Grade Four

English

In Term 3, students have been introduced to Reciprocal Reading strategies and have applied them using appropriate levelled texts as well as their good fit books. The four strategies practised are predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarizing. Students also studied different sentence structures, made nouns and verbs more descriptive and applied these skills in their independent writing pieces.

During Book Week in Week 5, the Grade 4 students looked at a book called Sorry Sorry by Anne Kerr, which exposed them  to a variety of short stories and fables. This enabled the  students to  develop their own story with a moral. Students also designed and created an artwork to align with their writing. It was wonderful to see students proudly wearing their work for our Book Week Celebration. 

Maths

In Maths the Grade 4s have been busy with  open-ended problems in number and algebra. Students created their own repetitive number patterns using addition, subtraction, and multiplication. They also explored the constant function of a calculator to create more advanced patterns. During our additive thinking unit, students studied the links between addition and subtraction. They demonstrated the different ways they could solve problems using a variety of written strategies. During the final weeks of the term, students practised solving time problems. They also learnt about using a stopwatch to time the duration of events, such as, how long it took for their Integrated Studies machines to operate.

Integrated

Throughout the term the students have been exploring forces and the six simple machines in preparation for an end of term project based around ‘Rube Goldberg’ machines. The students have thoroughly enjoyed creating windmills and parachutes, experimenting with different materials to further their understanding of different types of forces.  Towards the end of the unit, students worked in groups to create their own 'Rube Goldberg' machine incorporating the forces and simple machines they have learned about throughout the unit. The machines were very intricate and the students had a blast attempting to get their machine to successfully complete their end goal. For example: landing a ball in a cup or a toy car into a carpark. Students collaborated together to present their end result as a class website or a google slide to reflect on their understanding and to showcase their work to their peers.