Our end of year video - A look at our world

THE END OF A SUCCESSFUL YEAR

A LOOK INTO OUR WORLD
4M NEWSLETTER
NOVEMBER 2008

Dear Parents

As the Christmas holidays approach, we are spending time together working on Christmas activities, talking about the successes of the year, reflecting on our achievements and enjoying each other’s company. Reports have been completed and these will be mailed home in the first week of the holidays.

The children have accomplished a great deal and I think that they have enjoyed many of the learning opportunities that they have been involved in. They have been challenged, stimulated
and motivated to reach for the heights and to be the best that they can be.

I would like to thank you all for your support on the home front, and a special thanks to those parents who were able to spare some time to provide additional support in the classroom at various times throughout the year.

We have had a most rewarding year and the children can be very proud of their achievements.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy holiday.
I wish all of the children the best of luck in Grade 5 or as they head off on adventures to new schools. It has been a pleasure to teach you this year!

With best wishes
Mrs. M


A NETWORK OF FRIENDS - A NETWORKED COMMUNITY
The children shared gifts, cards and poems with the folk at the Good Shepher Home. They also put on a Christmas concert.This is what the children said about the experience in their reflections:
"It was good to see the smiles on the peoples faces."
"I was glad to make the hour the happiest hour for some people."
"I felt proud to be part of TGS and to make a difference in the community."
"I was part of a community action and I wish that I could do this again."
"It was fun but hard talking to older people."

Haundenwasser- our artwork

This is work done by students in the class, We would appreciate it if you would click on the comment box and post a comment about the work.

Stable Strucutres

This week we re-looked at our structures. We realised that we needed to include additional support structures.
We viewed a slide show on stable structures and got some ideas of support structures.


We then had another go at building a tower. We still used 30 sticks but this time we used skewers instead of straws. We used blue tac instead of tape.
We included support structures using criss cross shapes, additional prop up legs and triangles in the corners. Our towers were much more stable and we were very proud of ourselves.

Swimming started today

We had a wonderful time at the pool practising our swimming skills. The water was wonderful!

The start to Term 4

Our first week of Term 4 is well on its way and we have had a lot of fun in Science. We are investigating design and construction and we are looking at how to make a structure remain strong and rigid under some sort of load.
In our first lesson we have to build a tower using straws and tape. We can only use 30 straws and 60cm of tape. The tower has to be able to stand on its own, it meeds to have a flat top and it has to be more than 25 cm high.
We have to work in teams of three and each person has a specific job although we all have to be involved in the building of the tower.
We have looked at a number of different bridges and we have talked about solid structures.
These pictures show the beginning of this task.

Science Fair celebration- Term 3

Our term ended with a wonderful celebration of science where the students were able to share their hard work with friends and family. The students in Year 4 have been busily working on a science fair investigation of their choice.
The students used the scientific method to conduct a scientific investigation, and they learnt about how to carry out a fair test.
We enjoyed a super shared afternoon tea. Thank you to the students for all their hard work and to the parents for their wonderful support of this occassion.
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Disco Dancing

A celebration of our school

This week we had Open Night. We had a chance to visit the Year 5 and Year 6 classes to see what our future holds and we were also able to share our learning with others who visited our classroom.
The Open Night was a wonderful evening with many students from our class performing on the night.

The Olympic Games

We are going to discussing the rights and responsibilities of the athletes competing in the Olympic Games. We looked at the A.S.P.R.E acronym for the Australian Olympic team.
We discussed what each letter stood for and what an athlete would do to display these values or qualities.
This is some of our work.





Keep an eye on the clock to see how long to go before the Beijing Olympics begins.

Can we have rights without responsibility?

This is the main question that we are investigating in our Inquiry.
After asking many questions about what this could mean, we decided that we would all have to agree on what we meant by the word " responsibility ".
After lots of discussion, this is what we came up with.

Our busy week - Week 3

We had a busy week at school. Our mums and dads came to visit our teachers this week to discuss our progress during parent interviews.
In Literacy we are reading Myths and Legends and we are going to write our own Australian myth or porquoi story.
To launch our reading, we read many versions of Maui and the Sun and we watched a video of this as well. In art we used wax and dye to create our impressions of the anguish of the sun. We feel very proud of our work.
Take a look at the slide show of some of our completed paintings.
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Maui vs the Sun

This week 4M also won the Environment Award for the second time in a row. The award is won by the class who keeps their area rubbish free. Well done 4M

Inquiry learning

Today we launched into our Inquiry for this term.Our big question is:
'Can we have rights without responsibility?'
Our teacher, Mrs M started off with some questions to get us thinking about rights and responsibilities and then we came up with lots of questions of our own. After that we used a graphic organiser to record our thinking on what we thought "Responsibility" was - what it looked like, sounded like and felt like.
Then we got together in pairs and we shared and discussed our ideas with a partner. After that two sets of pairs joined, and four of us worked together to on our graphic organisers, comparing out ideas and thinking and discussing this word and what it actually means.

The end of a week

We have had a good start to Term 3 and everyone is keen and eager to learn and have fun at school.
This week we have been striving for accuracy in spelling in our writing. We have done a dictation exercise each morning and we can't believe how much we have improved in one week.
We have also started reading a selection of myths and legends and we have read many version of the myth "Maui and the Sun".
Today we started some art work on this myth. We will show you our pictures when they are finished.
We have been talking about questions, the types of questions and we looked at some pictures of the Olympic Games and we had to work in pairs and write down as many questions that we could think of. This was quite challenging and was much more difficult than we thought it would be.
Today was Nelson Mandela's 9oth birthday and we read about him on the internet and we sent him an online birthday greeting.
It was also Nicholas's birthday this week- Happy Birthday Nic!
We also had a chance to work on the laptops this week and we started to set up our own diaries on our class website.
It was a good week.

A look into our World.

This is the start of an exciting adventure!
We are a group of Year 4 students attending a primary school in Northern Queensland, Australia. We live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, with the Great Barrier Reef right on our doorstep, beautiful beaches and wonderful weather.
This is our space for celebrating our successes, sharing our learning and inviting students from schools from all over the world to make contact with us. We will also showcase our work for family and friends to read and see. We are keen to share and exchange experiences, cultures and learn more about each other.
Enjoy taking a look into our world! Your comments and feedback will be appreciated.
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