Week 8 - 9

Over the last two weeks we have continued to reading and practise reading strategies. In Week 8 we learnt to identify cause and effect relationships in procedural texts. We did this through locating important facts and details via text structures - headings, subheadings, diagrams and captions and through language features such as signal words and topic vocabulary. We did this through becoming dectectives and highlighting the signal words, underlining or circling headings/sub headings and drew arrows to show the cause and effect. This helped us to better understand information and explain how events actions and ideas are interconnected.

In Week 9 we learnt to describe how text structures help us understand the text by analysing and unpacking comprehension questions related to text features. We learnt to recognise the author's choices and how these choices help the reader understand the information they present. We did this through reading different procedural picture story books/narrative and information texts and then using questions about text features to unpack the choices the author made. Later in the week we examined text features to help nativagate texts more easily and understand information more clearly by recognising how different features contribute to the purpose of a text.

Over the last two weeks we have continued to work on writing procedural texts. We have concentrated on adding detail to our work to make them more descriptive. This week we explored using a variety of adverbs and adding them to our sentences. We started planning a new procedural text, one of our own choice or one our teachers approved of. We used a template to ensure we included a title, a goal, a list of materials/ingredients and the steps in sequential order. Next we started drafting our procedural text from our plans. We practised adding clauses to our procedural texts. 

In Week 9 we also unpacked ideas from a visual prompt to help us generate and develop ideas for writing. We practised using descriptive language, questions and inferences to expand our ideas which helps us create engaging and detailer writing pieces that will capture a reader's interest. Later in the week we used CUPS and ARMS to revise and edit or proceudural texts to prepare them for publishing. Then we published our good copy either by handwriting or by creating a multi-modal text. Lastly we wrote a creative procedural text where we had to create and write the steps for the most disgusting dessert.

In Maths we have been learning to solve addition and subtraction problems by using fact families to help us understand how different strategies can be used to solve these types of problems. Next we learnt about the commutative property of addition. We learnt that by changing the order of numbers in an addition equation and checking if the total stays the same. This helped us to solve addition problems more efficiently. Lastly we learnt how to understand equivalent number sentences by recognising the two sides of a number sentence must equal the same value. This help us to know how to balance equations. 

We also spent some time in Maths over the last two weeks getting prepared for our three way conferences and completing Essential Assessment General All in different strands to assist our teachers with knowing what we know and what we need to learn. 

In week 8 we started to plan  our 'Challenge' . We started by revisiting our  guiding questions - What are Earth’s resources and how do we use them responsibly? How do human actions affect the environment and climate? What natural processes change the Earth’s surface? How do events like earthquakes and volcanoes affect people and places? How can humans reduce damage to the environment?How can we use scientific knowledge to protect and care for Earth? We the began the research phase to design a solution, campaign, or model that shows how scientific understanding of Earth and space can improve the way we care for our planet.We began by choosing a topic that shows how scientific understanding of Earth and space can improve the way we care for our planet. We researched information on the internet related to our topic and used a graphic organiser to record the information. This continued into week 9. In week ( we also drafted the information that we intend to use in the final product and chose a method for our presentation so that we can share o our understanding of how we can improve the way we care for our planet.

Some Year 4 have been also engaged in following the FIFA World Cup. Some classes are running a sweepstake where each students received two countries. The country that wins will result in a prize to the student that has that country. We have also been very excited to watch games at different times of the day, during our lunch or snack breaks, PE lessons and as a reward in class for good behaviour.