19 Jan 2018

Year 4 Update – Wk 18

Friday 26th January 2018 – 4F Class Assembly 9am

Wednesday 31st January 2018 – Marie Marchand Parent Workshop 6pm – 8pm (please see details below)

Tuesday 6th February – Y2 Bake Sale – Bring some money and a snack box in order to buy a delicious treat

Monday 12th February – BHS China Day Activities (more details to follow)

Tuesday 13th February – Chinese New Year performance to parents 6pm

Friday 16th February – Half Term begins (3pm finish)

Monday 26th February – First day back

Congratulations Ms. Wu!

As some of you may know, tomorrow is a very special day for lovely Ms. Wu, as she is getting married! We would like to take this opportunity to wish, both, her and her husband-to-be every happiness for tomorrow and their future together.

(We couldn’t resist sneaking in this fabulous photo, sorry Ms. Wu!)

4W P.E.

Please note that for the following 6 weeks, 4W’s PE lessons will be on Mondays with Mr. Teahan and Wednesdays with Ms. Wu (not Thursdays) so 4W students will need to wear P.E. kit on these days.

Ukuleles!

Please encourage your child to remember to bring their ukuleles and ukulele booklets to school on the appropriate day. At the moment, we still have quite

a few children forgetting their instruments.

4F – Thursday

4L – Tuesday

4W – Tuesday

Ukulele Club – Wednesday lunchtime (this only applies to members of this club and they know who they are).

BAKE SALES – Keeping our playground clean!

This week lots of children bought cakes from the bake sale. Each cake is handed to the children in a tissue. Unfortunately tissue cannot be recycled in Hong Kong and has

to go to the landfills. Also, many children left bits of cake and tissue on the floor as they did not have a container to eat from. From now on, on bake sale days the children should bring a reusable container to school to put the cake in while they eat it to stop the rubbish problem. The next bake sale will take place on Tuesday 6th February. Thank you very much!

4F assembly

We look forward to welcoming 4F parents to see their children perform in their assembly next week (Friday 26th January). Please be seated in the Hall ready for a 9am start.

Marie Marchand Parent Workshop

We are delighted to welcome back Marie Marchand to present at Beacon Hill School on January 31st from 6-8pm. This year’s focus will be positive behaviour management strategies for parents- Discipline without Shouting. Please see the details and sign up via the gateway https://tg.esf.edu.hk The cost will be $50 per person.

Marie is an excellent speaker- both entertaining and informative and we thoroughly recommend any parents from year 1-6 to come and enjoy her presentation.

Student Council Fruity Friday

Please remember to provide your child with a healthy fruity snack on Fridays!

Y4 Teacher Contact Information

4F – Mrs Fennelly – charlotte.fennelly@bhs.edu.hk

4L – Miss Fisher – laura.fisher@bhs.edu.hk

4W – Miss Wu – jane.wu@bhs.edu.hk

Year 4 Learning Support Teacher – Ms Mak – haymen.mak@bhs.edu.hk

Vice Principal – Mr Thompson – andy.thompson@bhs.edu.hk

Unit of Inquiry/English

We have been wrapping up our work on explorations and discoveries that have changed the world. The children created pages for a class text about an explorer/scientist/inventor/innovator of their choice who had changed the world by addressing three key questions…

1. Who was this person? (brief biography)

2. What did they do that was significant?

3. How has their exploration/discovery changed the world?

Here are some of the portraits 4F created to accompany their text…

Preparing for our next U.O.I.

This week all Year 4 students undertook a pre-assessment to allow us to start thinking about our new U.O.I. The challenge was to build the tallest free-standing structure using only 10 sheets of newspaper and 1metre of tape. Many of the students thought this was going to be easy as they recalled doing similar challenges in the past. However, many of them found it much more difficult than they expected!

This was a very useful exercise for us all, as we know now exactly what we need to work on as the unit commences next week.

How we organise ourselves

Central Idea

The design and construction of structures reflects their purpose.

Lines of Inquiry

An inquiry into…

Designers use and reflect on their plans in order to be successful (REFLECTION)
The skills and knowledge needed to build structures (CAUSATION)
How purpose affects the design of structures. (CONNECTION)

We will be reflecting on what we learnt from the pre-assessment (building newspaper towers) in order to improve our designs. We will be starting to learn some techniques for joining materials and have a go at creating a new tower using different materials, including Strawbees.

Throughout this U.O.I. we will also be working closely with Mr. Lowe, who will be sharing his knowledge of design and construction and supporting up with making cardboard structures, amongst other things.

Strand Maths: Shape

Central Idea

Shapes can be identified, classified and used in different ways

Lines of Inquiry

An inquiry into:

The relationship between 2D and 3D shapes
Symmetry and transformations can be found in our environment
Angles in 2D and 3D shape

We will be beginning this inquiry with a pre-assessment to find out what the children already know. Our initial focus will be on 2D shapes, particularly 4-sided shapes and all the different ways they can be named and classified.

Our work on shape will be closely linked with our new U.O.I. on structures and design.

Writing to Entertain (First person narrative)

Next week students will begin to think about narrative by reading some familiar fairytales told from different perspectives. We will be hot-seating (interviewing) the min characters to help us think about their views and feelings. This will enable us have a go at rewriting familiar stories from a different point-of-view.

Comprehension Strategy: Making connections

The children will be reviewing the 3 main ways that we connect with texts…

text-to-self
text-to-text
text-to-world

We will be applying this comprehension strategy to the fairytales we read and non-fiction texts related to structures.

Throughout this UOI, the children will benefit from additional session with Ms. Jeves to further develop their information literacy skills.

Congratulations to the students who were awarded Golden Book certificates on Monday!

4F – Victoria Teh

4L – Liane Thang

4W – Trinity Wong

Mandarin – Cadence Wong

homelearning

Home Learning – Favourite structures – 19.1.18

Create an A4 poster to show some of your favourite structures from around the world (buildings, towers, bridges). Label each picture with the name of the structure and where it is located. You may create this poster by hand or use Google docs or Google drawings. Try to include at least 5 structures.

Deadline: Friday 26th January

Spelling

The children have a list of words they need to learn. They should practise these at home in preparation for “buddy spelling tests” (the children testing each other) in class next week.

Reading

The children have been given their Home Reading Journals and are expected to read for 20 minutes per day at their given comprehension age. Children will record the title of their book in their journal. Please discuss your child’s reading and leave a comment in the journal so that they can change their book.
To support their reading development, please make sure of the following:

Home reading should be fun not a chore.
Keep the timing short, find a comfy, quiet space and have a chat about what your child is reading. This really helps to develop their comprehension skills.
There is information about comprehension at the beginning of the journal, which you can use to help guide your discussion with your child. Please also refer to information your class teacher has sent out to you about how to help your child at home.

Mathematics
All children should aim to spend 30 minutes per week completing their assigned Mathletics tasks and/or practising their times tables.

Mandarin (All children are encouraged to take a reading book home on the days when they have Mandarin lessons.)

Ms Lynn (Home learning) – Please check your google classroom for details.

Ms Xu – 完成google classroom 练习，记得借书读书，写读书报告，完成课堂未完成的功课。