Year 4

Literacy

Reading

The grade 4’s started 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 focused on Inferring where students learnt and explained the literal and implied meanings from texts. Students are able to identify the key message of a text and infer the cause and effect that creates change in a characters motivations, feelings, beliefs and actions. Throughout the unit, students justified their inferences by using evidence from the text and their prior knowledge. Students then compared their inferences with their peers and discussed how or why they may be different.

Writing

We started 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 then moved 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 worked through the writing process of planning, drafting, editing and publishing highlighting the control that they develop over the structure and language used. Students used a range of print and digital resources to gather information to form a comprehensive text. Throughout their text, they demonstrated their understanding of grammar, subject specific vocabulary, spelling and punctuation. 

Numeracy

Throughout term 1, the grade 4’s covered several units. We started the year by focusing on Time, students are able to identify o’clock, half past, quarter past, 5 minute interval and minute interval times while using am and pm notations. We then focused on Place Value where students learnt to skip count and build up to 100,000 using place value. We moved on to Financial Maths and Data; students created and represented their data in a variety of tables and graphs including through digital technologies. Then finished the term with Length, including measuring objects using an appropriate metric unit and comparing and ordering different sized objects.

Inquiry

The Grade 4 students have had a terrific start to Inquiry this year! 

We started the term with our ‘Learning to Learn’ unit, where we worked on developing a Growth Mindset. We looked at the Power of Yet and that it is okay to make mistakes because they help us learn. 

The students used their knowledge of the Power of Yet to help them set their own SMART goal for Inquiry this term. We also explored character strengths with each student identifying and celebrating their own character strengths by creating a page for their class book titled, “It’s good to be me because…”We started our next unit, Stay Safe in Week 5. 

During this unit, the students investigated how they can be safe at home by creating a home fire escape plan, how they can be safe at school through roleplaying different scenarios and how they can be safe in the community. We explored road safety, water safety, being safe with medicines and other dangerous substances, and how to stay safe at shopping centres, parks, and on playgrounds. 

The students demonstrated a solid understanding of the strategies they can use to ensure that they stay safe in various situations. Well done Grade 4 students!

Mrs Marshall 

The grade 4 teachers would like to congratulate you all on a fantastic start to grade 4! Have a restful break and we will see you in term 2. 

Science

We have had a fun start to the year, exploring the fascinating world of plants including how they grow, what parts make up a plant and the life cycle of plants. Students have completed hands-on experiments investigating the parts of seeds and flowers and had the chance to grow their own broad beans from scratch. 

The students have also learnt about pollination and the adverse effects of the loss of pollinators such as bees or butterflies. As term 1 draws to a close, enjoy the holiday break and I look forward to seeing everyone in Term 2.

Art

The 3/4 students started the semester by decorating their art folios. They each have chosen a design that best reflects themselves, drawing on techniques to create their designs; such as bubble writing and use of primary, secondary and complementary colours. 

The 3-4 students have also been working with collage; an art technique that uses torn pieces of paper and images to paste and create a design. This ‘all about me’ project displays the interests of each student, by using; words, images and photos from magazines and newspapers to make a design. 

A new area that we are currently working on with grade 3-4 is Monochromatic Art - which means shading with one colour. The students have designed a face using different pressures of the pencil to create light and dark shades of one colour. The idea is to ensure that students understand the importance of using light and dark shades in Art to create tint and shadow. 

The 3/4 students have been using a range of materials including; Posca paint pens, sharpies, pencils, textas, paper, paste and crayons. It has been a fun and creative time with the 3/4 students and we are finally back into the art room!

PE

The Year 4’s have had such a wonderful start to the year when learning about Physical Education. They have learned about the routines and expectations in the Gymnasium and how to help create an inclusive and collaborative environment, when learning about new skills. They have demonstrated how to follow instructions when using equipment, moving safely around their peers, and the rules required to participate in activities. 

The Year 4’s have worked really hard at practising their ability to accurately perform underarm and overarm throwing and catching. They have also work hard at learning about the rules of playing tennis, learning technical movements like forehand, backhand, open stance and closed stance when using tennis rackets, balls and nets. The Year 4 students will continue to apply their fine motor skills when exposed to learning different sports. Well done on your hard work Year 4’s!   

LOTE (Chinese)

In term 1, Grades 4 started with Chinese New Year. We learned how to pronounce the Year of the tiger and some best wishes that Chinese people normally spoke during Chinese New Year. 

We have learned about the culture behind Chinese New year, such as when Chinese people celebrate it, why people celebrate it and what people normally do during Chinese New Year. We also learned about the last festival that Chinese people celebrate before the Chinese New Year finishes, which is the Lantern festival. After this, we learned how to pronounce a bunch of fruit names in Chinese, which included the King and Queen of the fruit (Durian and Mangosteen) and some other most common fruits that you can purchase from the supermarket. 

Then we also learned some common vegetable names in Chinese. This term, we mainly focused on how to write Chinese characters, which include the name of fruits and vegetables. The photos below are the paper lanterns we made during learning and the worksheet we did for character practising.