Carlsruhe Annexe / 

Main Campus - Year 4

It is hard to believe we are almost at the end of week 4 already! Our students have really settled into the routines for Carlsruhe and are marvellously completing their tasks and daily jobs. If you walked into the classroom at the main campus or Carlsruhe Campus and watched the students at work or outside completing jobs, you would think they had been in Year 4 for more than just a few weeks. We are enjoying seeing the cooperative way they are working together to complete the classroom tasks and Carlsruhe jobs. 

This week, students began the process of borrowing books from the library to read at home and in the classroom. Books are borrowed for two weeks and need to be returned before more books can be borrowed. If your child would like to re-borrow a book they need to bring it back on book borrowing day so it can be reissued by their teachers, otherwise it will become overdue. There are still a few of the students with overdue books on their files from last year, so it would be fantastic if these books could be returned so they can have new books issued to them. 

Homework

In Year 4, we are gradually building up to regular homework tasks this term which utilise students’ Chromebooks. This will include:

• Reading—Independent reading or reading to someone else— try for 15 mins, 4 days a week - recorded in their Reading Log (found on Google Classrooms).  
• Touch Typing practice (the link is on Google Classrooms) —10 mins, 2 to 3 times a week.  
• Mental Maths practice—Focus times tables facts (the Timestables.com link is on Google Classrooms) —5 mins daily.

The students have been using their Chromebooks this week and we now introduced Google Classroom, where we have posted useful links and learning tools. They have really enjoyed learning lots of new skills and tips to help them navigate around the system. We are really impressed with the way the children have been remembering to bring them each day, fully charged and ready to use. The children from 4AI and 4LS do not need to bring in their Chromebooks on a Wednesday as this is when they complete their specialist learning sessions. They will be required to bring them for some French lessons later this year, however, they will be given advance warning from Mrs Anders when that is the case.

We started our Inquiry topic this week and have been learning about first contact and Indigenous culture using ‘My Place’. As part of our literacy lessons, we will continue to study texts and learn some vocabulary used by the Taungurung people, who are the traditional custodians of the land on which our Carlsruhe campus stands.

In numeracy, we have started learning about decimals to two decimal places including tenths and hundredths. The children enjoyed a scavenger hunt last week, where they were tasked with finding diagrams of either tenths or hundredths that had portions of them shaded, using them to write the decimal and equivalent fraction. They enjoyed this activity and had fun searching for all the ‘clues’ around the campus (see attached photographs).

We are still looking for volunteers who would be able to help with some weeding of the vegetable garden at the Carlsruhe campus. We are slowly starting to clear sections of it with the wonderful support we have had so far, but there is still so much to do. Please let us know via email if you can donate any of your time to help us with this.

Thank you all for your ongoing support,

Year 4 Teachers

Ann Ireland (4AI), Louise Safstrom (4SM)/Alison Meggs, Lisa Sutch (4LS)