Grade 4 News

Important Reminders 

• Hats - As per our school's SunSmart policy, all students are required to wear hats till the end of April 2024.
• Maths Masters- the students practise their goal every day. You can also practise your goal at home in order to increase numerical fluency. The goals can be found online here: Maths Masters Belts folder. 
• Middle School Open Morning-  we are pleased to inform you that the Middle School will be having an Open Morning on Thursday 30th November. The classrooms in grades 3 & 4 will be open to family members from 9.15am until 10.00am. This gives students the opportunity to showcase the work that they have been doing this term. 
• Important dates:
• 30th November- Middle School Open Morning
• 1st December- Up-session (Literacy)
• 8th December- Up-session (Maths) 
• 12th December- Meet new teacher & class
• 15th December- Meet again with the new teacher & class
• 19th December- class parties 

The swimming program put a big dent in the program last week, but we still managed to cover a fair bit of work. 

Literacy:

The students have been continuing with the writing process for their buddy books. They have referred to their plan to write their draft, and then they have edited and reworked their story through conferencing sessions. When it has been typed up, the students are drawing pictures to go along with each page. The grade 4s are taking pride in their work in order to present a lovely book to their future buddies. Hopefully, this will inspire a love of reading within the little ones. 

To enhance our reading and writing, the students have focussed on descriptions. They have noticed the formal language and structure of this non-fiction text, and developed their skills at writing their own descriptions using subject-specific language. 

This week we delved into writing an information report. The students chose a topic from the Inquiry study which they researched further and began to write a report.

Next Week:

The students will continue with their buddy books, if not yet finished. Time will also be given to continuing with the information report. 

Mathematics:

After working on our understanding of fractions for most of the term, we are now looking at connecting and extending that understanding to working with decimals. Students have been exploring writing tenths and hundredths in both fraction and decimal notation, as well as representing these values in a pictorial way. After representing, writing and reading decimal numbers, students worked on ordering decimals on a number line by thinking about if they were more than or less than half.

Formal testing has also been part of the program. 

Next Week:

Next week, we will continue to work on decimals - looking at how the different notations can sometimes trick us up e.g. thinking 1.2 and 1/2 are the same value because the digits are the same.

We will also start our work on learning about angles. We will look at angles that exist in the real world, with a particular focus on the hands of an analogue clock, and making connections to our learning about time. 

Inquiry:

The students have learnt about the three different areas of sustainabilty that have been offered: ocean pollution, deforestation and theriocide. This week they chose one of these areas and created a flowchart to represent how actions affect results. 

Next Week:

Now that the students have learnt about their chosen area in more depth, they will plan a course of action to make others aware of the problems and possible solutions. We want to make our voices heard.