Year 4 News
From Matilda, Year 4 Teacher
Numeracy - Fractions
By Ellie B and Temwa N, Year 4 students
In 4E we have been learning fractions in Maths. So far we have learned about what a fraction is and we have made fraction walls by folding little strips of paper. We have also played a calming game called colour in fractions where you rolled a dice and colour in the fraction you get. First to fill the board wins! Also we will be doing fluid groups where we split up into different classes and learn different things suited to our learning capability. The groups are challenging but will help us learn new skills. Overall we really like learning about fractions every year.
Reciprocal reading in Year 4
By Ellie and Nora, Year 4D students
We’re put into reading groups that the teacher thinks we will work well with and each group gets assigned a chapter book that we base our reciprocal reading on.
There are 4 roles that are given to each student in your group and we rotate roles each week. The 4 roles are: the predictor, the clarifier, the questioner and the summariser. Essentially reciprocal reading is where the students run their reading lesson. We only have it once a week for about an hour so it’s very manageable. Now let’s go into detail about each role.
The predictor:
The predictor leads the conversation about our predictions, based off of last weeks session of reciprocal reading, everyone makes a prediction of what they think will happen next in the book.
The clarifier:
The clarifier asks everybody if they have any words that they didn’t understand whilst reading. If somebody does, they ask the group if anyone knows what that word means. If nobody knows including the clarifier they look in a dictionary then if they can’t find the word they ask the teacher to search it up.
The questioner:
The questioner thinks of two questions that are meaningful and helps elaborate on a persons learning. Then everybody answers the two questions and tells the questioner their responses.
The summariser:
The summariser asks everybody to summarise the chunk of the book that we read then everyone writes it in their reading journal.
Some of the books that we are reading in our class are: Wombat Warriors, The Butterfly Lion and the Rat Catchers Apprentice. After everybody in the group has had their go of leading a part of the conversation the teacher assigns us a chapter to read up to, by the next weeks session. We help further each other's learning
No one can interfere with the group, so we can focus on our learning. We have Role cards to help us.
We hope you now know what reciprocal reading is.