Grade 4 News
Important Reminders & Dates
Upcoming dates/Important Info
Monday 31st August: Middle School Hooptime
Tuesday 8th September: 4FH Kinder Visit
Friday 18th September: Footy Dress Up Day
Last Day Term 3 - 2.30pm Dismissal
🧢 Hats: As per our school's SunSmart policy, all students are required to wear their hats from Tuesday 25th August.
Looking Ahead to the Year:
Monday, October 5th - Wednesday, October 7th: Grade 4 Camp - ADANAC
Wednesday, November 25th: Grade 4 Science works excursion
Homework
📖 Literacy
On Monday, we had Minions, Dorothy, Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and 2, Football and Basketball Players, Woody and Jesse, and many, many more characters enter our classrooms for Book Week celebrations. The Where’s Wally (aka Teacher) hunt throughout the school was an exciting activity, as was the class story and Book Week Parade. The Grade 4 students demonstrated fantastic participation and enthusiasm, and with their positive attitude and willingness to participate, it was wonderful to see and a great way to highlight the importance and joy of reading books.
Over the last fortnight, students have read the remaining chapters of our class novel The Wild Robot, where they explored themes of acceptance, diversity, resilience, survival and friendship. In the end, Roz discovered that she must leave the island to protect the animals she loves, but she promised to find a way back to them. While the ending felt quite sad that Roz had to leave, the students were filled with hope as Roz prepared to reunite with Brightbill and her island family in the future. New vocabulary, for example ‘pried’, ‘detach’ and ‘muffled’ were explored, and students demonstrated and discussed definitions of these, plus many more new words.
The students continue to write their persuasive letters on the topic Every Home Needs A Robot, and they are very convincing! They have used the PEPS structure (point, explanation, proof and statement) to write arguments with supporting details such as how having a robot at home to complete chores would free up time for families to spend more time together. Rhetorical questions, facts and high-modality words like ‘must’ and ‘essential ’ have helped support their arguments.
We also explored acronyms and initialisms over the past two weeks, understanding that SIM and NASA are acronyms (can be said as a word), and ATM and VIP are initialisms (we verbalise each individual letter). Students had fun learning new examples and identifying the correct term for each.
Preview: As we have now completed the class novel, over the coming weeks we will begin our poetry unit. Students will learn about stanzas, rhyming, abstract and concrete examples of vocabulary. They will also finish their persuasive letters.
➗ Maths
It would be fantastic if students could continue to practise their times tables at home. We regularly practise these skills in the classroom, however, any additional practice at home will help students build fluency and consolidate this essential mathematical skill.
It has been fantastic to see Grade 4 students persisting and applying learning concepts to convert fractions into decimals by using place value and division, of tenths and hundredths. They practised identifying equivalent fractions and recognising common fraction-decimal relationships. Students applied these skills to solve problems and represent numbers in different forms being a fraction, decimal, mixed numeral and a diagram.
Students also learnt about location, and how to use grid references to describe and locate positions on a map, making sure they wrote the grid reference with the letter then the number, e.g. A3. They practised reading and interpreting coordinates using horizontal and vertical grid lines, and extended their understanding by using a compass point to move to locate other places within the map.
Preview: Over the next fortnight, students will learn how to apply their understanding of decimals in a range of practical situations, such as finance and measurement. They will convert cents to dollars, convert and compare units of measure and use vertical addition to find the total cost. Students will continue to practise their multiplication fluency, maths masters and participate in daily review, each day, to consolidate maths concepts.
🌿 Wellbeing
Wellbeing has been full of discussion this past couple of weeks, as we have continued to explore the rights and responsibilities we have as individuals and members of our community. Students gave excellent examples of why stereotypes and certain duties and responsibilities should not limit what people can do or contribute to. The key takeaways below were discussed again, and continue to empower students to be their true selves.
Our key takeaways were:
✅ Everyone is different.
✅ It’s okay to like different things.
✅ We should respect other people’s choices and interests.
✅ Nobody should feel pressured to change who they are just to fit in.
Preview: Our second session of Circles for the term will take place in Week 8, and circle leaders will discuss and initiate activities about the value of kindness.
⚗️Science Day
Last Monday, the Grade 4 students turned into scientists! They spent the day exploring, investigating, observing and problem solving. Science day saw students compare dinosaurs, find Moon Rocks in the classroom, watch the first moon landing and see amazing experiments brought to life during an incursion. Even Miss Emmonson, Mr Robinson and Mrs Ward donned the safety goggles to participate in an exploding experiment!
🏅 Sport in Grade 4
For the past fortnight the Grade 4 cohort have participated in a variety of games. Kickball, Bombadi, Memory Tag and Gaga, have been enthusiastically participated in by all students, with Mr Robinson being struck out in Bombadi, much to the delight of all involved! We will begin a new sport focus in Term 4, and for the remainder of the term, will continue to participate in a variety of fun and engaging sports activities.
🌟 Kinder Visit
4E had a wonderful time visiting our kinder buddies! The students enjoyed reading a book together before getting stuck into a range of fun activities. They played with the doll house, created with play dough, built train tracks, drew pictures, played matching card games, enjoyed hairdressing and even made their own kites. It was a lovely opportunity for our students to build connections with their kinder buddies while having lots of fun together!
Grade 4 Teaching Team
Bek Emonson, Will Robinson, Hayley Ward & Lex Fisher