Year 4 News
English
Reading
The grade 4’s will start the year by re-igniting their passion for reading after the holidays and creating their classroom libraries that are filled with just right texts and books of interest. From then on, we will be focusing on Inferring where students will begin to learn and explain the literal and implied meanings from texts. Students will be able to identify the key message of a text and infer the cause and effect that creates change in a character's motivations, feelings, beliefs and actions. Throughout the unit, students will be justifying their inferences by using evidence from the text and their prior knowledge. Students will then compare their inferences with their peers and discuss how or why they may be different.
Writing
We will be starting the year by completing a writer’s workshop to spark creativity and build a bank of seed ideas for future writing. The grade 4’s will then move onto writing Explanation Texts, pieces of writing that explain something. They might tell you how or why something happens, or give information on how to do something. Students will work through the writing process of planning, drafting, editing and publishing highlighting the control that they develop over the structure and language used. Students will use a range of print and digital resources to gather information to form a comprehensive text. Throughout their text, they will demonstrate their understanding of grammar, subject specific vocabulary, spelling and punctuation.
Mathematics
Throughout term 1, the grade 4’s will be covering several units. We will start the year by focusing on Time, students will be able to identify o’clock, half past, quarter past, 5 minute interval and minute interval times while using am and pm notations. Then we will focus on Place Value where students will learn to skip count and build up to 100,000 using place value. Moving on to Financial Maths and Data; students with create and represent their data in a variety of tables and graphs including through digital technologies. Then finishing the term with Length, including measuring objects using an appropriate metric unit and comparing and ordering different sized objects.
Inquiry
In Inquiry this term, the 3/4 students are beginning the term by practicing using core thinking routines, such as Think, Pair, Share and See, Think, Wonder during our Learning to Learn program. Students will use these core thinking routines to strengthen and support their ability to learn and form positive relationships, develop a growth mindset, and recognise and nurture their character strengths. We will then begin our ‘lets get physical’ unit. This unit will allow students to identify and practise strategies to promote health, safety and wellbeing. Throughout the unit students will investigate how emotional responses vary and understand how to interact positively with others in different situations including in physical activities. Students will interpret health messages and discuss the influences on healthy and safe choices. By the end of the unit students will understand the benefits of being fit and physically active.
Science
Grade 3 and Grade 4 students have an exciting start to the year in 2023 with Term 1 focusing on Biology. Students will learn that living things have life cycles and that plants and animals depend on each other and the environment to survive. They will be involved in learning tasks based upon: making and recording observations of living things as they develop through their life cycles; describing the stages of life cycles of different living things such as insects and flowering plants; comparing the life cycles of animals and plants; recognising that environmental factors can affect life cycles such as fire and seed germination; investigating the roles of living things in a habitat, e.g. producers, consumers or decomposers.
LOTE - Chinese
During Term 1 in Chinese, Grade 4 will learn about Chinese New Year in first two weeks’ time and then make Chinese lanterns in the classroom. The topic for this term is Chinese Festivals and their food. Students will explored 4 main festivals in China and their related food in English and Chinese. Also they have good knowledge of Chinese zodiac especially 4 animal signs relate to their birth years.
Art
Welcome to Term 1, Art, 2023! In Art, the Grade 3 and 4’s will revise routines and follow expectations in our classroom environment, including correct use of tools and materials and being safe and respectful inside the Art room. We have started the year creating an ‘All about me’ collage. The students have used various typed of mediums such as magazines, newspapers, glue and scissors to cut out pictures to create a new art piece that represents their personalities and reflects their individuality. The students will then be introduced to colour theory. It will be a messy term in the art room! We will explore warm and cool colours, and students will be printmaking using leaves as stencils, taking into consideration the current season and tones of ‘Summer’ and ‘Autumn’. Warm and cool colours play a vital part when designing, and particularly when painting to create a sense of mood in the artworks. The 3-4’s will be learning to use the colour wheel, identifying where colours sit together in order and colour opposites.
It will be fun to start working with paint this term and to replicate some of the great artists work, such as Vincent Van Gogh and his sunflowers and Keith Haring’s ‘Subway art’. The students will work with mediums, such as acrylic, watercolours, glue and chalk and will learn new techniques.
I look forward to having fun in the art room this Term with the grade 3 and 4 students.
P.E.
For this term our grade 4 students will be continuing a games-based approach to Physical Education by participating in a range of sports, using the relevant skills and movements in conjunction with problem solving and strategy to achieve successful outcomes. In term one, grade 4 students will participate in tennis and baseball (T-ball). While playing in these sports the students will continue to develop their fundamental movement skills which include throwing, catching, striking, running, jumping, and dodging. During this term we will take a deep dive into the core skills needed for each of these sports and give the students ample opportunity to demonstrate these skills in game play. In addition to this, we want our grade 4 students to problem solve, and begin to think critically when playing sports to create strategies to gain successful results. Grade 4 students will learn through their movement and will be able to apply basic rules and scoring when they play in these sports, apply creative thinking when playing sports by using strategy, and demonstrate social skills by working with others in teams. I am extremely excited to work with the grade 4 students this year and looking forward to building on the learning that occurred last year.