Year 4

What a busy few weeks it has been in Year 4! Our students have had lots of exciting news to share as we come to the end of the term. Students have revised learning and begun new learning topics as well as attended swimming lessons at State Swim Craigieburn. Here are just some of the many things we have been up to recently.

Swimming 

In Week 6 we attended swimming lessons every day at State Swim in Craigieburn. All the students did an amazing job listening to and learning from their swimming instructors each day. The students were placed into groups where they practised a range of different swimming skills and learned how to be safe when in the water. On the last day students even got to play some games, which everyone enjoyed.

Harmony Week 

This week we are celebrating Harmony week. Harmony week is the celebration that recognises our diversity and brings together Australians from all different backgrounds. On Tuesday we spent the day understanding the significance and importance of this amazing celebration. We started off with a whole school assembly and then the students participated in learning experiences related to Harmony Week for the remainder of the day.

Reading 

Over the past few weeks we have started to read our new class chapter book ‘Rowan of Rin’. The students are enjoying listening to this book and have been making some great inferences and predictions. Students have also been working hard on their reading goals and assessing themselves to see if they have achieved their goal or if they need to continue working on it. Students are currently focusing on phonics in the classroom and are consolidating our understanding of graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds), they are also beginning to learn about word morphology and how prefixes and suffixes are used to change the meaning of words. 

Writing

Students have finished writing and publishing their autobiographies and they did such an amazing job! We have begun focusing on narratives and delving deep into creating interesting characters and settings. The students are learning that good writers add detail to their writing that tells the reader what is happening. Students have been using their five senses (see ,look, taste, touch and smell) to help them describe their characters and settings.

Numeracy 

These past few weeks we have been focusing on the connection between addition and subtraction and partitioning numbers. The students have been doing a wonderful job on finding all the different ways that we can partition a number and using their knowledge of addition and subtraction along the way. We have also been exploring probability and talking about events that are certain to happen and ones that could not possibly happen. 

Civics and Citizenship

What a wonderful term we have had learning about Civics and Citizenship. Students have learnt about different communities that they are part of, the services that are available to them and what it means to be a good citizen. As we come to the end of our inquiry unit, students will begin to research and develop a way to share what they have learnt throughout the term and be able to share this information with their classmates.