape personal identity. 

Wellbeing

CEPS VALUES

COURTESY    RESPECT    CO-OPERATION    RESPONSIBILITY 

In our classroom, we support students’ wellbeing through the Respectful Relationships program. This program helps students develop important life skills such as empathy, resilience, cooperation and positive communication. Through age-appropriate discussions, activities and real-life scenarios, students learn how to build healthy relationships, manage emotions and show respect for themselves and others. These lessons support a safe, inclusive classroom where everyone feels valued and supported.

This term, the value our school is focusing on is COURTESY and awards will be given to children leading by example. For Term 1, parents of award recipients will be notified by the classroom teacher via Dojo prior to Friday’s assembly. Following on from the change made to the assembly schedule in Term 4, 2025, where we moved to fortnightly assemblies, Years 3 - 6 assembly will be held on odd weeks in Term 1, commencing in Week 3. 

Supporting Learning from Home

Homework

With exceptionally busy lives, we have found over the previous years that many families are struggling to find the time to meet ‘deadlines’ with homework. This year we will provide work throughout the year and are happy to support families with their requirements by reviewing work on request, answering questions, and providing targeted support to students as needed. 

Homework, as detailed below, shouldn’t be more than 90 minutes per week.

Things you can do at home that will support your child’s learning:

• Read! Read as much and as often as you can. Read aloud. Be read to. Share a book. Compare books. Aim for a minimum of 15 minutes every night.

• Maths. Students are encouraged to practise basic number facts at home, including multiplication tables. Mathletics will soon be available for all students, and login details will be sent home shortly. This year, students will not be assigned weekly set tasks. Instead, they will have access to the full Mathletics curriculum, allowing them to choose activities that best support their individual learning needs. We recommend that students reinforce classroom learning by completing related tasks on Mathletics at home.

If you require any support with accessing or using Mathletics, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

• Challenge. Students thrive with challenge, but struggle with failure. They only learn to manage adversity by surviving failure. Give them opportunities to fail safely. Eg, cook dinner (almost) on their own, make the shopping list for the week, plan and coordinate an outing with a friend.

Communication

You are welcome to contact your classroom teacher via email through Compass. Whilst families are navigating the transition to Compass, we are also still using Dojo for messages between parents and teachers at this stage. This is likely to be phased out at some stage this year. We are also still currently using Dojo to share learning updates from our classrooms.

With that said, you are always more than welcome to pop into the classroom before or after school if you have any queries or concerns. 

Whilst we endeavour to get back to you promptly, please understand that we are often unable to check these messages until after 3:30pm. If you need an important message to be passed on to your child, we ask that you communicate this via the office (e.g. to advise that your child will be collected early or by another family member). The office will then pass the message on to your child's classroom teacher.

Compass: Compass is the formal tool for communication regarding attendance, payments, excursions, camps, permission forms, school reports, etc.

Please use Compass to advise the school in a timely manner of all student absences.

Early Pick Up: If you need to pick up your child early, please collect them from the office area and be sure to sign them out. You will require an Early Leaver's Pass, provided by the office staff, before we are able to dismiss students. 

You can also keep up-to-date by using the school website and weekly newsletters:  http://www.cheltenhameast.vic.edu.au