Year 4 Update – Wk 18
Monday 23rd January – New Unit of Inquiry begins
Wednesday 25th January – Chinese New Year Performance at 6pm
Thursday 26th January – China Day, school ends at 3pm
Monday 6th February – First day back at school
Wednesday 8th February – Marie Merchand Parenting workshop @ 6.30pm
Friday 10th February – 4W Class Assembly
Tuesday 14th February – Y2 Bake Sale – bring some money for a tasty treat!
Friday 24th February – 4L Class Assembly
Friday 3rd March – Student Led Conference
Home Reading Journals
We have noticed that after the holiday, the children have found it a little challenging to get back into school routines, and have found it particularly hard to remember to bring in the Home Reading Journals on a daily basis. Please could you help them remember to pack them in their bags after reading every evening. The Home Reading Journals are a really useful way of keeping track of their daily reading and help to make the students accountable for their reading.
Portfolios
Please make sure your child has returned their portfolio!
Mount Davis, Hong Kong Island – Mr Thompson and Ms Wu
Shep Kip Mei Art Centre – Ms Fisher
Hong Kong Park and The Peak – Mrs Fennelly and Ms Mak
Where We Are in Place and Time
Central Idea: Change in our world can happen through exploration and discovery.
Lines of Inquiry
An inquiry into:
- explorations and discoveries that have changed our world (CHANGE)
- why people choose to explore and discover (CAUSATION)
This week the children decided on a different explorer they would like to research in more detail or have been put into a group from which they will decide together which explorer to find out more about. They will be carry out some research and present their learning in an information poster designed using the C.R.A.B. design principals (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Balance).
Central Idea – Objects and events have attributes that can be measured using appropriate tools.
Lines of Inquiry:
- Read and write the time to the minute and investigate the relationship between units of time.
- Convert between the units of time.
- Describe time and duration (elapsed) in terms of am and pm.
The children will participate in a series of open-ended tasks which have required them to work out elapsed time (duration).
Number Maths: Operations – Multiplication and Division
Central Idea – The operations of multiplication and division are related to each other and used to process information to solve problems
Lines of Inquiry:
- The methods that are used to solve calculations
- The operations of multiplication and division
- The different relationships between the four operations
This week the children have completed their subtraction and addition by consolidating their skills using rich learning tasks and larger numbers. Next week, the children will return to multiplicative thinking and will be challenged to work out problems within the areas of “twice as many” and multiples.
- to argue a case from a particular point of view
- to attempt to convince the reader/listener
Over the coming week, the students synthesise everything that have learnt and practised about exposition writing and apply it to the creation of their own expositions.
- supporting arguments/reasons with examples and sufficient evidence/detail
- using emotive language to effectively persuade others
Comprehension Key: Summarising and Synthesising
In the next weeks the children will reflect on their reading and make note of how their thinking changes in the process. The sentence starters in the image above will be modelled during class / guided reading of fiction and non-fiction texts.
Daily home reading
A reminder that the colour of the home reading book your child brings home will reflect their reading ability at the end of Year 3. However, as reading assessments continue over the course of the coming few weeks, this may or may not change. PLEASE be reminded that the colour sticker on the reading book your child brings home is far less significant than the development of fluency AND comprehension. There is also an expectation that your child will read a book and complete any quizzes on Reading Eggspress twice a week.
Spelling
The children will have 10 new words to learn each week (Friday) and will be tested on them by a classmate three times per week. The words they have consist of some vocabulary relevant to our current U.O.I., some words relating to the spelling rule that we are currently learning about and some words of their choice.
Year 4 Home Learning – UOI – Ongoing
D.I.Y.
We’ve been so impressed to hear about the enthusiasm and progress students have shown over the holidays working towards their patches on DIY.org. Please continue with this for the remainder of this unit of inquiry. Don’t forget to blog about your progress on your class blog! Also, take the time to comment on your friend’s posts too.
*It is an expectation that the children devote some time at home to develop some new skills over the next few weeks and post their experience on the class blog as they progress through tasks.
