Grade 4 News
Important Reminders & Dates
Upcoming dates/Important Info
Monday, June 8th: King's Birthday Public Holiday
Tuesday, June 16th: 4FH Kinder Visit - 2.30pm (see below for an insight into 4E's visit)
Friday, June 26th: Last Day Term 2
- Icy Poles will be sold outside the senior school Monday & Tuesday lunch times
Looking Ahead to the Year:
Monday, October 5th - Wednesday, October 7th: Grade 4 Camp - ADANAC
Homework
📖 Literacy
Over the past fortnight, students have continued to read Storm Boy, where they have unpacked the unique relationship Storm Boy has with his pet pelican, Mr Percival. Storm Boy has managed to train Mr Percival to follow commands, like bringing fishing lines out to sea and back. The students have explored new vocabulary such as ‘perched’ and ‘impatient’, and discussed the author's phrase to set the scene of Storm Boy and Mr Percival becoming a duo that people of Goolwa will talk about forever.
The information report about The Coorong is making great progress and has had the introduction completed, along with both the first supporting paragraph, ‘Where It Is and What Does It Look Like?’ and the second supporting paragraph, ‘Cultural Significance.’ Students researched and took notes using note-taking symbols, identified the main points, and then constructed detailed sentences to create informative paragraphs.
Preview: Students will continue to create their information reports, using the Information Report Writing Sequence, and will focus on including compound and complex sentences filled with relevant and factual information.
➗ Maths
Grade 4 has enthusiastically participated in perimeter and area activities over the past couple of weeks. They had to use measuring tools such as rulers, tape measures and trundle wheels to determine the perimeter of objects inside the classroom, and discuss what objects would be best measured in mm, cm and km. A fun ‘post-it’ note challenge, helped students to understand how area can be measured, and they also became ‘Area Architects’ to design and create a playground that had to include objects that are a certain area in size. The designs were so creative! We identified 2D shapes by the number of straight lines, curves and vertices and used component shapes to make a composite shape.
Preview: Students will focus on creating symmetry and patterns and identifying rotational lines of symmetry, whilst continuing to review previous topics and fact fluency of their Times Tables.
🧠 Knowledge Rich Units
As our Knowledge Rich unit on Service, Courage, Mateship and Loyalty: Our Australian Heroes draws to a close, it has been wonderful to see the students' understanding of what these values look like, both at war and within our community. As teachers, it has been so rewarding to be a part of the rich discussions the Grade 4 students have been involved in, and hear their insights, connections and understanding of how important these values are and how we can all show them in our own lives. To conclude this unit, students have begun to research and create a biography about a ‘hero’, where they will focus on an Australian Hero and how they have demonstrated these values.
Preview: Students will continue to research and write about the Australian Hero and create a published biography.
🌿 Wellbeing
On Friday, we had our first Circles session of Term 2, and the students enjoyed going to their groups and engaging in activities with a focus on ‘Respect’. Students discussed that respect is:
- Respecting ourselves means looking after our own feelings and choices.
- Respecting others means being kind, fair and listening to people.
- Respecting the environment means looking after our classroom, school and the world around us”
They also role-played different scenarios and how to show respect in each, e.g. taking turns in a game.
During our weekly wellbeing sessions, we looked at different problems and discussed how to identify if the problem was serious enough that it would be best discussed with an adult or others to help us solve it. Grade 4’s learnt what questions they could ask themselves, such as ‘Does it break the rules? Can someone get hurt? Is it unfair?’ and if a problem doesn’t seem to go away, it is best to ask for some help to solve it. Students came up with some great examples of a small problem, ‘my pencil is blunt’, through to a more serious problem, ‘you injured your ankle while playing soccer’. We also mirrored each other's energy and looked at the different ways calm and stress can feel.
Preview: Next fortnight students will focus on when/how they can seek help and how they also can be helpful to others in need.
🏅 Sport in Grade 4
The Grade 4’s have been mastering their soccer skills, in preparation for the soccer game in the next couple of weeks. They have done this through controlled, long-distance passes using the correct kicking method and stopping skills, aiming for the goal from short and a long distances, and controlling and directing the ball for accuracy. They have played games such as numbers, pass the pass, and we continue to see progress in both their soccer skills and confidence in the sport. It has been lots of fun!
Preview: Students will participate in a game against other Grade 4’s to consolidate their passing, dribbling and accuracy when shooting for the goal.
🌟 Kinder Visit
This year, the Grade 4 students are fortunate to have the opportunity to visit our onsite kinder, to build relationships with potential LPS students. The aim is for each class to attend multiple sessions across the year, and this week it was 4E’s turn to visit!
During their session, the Grade 4 students read a picture story book to a kinder friend and then went outside to play, where the students played tag, kicked some footballs and built structures with big blocks.
Some quotes from our Grade 4s were:
"I'm having so much fun right now"
"My buddy was so kind"
"My buddy was like a friend, it was really nice"
We are loving building connections with the kinder kids and are excited to see what 4FH gets up to during their visit in Week 9!
Grade 4 Teaching Team
Bek Emonson, Will Robinson, Chloe Flack & Hayley Ward