Friday Weekly Reflection 33

Hello Grade 4 Families, 

I hope you have had a great week!

Grade 4 has been busy taking action this week!

We started the week of really pleasantly, with a well deserved trip to Yoyogi park!

The group have been organizing a fundraising event for the victims of the Nepalese earthquake.  They made a plan and worked really cooperatively to organize this initiative. See the images below for their work so far and the poster they intend to put up around the school. 

We have also begun our new inquiry; New digital media changes the way in which people access information and connect to each other. First, we investigated forms of communication and the ways in which communication has changed over time. We considered how many times we digitally communicate in a day, versus how many times we communicate through non-digital means. Students are enthusiastic and curious about older communication technologies and were very amused when I showed them a photo of the first mobile phone!

We are going to focus primarily on new digital media, particularly social media and the way it impacts our lives (both positively and negatively). 

Mathematics this week has involved some more work on division strategies as well as pattern making and collecting and displaying data. Students conducted surveys at the beginning of the week to help them with the fundraising initiative. 

We spent language time recording our persuasive speeches and will be working on persuasive techniques a little more throughout the new unit of inquiry.

Undokai practice is still going really well and it is wonderful see the students become more confident in themselves and their bodies!

Until next week, 

- Miss Raciti

 

Friday Weekly Reflection 32

Good Afternoon Grade 4 Families,

Welcome back! 

I hope everyone had a safe, happy and refreshing Golden Week!

The energy is high in the Grade 4 classroom. 

Undokai practice is incredibly exciting and it is great to see the enthusiasm from grade 4 when they participate. Everyone is putting in 110% effort.

This week, grade 4 finished their persuasive speeches and presented them to the class. The commitment to this task that most students have demonstrated has really made for some interesting and entertaining speeches. 

During Mathematics, we practiced division at one station and another station was dedicated to ordering and comparing decimals. 

Language time was dedicated to completing the persuasive speeches, giving medals and missions and polishing the presentation aspect of the task. 

That is all for this week, 

- Miss Raciti

Friday Weekly Reflection 31

Hello Grade 4 Families, 

This week, although a little disjointed due to the public holiday right in the middle, was a productive week for grade 4. 

We have started examining how to be persuasive in both writing and speaking and the students have been busy preparing a speech about the importance of children's rights. We will hopefully have them ready for presentation in the first week back after the break. It was a good opportunity for students to reflect on the opinion piece they wrote for the ISA test and take action to improve in this area of their learning. We started with a very basic persuasive argument structure using a computer program that scaffolds the students' ideas and creates a printable planner. It worked fantastically as a visual organizer for students and their speeches are coming along fantastically. We discussed persuasive techniques such as rhetorical questions, expert quotes and statistics and appealing to emotions (among others). 

In mathematics, we have worked some more on decimals and students examined decimals using money. They undertook a menu challenge, where they practiced adding and subtracting amounts of money by "purchasing" various items from a restaurant menu. It was a good opportunity for the students to put their knowledge into practice, although some debated the necessity to learn about currency other than yen. I look forward to moving ahead with the unit when students have returned from the break. 

Just a reminder, Undokai practice will begin as soon as we return from holidays. Students are required to bring their P.E uniform 

Well, that is all for this week. 

Have a happy, healthy and safe Golden Week holiday! 

- Miss Raciti

Kotowaza(Proverb) book

Grade 4 students have been learning Kotowaza, Japanese proverbs.

There are so many proverbs and set sayings in Japanese and knowing proverbs will make their Japanese more natural and improve the understanding of the Japanese way of thinking.

They picked some of their favorite Kotowaza and made their own proverbs.

They also made a surprise present for you...

Weekly Reflection 29 & 30

Hello Grade 4 Families, 

My apologies for not publishing the blog last week! I have combined the last 2 weeks to give you a glimpse of what has been happening in the Grade 4 classroom. 

During Mathematics, the rotations have been working really well. The students are revising  3D shapes, particularly their 2D net representations. Additionally, the group has begun working with decimals, focusing this week on reading, writing and comparing tenths and hundredths.

Language and Inquiry have been combined quite a lot over the past 2 weeks, particularly in preparation for the "A Day in the Life" project. I am sure those of you who were able to attend International Children's Day would agree that the final products were fantastic. 

Grade 4 students have really engaged with our current unit of inquiry, focused on the challenges and opportunities faced by children around the world. Throughout our discussions, they have exhibited so much thoughtfulness and provided many empathetic responses. The "A Day in the Life" project allowed students to explore 2 perspectives and compare and contrast lifestyles that were similar and dissimilar to their own. When the task was completed, students decided that the main skills they used throughout the project were the following, which became their assessment criteria:

• "Research skills to find out about the child in the photo and where they come from"
• "Thinking skills to put the information in their own words and create a schedule about what that child's lifestyle might be like"
• "Communication skills to write the schedule in the right way (a schedule) using the right spelling and tense"
•  "Self Management skills to be organized and make sure the project is finished on time"

Students also identified that when doing this project it was important to think about perspectives and reflect on their own lifestyle. 

This week, grade 4 watched a provoking advertisement about the year in the life of a child who was involved in war and investigated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The students then wrote 3 journal entries from the perspective of the child in the video to express how she might be feeling which aligned well with our third line of inquiry; how children feel about their lives.

Next week we will be learning about persuasive writing techniques in Language time and will use these to create a  persuasive argument about the importance of children's rights. 

I also included some photographs from our photo shoot last week as well as some snaps from International Children's Day. Enjoy. 

That is all for now, 

-Miss Raciti