Yr4 Curriculum Update – 22/09/17
Working together to achieve success for every child
Dear Parents,
Since our last update, the students have spent a lot of time inquiring into what a successful learner is and does. By reflecting on the traits of a successful learner, the children have been able to identify the learner profiles that enable them to be successful so that they can ultimately create their own action plan to achieve an independent learning goal. This process will involve the students using the two key approaches to learning we are focusing on in this unit – metacognition (thinking about our thinking) and informed choices.
In written language we have continued to explore the ideas we can use to add interest for our reader and how our personal voice helps to make our writing unique. The students have been set a daily writing prompt to write about in their personal journals.
During reading we have continued to look at how we monitor our comprehension and use our inner voice to help us notice when we have stopped understanding. Once we have noticed that, we are then able to use a fix-up strategy to get back on track. The strategies we can use can be reading on, re-reading, noticing words we don’t know and inferring the meaning. We have also begun to think about the connections we can make to the text including: connections to our prior knowledge, personal connections (text to self), connections to other similar texts read (text to text) and real life connections (text to world).
In Maths we have continued to focus on place value by inquiring into how we round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000. The students have enjoyed playing games using rounding and have applied their understanding of rounding to explore open-ended problems.
Year Four have continued practising their art skills and improving their painting and drawing techniques. Students were inspired by op art from Bridget Riley, who is an abstract painter.
Students have also explored line and form to create graffiti styles.
How you can help at home
Continue to encourage your child to share the thinking they do when they are reading and what strategies they use when they get stuck. Discuss with your child what they are doing to be a successful learner for example: noticing what they understand and don’t understand; getting ideas or help from someone else; identifying the mistakes they have made and how they fixed them up.
A date for your diaries:
Tuesday 26th September at 3:00pm Camp meeting in the Library:
We will give you all of the information you will need to prepare your child for camp including the kit list!
Remember if you have any concerns or questions about your child’s learning and wellbeing at school please contact your child’s teacher in the first instance
Kind Regards
Team Year 4.
