Yr4 Weekly Update – 01/26/17

We have completed our summative assessments this week and children are in the process of reflecting on their learning in this unit. We have been creating next steps for ourselves to work on over the next few weeks in the skills and dispositions we have been using.  We have added voice tracks to our animated videos and created credits and titles in iMovie.

Classes have been marking the Lunar New Year celebration in different ways and it was great to see all the fine outfits on Thursday. All the very best for the holidays from all of us in Year 4.

Maths

We have been using our understanding in fractions to solve problems and investigate different ways to divide shapes. Being able to talk about different ‘models’ of fractions has helped to develop a better conceptual understanding. A very common misconception when transferring meaning to a numerical form is to talk about “the number on the top and the number on the bottom”. This confuses children because the whole fraction is the number. A simple change in the language that we use to explain how it is notated can avoid years of ‘fear’ of fractions. Instead,

Literacy
More work this week on summarising and synthesising. This builds on a previous strategy of determining importance as we need to know what is important before we can write a summary. We have continued reading each others’ reports on adaptations and collecting useful feedback from each other on how to improve them.