26 Jan 2018

Year 4 Update – Wk 19

Wednesday 31st January 2018 – Marie Marchand Parent Workshop 6pm – 8pm (please see details below)

Tuesday 6th February – Y2 Bake Sale – Bring some money and a snack box in order to buy a delicious treat

Monday 12th February – BHS China Day Activities (more details to follow)

Tuesday 13th February – Chinese New Year performance to parents 6pm

Friday 16th February – Half Term begins (3pm finish)

Monday 26th February – First day back

E-Notice ~ HK Forest Adventures

Many thanks to all those who have completed the E-notice and brought in cheques for our next exciting excursion. Polite reminder: If you haven’t done this yet, please could you do so as soon as possible!

To enhance the construction experiences we will provide in school we have organised a visit to the HK Forest Adventures. This is an opportunity for our students to design and build on a larger scale using a range of construction materials and tools led by experts. The students will have a chance to make:

a large scale castle from wooden pallets
go karts
use various construction kits.

The cost of this trip is $350 per child. We recognise this is more than our usual trip costs because students will be working in small groups led by an expert using a variety of materials and tools. We feel that this trip is a unique opportunity to enhance the skills and understanding of our students. In recognition of the expense of the trip we have reviewed our trips considering cost and the benefit to student learning. As a result we have replaced two trips from other units of inquiry to reduce costs and still maintain a range of learning experiences.
Dates of the trip
Class 4F – Tues 13th March
Class 4L – Wed 14th March
Class 4W – Thurs 15th March

We will need to leave school at 8:45 am. Please ensure your child is punctual on that day. We will return in time for the end of the school day. Deli Fresh will need to be cancelled on that day and your child will need to bring a snack and packed lunch .

PARENT VOLUNTEERS PLEASE!

To accompany the children and ensure safety on the HK Forest Adventures Trip, we would like to ask if any parents would be willing to come along. The excursion will involve lots of “hands-on” tasks and the use of tools such as saws or drills. If you have some experience of these, or are just eager to get involved, please contact your child’s class teacher.

Book Drive

Muchan, a Student Councillor for 5C, is organising a Book Drive to help spread his love of reading. The Sony Corporation will collect books to create mobile libraries in South Africa for schools that do not have enough books. If you have books that are:

Please send them to school. There will be a collection box in the school foyer. Any books you can donate will be spread our love of reading.

4W P.E.

Please note that for the following 6 weeks, 4W’s PE lessons will be on Mondays with Mr. Teahan and Wednesdays with Ms. Wu (not Thursdays) so 4W students will need to wear P.E. kit on these days.

Ukuleles!

Please encourage your child to remember to bring their ukuleles and ukulele booklets to school on the appropriate day. At the moment, we still have quite

a few children forgetting their instruments.

4F – Thursday

4L – Tuesday

4W – Tuesday

Ukulele Club – Wednesday lunchtime (this only applies to members of this club and they know who they are).

BAKE SALES – Keeping our playground clean!

This week lots of children bought cakes from the bake sale. Each cake is handed to the children in a tissue. Unfortunately tissue cannot be recycled in Hong Kong and has

to go to the landfills. Also, many children left bits of cake and tissue on the floor as they did not have a container to eat from. From now on, on bake sale days the children should bring a reusable container to school to put the cake in while they eat it to stop the rubbish problem. The next bake sale will take place on Tuesday 6th February. Thank you very much!

Marie Marchand Parent Workshop

We are delighted to welcome back Marie Marchand to present at Beacon Hill School on January 31st from 6-8pm. This year’s focus will be positive behaviour management strategies for parents- Discipline without Shouting. Please see the details and sign up via the gateway https://tg.esf.edu.hk The cost will be $50 per person.

Marie is an excellent speaker- both entertaining and informative and we thoroughly recommend any parents from year 1-6 to come and enjoy her presentation.

Student Council Fruity Friday

Please remember to provide your child with a healthy fruity snack on Fridays!

Y4 Teacher Contact Information

4F – Mrs Fennelly – charlotte.fennelly@bhs.edu.hk

4L – Miss Fisher – laura.fisher@bhs.edu.hk

4W – Miss Wu – jane.wu@bhs.edu.hk

Year 4 Learning Support Teacher – Ms Mak – haymen.mak@bhs.edu.hk

Vice Principal – Mr Thompson – andy.thompson@bhs.edu.hk

4F’s Fantastic Assembly

Congratulations to 4F for a wonderful assembly. See the pictures below for some of the highlights!

New Unit of Inquiry

This week we started our new unit of inquiry which is centred around structures, design and construction skills. The children have begun to think about this in more detail. To make more successful structures, they have begun trying to apply the practical skills we realised they needed from the pre-assessment. They have been using Strawbees, some fantastic construction materials made out of straws!

Ms Jeves Returns

Miss Jeves is supporting the Year 4s once again. She will guiding the children through our third line of inquiry: How purpose affects the design of structures. She began this week by asking students to think about a definition of design. She will also be engaging them with our comprehension strategies: making connections.

Character Hot Seat

The week in English, some of the children used a strategy called “hot seating” to help them take on the perspective of a character from a fairy tale. Each child had the opportunity to pretend to be a character, whilst the others in their group were journalists asking them questions about what had happened, their thoughts, feelings and motivation. They thoroughly enjoyed this experience and also found it useful later on when they had to write a story in the first person from the perspective of another character.

Inter-House Competition

The Year 4s have been taking part in an inter-house Capture the Flag competition organised by the house captains. The games happened during lunch and the children really enjoyed the opportunity to support their house teams.

How we organise ourselves

Central Idea

The design and construction of structures reflects their purpose.

Lines of Inquiry

An inquiry into…

Designers use and reflect on their plans in order to be successful (REFLECTION)
The skills and knowledge needed to build structures (CAUSATION)
How purpose affects the design of structures. (CONNECTION)

We will be continuing to develop our understanding of the skills and knowledge needed to make strong and stable towers.

Mr. Lowe, who will continue to work with the children on joining techniques for cardboard. This involves the use of glue guns and we are very pleased that almost all of the children have shown themselves to be very sensible and mindful of the fact that the glue guns can get very hot.

Here are some examples of the posters the children made for our home learning last week.

Strand Maths: Shape

Central Idea

Shapes can be identified, classified and used in different ways

Lines of Inquiry

An inquiry into:

The relationship between 2D and 3D shapes
Symmetry and transformations can be found in our environment
Angles in 2D and 3D shape

We will be moving on to classify other types of 2D shapes, using mathematical language (parallel, perpendicular, symmetrical, angles (right-angle, acute, obtuse), sides, vertices, equal and opposite. We will also apply this knowledge to 3D shapes.

Our work on shape will be closely linked with our new U.O.I. on structures and design.

Writing to Entertain (First person narrative)

Next week we will finish our first person narratives based on a familiar fairy tale and will move on to explore characterisation through “showing, not telling” in the first person.

Here is an example of “show, don’t tell” for those that are unsure. It describes how the main character is feeling, without actually saying she is upset.

“I stared at her while my guts turned to liquid nitrogen and all the heat in my body rushed to my eyelids.”

Blabber Mouth, Gleitzman, M. (p. 41)

Comprehension Strategy: Making connections

The children will be reviewing the 3 main ways that we connect with texts…

text-to-self
text-to-text
text-to-world

Throughout this UOI, the children will benefit from additional session with Ms. Jeves to further develop their information literacy skills.

Congratulations to the students who were awarded Golden Book certificates on Monday!

4F – Alfie Tong

4L – Kaylee Fish

4W – Cherry Ho

homelearning

Year 4 Home Learning – 50 Word Story 26.1.18

Write a story with only 50 words! It can be about anything and written in any style (fairy tale, adventure, sci-fi, etc). It can be written in first person, like our stories in class, or can be narrated in third person. It should have some kind of problem or dilemma and should contain descriptive language so the reader can visualise what’s happening. See an example below!

Jump right into the action, and make every word count!

The best stories will be put forward as entries in the ESF 50th Anniversary Story Writing Competition!

Deadline: Friday 2nd February

Spelling

The children have a list of words they need to learn. They should practise these at home in preparation for “buddy spelling tests” (the children testing each other) in class next week.

Reading

The children have been given their Home Reading Journals and are expected to read for 20 minutes per day at their given comprehension age. Children will record the title of their book in their journal. Please discuss your child’s reading and leave a comment in the journal so that they can change their book.
To support their reading development, please make sure of the following:

Home reading should be fun not a chore.
Keep the timing short, find a comfy, quiet space and have a chat about what your child is reading. This really helps to develop their comprehension skills.
There is information about comprehension at the beginning of the journal, which you can use to help guide your discussion with your child. Please also refer to information your class teacher has sent out to you about how to help your child at home.

Mathematics
All children should aim to spend 30 minutes per week completing their assigned Mathletics tasks and/or practising their times tables.

Mandarin (All children are encouraged to take a reading book home on the days when they have Mandarin lessons.)

Ms Lynn (Home learning) – Please check your google classroom for details.

Ms Xu – 完成google classroom 练习，记得借书读书，写读书报告，完成课堂未完成的功课。