Pen Licences

In year 4 students can earn their pen licence. We have handed out our first four pen licence certificates today and I've just finished putting together their official licences so that they can start writing with pen tomorrow. It is very exciting! The laminated licences will be handed out tomorrow...

I see some pen shopping in the future for our four graduates!!

Pastel and watercolour

Over the last week we have drawn buildings, traced over our lines carefully with a black oil pastel and are now beginning to use vibrant water colours to paint our creations.

Plant Diary

Our broad beans have been growing primary and secondary roots and recently they have been growing their stems and leaves. We've found that forgetting to water your plant means that it doesn't grow as well and that too much water can kill a plant. Here are some of the fabulous diary entries and diagrams we have been doing in science lessons.

Graphing and computers

We learnt to make a graph using Microsoft word. It meant that we were doing computers and maths at the same time! We had to open a word document and then go to the insert tab at the top of the page and insert a chart. That is the little coloured picture with three cylinders next to each other. We then chose a column graph in the pop-up menu, entered our data in the excel sheet that automatically opened on the right of our screen and then watched the graph magically take shape.

We all managed to create our own labelled column graph and most of us also got to print it out. Some of us even tried our hands at making a 3D column graph and a pie graph.

What does a million look like?

During maths we talked about a million. What does it look like? Where do we see the word million? What does it mean? What does a million lots of things look like?

There were so many great answers. We found out that a million has 7 digits and that it is a very large. We practiced reading numbers with millions and thousands. We found that after the first number in a million we say the word 'million'. We then read the next three numbers and say 'thousand' after that. Finally we read the last three numbers.

For example:

1 235 778

We say:

one 'million', two hundred and thirty-five 'thousand', seven hundred and seventy-eight. Some of us practiced reading numbers in the millions and some of us practiced reading numbers in the thousands. We all did really well.

After that we practiced breaking numbers into parts. We had to work out how many thousands, hundreds, tens and units in a number. 

Reading and Writing up a storm

This morning we had some time to do sustained silent reading of our novel. We found out that the word sustained means maintained or continuous without interruption. We enjoyed the chance to read in class and really found it hard to stop when it was time to write our summaries. We talked about the parts of a summary and remembered that a summary retells a story or text in a short way using the main ideas. We had to think about who (the characters in our story), the what (plot and what is happening) and the setting (where is the story mostly told).

We brainstormed under these headings and then tried to put our planning into sentences that made sense. Some of us had a chance to share our summaries. We are thinking about ways to start our writing all the time to make it interesting.

After our novel study time was over we looked at using sizzling starts to make our writing more interesting. We wanted to see if authors also use interesting beginnings to draw the reader in. We got into groups and began searching for sizzling starts. Some of the novels had wonderful beginnings to the book or the chapter. Others were not as well written. We chose the best sentences and then shared them. Some of us used these to write our own sizzling starts.

The Beatty Clan

Today the Beatty Clan came to perform at our school. Our class sat at the back of the hall, after a kindy, year 1, year 2 and year 3 class. We got to sing songs with actions, find out about both the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags and what the colours and shapes on them mean and learn the names of some new instruments.

Year 4 in our class got to go up on stage and sing a song in front of the rest of the students in the hall. They were so happy and grinned throughout their performance.

The teachers even had to have a go!

3 Dimensional Objects

Three dimensional objects have edges, faces and corners. They have names like cubes, cones, pyramids, prisms, cylinders and spheres. Exactly where can you see these? We went on a mission to find some of these 3D objects in our playground. We found many cylinders. Everything from the posts holding up the bridges to the monkey bars and tubes protecting the chains on the climbing frame. Rectangular prisms were the steps on the fort and the pieces of wood on the bridge. We even saw some balls which are called spheres. We had to draw diagrams of these in our maths books and then describe them using the correct mathematical terms.

Literacy

We listened to the story 'Nail Soup' and just before the ending we stopped the story and then had to create an alternate ending. We talked about the different ways we could begin our paragraphs. Mrs Taylor keeps telling us to write our stories starting right from the action, with people speaking or with a sound. These 'sizzling starters' help to make our stories more interesting and make the audience want to keep reading.

NAPLAN week

This week has been a week of NAPLAN  tests for year 3 and 5. We've done the language conventions, writing and today the reading tests. Students have been really calm and focused and the rest of the school has been really quiet and allowed us to go on with our tests with no interuptions. The NAPLAN

 tests have been in the morning sessions, except for the first day where there were two tests to fit into the day. That has meant that we have been fitting our literacy and numeracy lessons around the rest of the day as best we can. Finishing NAPLAN this week will let us get back to our reading groups and novel study in the mornings, maths in the middle session and our science, art and yoga in between these.

Reading groups have changed for this term and students have begun a novel of their choice with a little encouragement and guidance from their teachers to make sure they have the perfect novel for their ability. The compromise has meant that everyone is pretty happy with their choice. We have a range of novels from the classic 'Charlotte's Web' to the fantasy novel, 'Rowen of Rin'. We will be using the super six comprehension strategies from last term to help us work our way through our novel and also be looking at the setting, characters and plot.

This has been the second week of Yoga. Year 4 had their lesson without year 3 this week because of NAPLAN. Mrs Stanford stayed with year 4 while they were at their Yoga lesson as Mrs Taylor was with year 3 supervising their NAPLAN test. Year 3 will get to catch up on their lesson later in the week. The comments after our Yoga lessons have been very positive! Everyone seems to love it!

The week in pictures...