Year Four News 

We are well and truly back into the swing of things while learning back at school this week and wow! What a difference it makes to learn and enjoy learning together! The Year Four students have been principled in the way they listen and act in class and inquirers when it comes to our new inquiry unit. 

Here is what has been happening over the past couple of weeks in Year Four!

Reading

The Year Fours are learning to become writing critics this term, reading a range of text types such as informative and instructional texts and giving their opinion on the way they have been written and how the content is shared. We use checklists and reflective questions to start the students critical thinking and they share their reasons behind their answers. The Year Fours are continuing to build their reading stamina as they have done so throughout the whole year and delve into deep conversations about their class book. This Friday we are dressing up for Book Day – it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Writing

In these next few weeks, we are looking into procedural texts and creating our own! Students practiced following the steps in procedural texts to create pirate hats and teach each other a new skill. This week we are following the writing process to create our best examples and combine it with critiquing to give each other positive and constructive feedback on their writing skills. Writer’s Notebook and mindfulness writing is also occurring.

Mathematics

Last week we started our new maths concept of shape transformations, recognising and creating flips, slides and turns of various shapes. We got creative with our maths, using paint to help us understanding how reflection works by painting our names and reflecting it onto the other side of the paper. Many students were also introduced to Tetris this week and enjoyed figuring out the best way to turn their shapes and achieve their highest score. Alongside transformations and tessellations, students are continuing to build their times-tables memory and practice their multiplication and division skills, either in games, learning activities or quizzes. 

Inquiry

The Year Four students are excitedly inquiring into their final unit for the year and what a great way to finish the year than with some science experiments! After working through the central idea together and deciphering the unknown words, the Year Fours discovered that we are going to be learning about how heat affects different types of objects and the scientific method. We revisited the ice-melting experiment from remote learning but this time with particular solids joining the cups of ice. Within their reading and writing lessons, students were introduced to the three states of matter, solids, liquids and gases. 

We would like to take the time to thank you for your help in providing your children with masks and encouraging them to wear it. Although a little uncomfortable, working together to be healthy and safe shows that we are caring for ourselves and for each other. 

The Year Four Team.