Dear 4K Parents,
Here goes the last fortnight (and a bit) of Term 3! With a few events coming up, it's sure to be a busy time!
We had a lovely morning yesterday with our visit to the church and joining in the parish mass with Father Archie. Eddie and Harry did an excellent job as volunteer altar servers and our wonderful behaviour and reverence received praise and a even some claps from some regular parishioners. Well done Year 4 crew - its been a while since we have last made it to church with wild weather cancelling our other two scheduled visits and it was nice to spend our morning fulfilling an aspect of being members of a Catholic school.
SeeSaw Updates
I have finished uploading an example of reading today for all students and last week we shared our amazing rosary presentations as a part of our religion unit. Seesaw is a great way to keep informed about what your child has been learning and their achievement. Please check in to your child's seesaw journal to keep updated on their learning. A great way is to turn on notifications so that you are aware when new work samples are shared.
Learning Journey
Another great way to see more about your child's learning is the open classrooms event next Wednesday after school. In 4K we will put out a sample of work such as our published writing copies, art, maths thinking scrapbooks and other subject areas for you to peruse and discuss their learning with your child.
Homework
Just a reminder that our fortnightly homework set is due tomorrow (end of even weeks of each term) for Week 7 and 8. Please continue with regular reading on week nights and fill out the log. The students are still asked to complete the four Maths columns across the fortnight and we will be discussing some of the answers and strategies in class every second Friday. I have also started the BANQER online app as a reward, and those who have completed and brought in their homework will be rewarded again. I am very impressed with the effort and increased numbers of homework completed this term in comparison to earlier this year.
A Learning Snapshot...
We are just finishing up our learning unit in mathematics on multiplication and division. Being able to recall multiplication and associated division facts up to 10x 10 is a part of the Year 4 mathematics curriculum. We practise daily mental maths to build up these automatic recall skills throughout the year but if would be greatly beneficial if you also ensure your child is practising their table facts most nights. It is a big jump from Year 3 expectations (2x, 3x, 5x 10x only) so additional practise using verbal recall games, flash card flip, online games would greatly benefit students who are not yet able to state their times tables facts. Saying them in the car on the way to school or sport or preparing dinner is another great way to squeeze in extra maths facts each day. Please feel free to email me if you would like me to send home a particular set of times table flash cards to practise. As your child may have mentioned, I love teaching maths and we are all so proud of ourselves and how far we have all grown in our numeracy skills this year.
We have completed our first novel study by Kate Dicamillo called "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" with great success. This week I have introduced our brand new novel "The Grandest Bookshop in the World" which has been written based upon the real bookshop in Melbourne. It is a wonderful story about magic and adventure and has some wonderful vocabulary as well.
In writing, we have completed our procedural text that will train our chosen mythical creature to perform a trick or useful skill and published copies of our instructions for you to look at during our open night and shared our hot task procedure writing skills on our SEESAW journal as well. The last couple of weeks we have studied the explanation text genre which is a text that explains how something works or how something occurs or happens. Some pretty cool life cycle explanations are currently in the draft process!
- Please continue to charge laptops every night to ensure that they come to school 100% charged. The coloured lights on next to the plug in section of the laptop tell you if it is fully charged or needs charging, changing from an orange light to a white light. A great method is for kids to come home, put on charge and then place in bags fully charged after dinner so they are ready to go. It is also a great habit to encourage students to keep their laptops in their bags when they aren't being charged as they will notice the weight difference in their bags when picking them up in the morning and they won't be forgotten. Unfortunately there is often several kids each day who are coming to school with uncharged laptops which will result in a few BANQER fines for repeated offenders as it hinders their daily learning especially with it happening to multiple students at the same time.
- Library bags are required on a Monday and the students are expected to borrow each week. We are encouraging students to try and include a variety of books each week to try out some new literary genres they may not normally choose.
- Please take some time to check in with our school policy on our schools webpage around hair cuts and uniform expectations for the last couple of weeks of school - this includes socks or incorrect shoes and jewellery.
Social Intelligence...this is a big one to have a handle on in a busy classroom...when a person knows what makes other people tick, he or she is displaying social intelligence.
They’re aware of the motives and feelings of themselves and others, and how to fit into different social situations.
Thank you for your continued support,
Penny and Gemma
