No Chairs!

This week saw Year 4 kick off our first POI for the year. We started the week by giving groups of students all the words to the central idea and asking them to make them into a sentence. It was pleasantly surprising to see that all the groups made their central ideas almost like the real one. Our first step to developing an understanding of the central idea was to begin learning more about what the words Value and Belief mean to us and to others. This week 4 D and E rated things at home or at school according to their perceived value. In 4E the class voted that they value chairs in the classroom the least, so the next day they had a chair free day to see if they had made the right option.

After learning about what an artifact is and how an object can be filled with both value and belief we all presented ours to the class on Thursday/Friday.This was a great opportunity for class mates to talk about their personal values and at the same time learn more about each other.

In literacy we started our unit in letter writing. Our focus for our letter writing is reflection (asking questions in our letter that leads the reader to reflect) and responsibility (writing in a responsible manner). 4D have nearly finished their first letter and 4 E are waiting to get some letters from their year 1 friends on Monday. In Maths  we have spent the week reviewing and expanding on place value and bench marks. We used base 10 blocks and place value grids to help kick start our brain back into maths.

Next week we will continue to work on letter writing and we will begin 'rounding' in Maths. In POI we will now start to focus more on our personal values and where they come from as well as what expectation do we have at home (in regards to values), so be prepared for some questions next week!

Have a good weekend!

(Homework will be posted up Monday 3rd Sept).

Who We Are

This week in Year 4 we have started our first Program of Inquiry (or POI) for the year. Over the next six weeks we will be inquiring into Beliefs and Values; personal and spiritual, under the transdisciplinary theme of Who We Are

Our central idea for this Inquiry is; Understanding different peoples beliefs and values helps us understand perspective.

We will be using three lines of inquiry to help each of us develop a better understanding of the central idea. These are;

• Our values are influenced by family and friends
• We build relationships with people that have qualities that we value
• Different religions and cultures have similar values

Key concepts that we will also be focusing an are; perspective, responsibility and reflection
Attitude; tolerance
Profile; open-minded

As always the transdisciplinary theme, central idea, lines of inquiry, key concepts, attitude, and all the Profiles will permeate through all of our learning in every discipline this year.