Level 4: Connect

Level 4 2025

Lisa Fennessy & Isabella Nocera 4A

Tilly Van & Marc Restaino 4B

Michelle Stainforth 4C

Inquiry Homework Task: Above we have included a 'Country Mini Research Project'. The students have loved working on this task across the last few weeks of term and showcased their fantastic research skills! We have included this document for students to choose another country to complete the project as a homework task if they wish. 

Important Date:

Tuesday 16th September: Whole School Production.

Thursday 18th September: Footy Fun Day

Level 4 Novel Recommendations:

We understand that finding the 'right book' can sometimes be a challenge. Please see a list of recommended texts below. Each book is aimed for students at a Level 4-5 level. Please note that some of these texts may explore more mature or intense themes and may be a sensitive topic for some families. Alternatively follow this link to Dymocks 'Kids top 51 Books' for more options and the 2025 Book of the Year Shortlist.

Literacy:

In Literacy we have continued analysing a new text, 'Figgy in the World by Tamsin Janu'. Figgy is a young girl in Ghana and the text follows her adventure in aim to get medicine to help her Grandma. 

“Figgy has two problems. One is her name. Nobody in Ghana has that name. The other is that her grandmother is ill and needs special medicine. Figgy can't do much about her name, but she can do something for Grandma Ama. She will go to America and bring back the medicine, and Kwame, her special goat, will go with her. Out in the wide world she will meet some bad people, but she will also find good friends.”

This text no only compliments our studies in our Inquiry unit of Geography, but also provides students with an engaging, adventurous text to practice our reading comprehension skills, as well as fluency and accuracy when reading aloud. In our reading lessons, students explore how the text can be summarised by identifying the main points and implement their knowledge of context clues and monitoring to better understand what the author is telling us.

In our Writing lessons we are continuing to draft, edit, and create detailed persuasive texts by utilising a range of persuasive devices. By exploring how we can structure our arguments, students have been producing strong reasons to support their opinions and experimenting with a range of statistics, questions, and persuasive language. It has been fantastic viewing students build on their skills of convincing by keeping an eye out for language and tone in their writing. 

Numeracy:

In Numeracy our Year 4 students have been developing their problem-solving skills by exploring a range of creative strategies to tackle challenging and unfamiliar problems. They have been learning to describe and represent mathematical situations in different ways, select and apply effective strategies, and give valid reasons for their solutions. Working in small groups has encouraged collaboration, allowing students to share ideas, coach one another, and develop confidence in their reasoning. We have been focusing on strategies such as excluding possibilities to narrow down solutions and using concrete materials to help visualise and work through problems step by step. These approaches not only strengthen mathematical understanding but also equip students with valuable skills they can apply to new and unfamiliar challenges. 

Inquiry:

Level 4's will be exploring the similarities and differences between places in Australia and neighbouring countries in terms of their natural, managed and constructed features. They will have the opportunity to choose a neighbouring country to research and present their findings to the rest of the class. The level 4 students have been refining and building on their research skills when completing this project and we can't wait to see how they create their final fact sheets!

Well being 

At school, we regularly check in and talk about the Zones of Regulation, a framework that helps children build awareness of their feelings and develop strategies to manage them. The Zones use four colours to represent different states of alertness and emotions:

• Blue Zone – low energy feelings such as tired, sad, bored or sick
• Green Zone – calm, focused, happy and ready to learn
• Yellow Zone – heightened emotions such as excited, nervous, silly, frustrated or anxious
• Red Zone – very heightened states such as anger, rage, panic or extreme excitement

We remind students that there are no "good" or "bad" zones—everyone experiences all of them. What matters most is recognising which zone we are in and using strategies to return to the zone that best suits the situation.

Tips for Parents at Home:

• Talk about your own “zone” during daily routines (e.g., “I’m in the yellow zone because I’m feeling a bit worried about being late”).
• Encourage your child to identify their zone and what they might do to manage it (e.g., taking a break, deep breathing, asking for help).
• Create a calm-down toolkit at home with items like a favourite book, stress ball, colouring, or relaxing music.
• Praise your child when they successfully recognise and regulate their emotions.

By working together, we can help children develop the lifelong skills of self-awareness, self-regulation and empathy.

Visual Art- please see 'Specialist Happenings for an update on our exciting sail Project!