Grade 4 Community News

The Grade 4 team would like to welcome our students, families and community to an exciting year of learning in 2024! We have spent the first weeks of school setting up our classrooms with the help of our students. They have used their voices to identify areas they think are important when creating a safe space for learning and growing. We have created shared expectations for all learning areas and set ourselves up for a successful year ahead. Students and teachers have enjoyed getting to know each other and reviewing skills we will be using throughout the school year. 

We will be introducing a grade four teacher in each newsletter!

4I - Miss Mitchell

Hello everyone! My name is Miss Mitchell and this is my third year teaching Grade 4 at Tarneit Rise. I love teaching grade 4 because of all the amazing topics we get to learn about. I also love helping students build their confidence and independence before they head into their final few years of primary school. In my spare time I enjoy hanging out with my cat, drinking good coffee and tending to my new vegetable garden. 

READING

Our students have established the skills required to build their stamina and endurance during independent reading. We have created protocols for reading independently, in groups and using our classroom libraries. Students have also started tracking their thinking by asking questions, making predictions and connections as they read. 

We are continuing to use our Student Journals in 2024 with the expectation that students are reading at home. Students will record the books they read in their journals and bring them to school to be checked by their classroom teacher on their assigned day. We are looking forward to our students receiving their first Nights of Reading certificates once they have reached 25 nights!

Vocabulary and morphology instruction are again a major focus this year and students have participated in learning tasks that have helped to develop and expand their vocabulary. Students have explored base and root words, as well as prefixes and suffixes. Students will be adding to their knowledge of different prefixes and suffixes, and how to apply them to words throughout the year. We are also exploring words from this term’s serial text ‘Birrung the Secret Friend’ by Jackie French. This exploration will help us in our analysis of the text later in the term! 

WRITING

Students have developed a set of protocols for independent writing and explored problems we may encounter during the writing process and how to solve them. Each class has clearly outlined the way writing needs to be set up in their books to make sure it can be easily understood and revised. Students have also participated in a pre-assessment for our historical narrative unit this term. We will be exploring how to structure and add language features to narratives that include details from history. 

MATHS

Students began the term by practising warm up activities, collecting data and completing assessments for our first maths unit. Students collected and displayed data about how many birthdays were in each month in their class. We have also introduced a number of maths games that the Grade 4s will be using throughout the year. Ask your child to explain the rules of Place Shuffle or Race to 100! We have also been exploring the idea of using a growth mindset during maths to help tackle challenging tasks. We can’t wait to see our students building their resilience and ability to get through the learning pit this year. 

We’re looking forward to updating you on our learning and growth in our next issue!