Grade 4 Term 3 Newsletter

This Term Newsletter will provide you with information about your children’s upcoming teaching and learning experiences in the new term. There is also plenty of additional information provided via Compass throughout the school year, so please make a point of touching base regularly.

WELCOME TO TERM 3, 2023!
We hope you enjoyed the school holidays and are staying warm. With half the year behind us, the Grade 4 team is looking forward to another fantastic term of learning! We would like to thank you all for supporting us through a great first semester. We are sure you would have been able to celebrate your child's achievements recorded in their first semesters reports and know that you will encourage their continued efforts in striving for their best.

As always, Term 3 is an exciting time of the year. Not only are students well-versed in classroom routines and expectations, but several exciting activities await students in the weeks ahead! Healthy Heroes Geelong Cats, Life Education Van and a crowd favourite Book Week. Book Week commences on August 21st and runs until to 23rd of August. There will be a num exciting opportunities where we can celebrate authors, illustrators and the love of books and reading. Our Book Week parade will be on Wednesday August 23rd at 9am - 11am, we would love to see as many of our special people attend this assembly as possible. So it’s time to start thinking about those costumes!

READING:
Students have been setting up their new Classroom Libraries for Semester 2 with a new range of books early this term and we will continue to work on their individual reading goals. As teachers, it is always incredibly rewarding to see our students reading independently for a sustained period of 30 minutes or more each day! As always, we encourage students to borrow frequently from both the school and classroom libraries so that they can enjoy a variety of rich literature when completing their reading at home.

Over the next few weeks, we will be working with students to develop their ability to identify the main idea of a text and summarise the key points. Our next focus will then be on analysing and critiquing a text by making judgements about authors intentions, word choice, structure and thinking about how these can effect the reader.

WRITING:
We are incredibly proud of the writing pieces that the students in grade 4 are producing. For the first three weeks the students are learning the key skills to create an information report. Students are working on skills such as note taking, paragraphing, and drafting using the structures and features of an information text. Further into the Term we are then going to continue focusing on the 6 + 1 Traits (Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Organisation, Conventions, Ideas, Voice and Presentation) of writing through the lens of poetry.

MATHS:
The Term 3 Mathematics topics for Grade 4 are - Fractions including: Decimals, Percentages, Time, problem solving and patterns through shape and numbers. A major focus of our Mathematics program is to involve students in ‘real life’ numeracy problems where they are able to apply their skills and knowledge to discover solutions. An important yearly focus for Grade 4 students is for them to know their times tables. All classes will spend time on a variety of activities and games to allow students to develop an understanding of multiplication and number facts.

INQUIRY:
This term our students will continue exploring inquiry throughout all curriculum areas. Our topic is ‘What a Wonderful World’. The key understandings we will explore relate to the following - The earth is divided into large areas of land that are called continents. There are natural and human characteristics of continents, climate and weather, habitats, flora and fauna, population, geographical features, natural resources, and industry.

A friendly reminder that coming up to Term 4 we have our Grade 4 camp. Camp Wilkin is Wednesday 11th October until Friday 13th October. Please make sure you have those dates in your calendar! Details about Camp Wilkin can be found as an Event on Compass. There will be lots of information to come, so keep an eye out.

Each year level team has provided their families with a detailed newsletter such as this. If you are interested in reading about all the exciting things happening across the rest of the school these can be accessed online at our school website from early next week.

Kind Regards,
Milli Gardiner, Justin Rae, Blake Freeman, Mel Tinkler, Greg Quirk and Kerry Barnwell