Year Four News

Dear Grade 4 Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to another exciting term! We hope you enjoyed the winter break. As we dive into Term Three, we are thrilled to continue our journey of learning and growth with your child.

Literacy Blocks

In Language Comprehension, our focus for this term will be based on the poem, Mulga Bill’s Bicycle, by Banjo Patterson. This literary adventure will drive our Literacy Blocks, guiding students through an exploration of new vocabulary, deepening background knowledge, and applying comprehension strategies to gain a deeper understanding of the text.

As part of our writing curriculum, students will harness the knowledge gained from our text studies to craft persuasive texts. Through the structured approach of The Writing Revolution, they will sharpen their skills in identifying and constructing various sentence types. Additionally, students will delve into the power of using literary devices in their texts, utilising them to enhance and elaborate upon their writing, expanding basic sentences into vivid images for the audience.

In Spelling sessions, the students will continue our new, school wide program called Spelling Mastery. They work through a carefully sequenced program designed to build strong spelling skills step-by-step. The program focuses on teaching spelling patterns, rules, and strategies explicitly, helping students become confident and accurate spellers. Daily practice and review activities allow students to consolidate their learning and apply it across their reading and writing tasks. Each session aims to foster greater spelling fluency, understanding, and confidence.

Maths:

In Numeracy, students will continue their Daily Review sessions to build fluency and strengthen key skills. They will extend their Fractions and Decimals understanding by converting mixed numbers and improper fractions. Students will continue developing their skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, along with mental math strategies. In Measurement, they will explore length, mass, capacity, and time, determining durations and elapsed times. They will also practise measuring the perimeter and area of regular and irregular shapes. In Chance, students will recognise independent and dependent outcomes in chance experiments, and in Statistics, they will create and interpret column graphs.

Units of Work

In Term Three, the focus will be on Chemical Science. Throughout this unit, students will develop their understanding of how materials can be changed physically and chemically. They will investigate the properties of everyday substances and explore how heating, cooling, mixing, and other processes can affect them. Through hands-on experiments, students will test predictions, observe changes, and begin to classify materials based on their behaviour. The unit will conclude with a design-based project, giving students the opportunity to apply their learning by creating something useful and fun using their knowledge of material changes.

Homework

Homework will start in Week 2 and will be posted in the Google Classroom. Students will be able to access the homework slideshow and record their work using their Google account.

Homework for Year Four students consists of:

• 20 minutes of reading, 5 nights a week
• Practising two maths concepts of their choice through Essential Assessment

Important Dates this Term:

Year 4 team

Troy, Charlotte, Medha and Lee