Grade 4 Report

This term in Grade 4, we have spent lots of time getting to know each other and our teachers. The students have done a brilliant job at transitioning to the Senior timetable and are now used to the different daily timetable. To link in with our Grade 4 iPad program, the students created a “My Life in Apps” to highlight some of their favourite things. This was a great way to learn about what the students have in common with their teachers and new classmates!

In literature we have listened to some great stories about having a go and using a positive mind set! The story called “The Beautiful Oops” by Barney Saltzberg taught us we should look at a mistake as an opportunity to create something new, something better, something beautiful. It can even be good to make mistakes! Mistakes are worth making and there is no need to be afraid. For an activity, we deliberately made mistakes with water colours and then turned them into some creative and exciting pictures!

Another story we read was called “The Dot” written by Peter H. Reynolds. The Dot is a story of a caring teacher who dares a doubting student to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to “make her mark”. After this story we used water colours, pencils and crayons to turn our own dot into anything we could imagine. How great do they look!?

Another great activity we have done this term was lesson 5 of The Resilience Project and it discusses the concept of small acts of kindness. We watched an engaging video by Kid President called “20 Things We Should Say More Often” and started a great discussion about what positive things the students think we should all say more often at school. The students then had a chance to write anonymous compliments and messages to their classmates to “fill their bucket.”

Here are some of the feelings the students felt after reading the messages from their classmates:

I feel seen
Reading kind things made me feel valued.
I really felt appreciated by people when I read what other people wrote.
It felt like they knew who I am on the inside.
It made me grateful to have others say kind things about me.
Reading kind compliments helps me know that people care.
I feel like I matter
A little bit of kindness can make a big difference