Year Four Team News

Hello Year Four families,

Welcome back for another term!

Fortnightly Curriculum Focus

Literacy: In Writing, students are learning about Information Reports. Linking with our Inquiry topic ‘Spinning in Space’ students have chosen a planet to investigate, researching information, translating this into their own words to draft over the first couple of weeks to publish a brochure. In Reading, Year 4 students are developing their skimming and scanning skills, investigating different types of texts, however mostly informative to locate information to answer questions. Students will continue to develop their knowledge of informative texts through Writing and Reading over the coming weeks, looking at the structure, text features and presentation of this text type. Over the coming weeks, our class novel will be introduced to students. We will begin with Storm Boy written by Colin Thiele and then finish the term with The One and Only Ivan written by Katherine Applegate. In classes, students are discussing the themes of these texts.

Numeracy: In Numeracy, Year 4 students have been introduced to our Location and Mapping unit. Students are learning directional vocabulary to identify routes and coordinates on a map. Students are locating landmarks on maps with coordinates and using scales within a variety of maps to find the distance between two points. Extending students further, we have introduced cartesian planes, challenging their skills of identifying a variety of different references. Our students have also continued to play games with a Number Sense focus. They are also using online programs such as Essential Assessment to reinforce skills and target specific individual goals. 

Inquiry: Students have been introduced to our new Inquiry unit “Spinning in Space”. This unit will focus on students identifying causes for day and night, looking at Earth’s rotation, the positions of the moon and its phases and lastly understanding why seasons change. Students will be going on an excursion to Scienceworks in Week 3, Monday 21st of October to further explore these concepts of our unit.

Willy Kids: Our fortnightly focus has been: "Willy Kids are Cooperative." Students this fortnight have worked in groups to cooperate during a task. Students learned that communication, sharing the load and encouragement of each other are key factors when being successful as a team. Students have then extended their knowledge of cooperation to reflect on how this is purposeful in everyday life.

Respectful Relationships: This term we are learning about stress management. We have focused on the following subtopics

• What is stress?
• Self calming and control techniques
• Calming and coping
• Relaxation techniques

Your child may come home with questions regarding this content. 

Reminders:

• Students will have an excursion to Scienceworks on Monday 21st October. Students need to arrive on time so we can make the train.
• Please bring devices to school everyday, fully charged.

Warm regards,

The Grade Four Team - Matt Eason-Jones (4E), Rebecca Givogue & Toni Lind (4G), Brittlee Salvo (4S)