It was terrific to see parents and students together this week, discussing school and setting goals. Though short, these snapshot conferences are important for everyone to have the same understanding of student learning, student strengths and areas to work on, in a non-judgemental and collaborative manner. Students clearly displayed increased confidence when speaking about these things with parents and teachers and showed their growth as thinkers.

During the week we continued to build our understanding of addition and subtraction strategies in maths and to widen our skills in guided reading activities. The activities we are currently doing are aimed at developing knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation of fiction stories. Our written language focus continues to be report writing as a text type and we followed the model to begin writing reports on our family's beliefs.

In our unit of inquiry work we have continued to look at the relationship between values and behaviour while starting to find out and understand more about different religions and how they impact people's beliefs and values. We were lucky to have two guest speakers in 4B, Mrs Annemarieke and Mrs Natasha, who spoke about their personal values and beliefs, where they had come from and how they affect the way they live their lives. The students had many questions and followed up by noting key points they had discovered on their Simple Minds mind maps on the iPads. Each week they are adding new findings about beliefs and values to these mind maps so that by the end of the unit they will have a great resource of personal knowledge.

We are looking forward to the Year 4 overnight camp this week at KICS stables. Camping in tents is always fun and there should be a lot of added enjoyment for the children in the activities they participate in. This will also be a great opportunity to make more friendships between classes and for Ms Isla and Ms Viv to see the children in a different context. Please make sure you go through the checklist together before Wednesday so that children are well prepared.

We have school photos on Sunday morning so we are asking all students to come to school in correct school uniform. We have PE later in the morning so they will have the chance to change for PE during Fatour time.


Week 10 in Year 4 on PhotoPeach