Year 4

Alhamdulilah, we’ve been blessed beyond measure to kick off the term with an ease on COVID-19 restrictions. Concurrently, coming back to school with mask free faces, was the icing on the cake. Our term has been jam-packed with wonderous adventures, special guests and a rewarding learning journey. We had our Eid Festival, which was incredibly set up – Allahuma barik!

During this term, the Year Four students have become Engineers! We have been delving into ‘the physical sciences’, focusing on forces (pull/push), gravity, air resistance, magnetism and friction. Our engineers have hypothesised, observed, asked many questions and they reached intriguing conclusions. We also carried out an experiment on magnetism, whereby, the students observed the push and pull forces between magnets. I think it is safe to say, that it felt … magical. Additionally, the 4D bunch skilfully crafted their own parachutes and dropped them and other objects like marbles and tennis balls on various surfaces, to test air resistance. In essence, we have utilised innovation and curiosity this term to unravel various phenomena.

The year 4 students utilised their public speaking skills and became Actors and actresses! It was incessantly delightful seeing the kids use the various elements of drama play to perform, flawlessly. Their uniqueness in their acting was evident when they focused on voice projection, eye contact and body language. We also reviewed the utilisation of props to capture and mirror the storyline of the chosen scripts. Drama was a splendid and entrancing avenue to explore.

Our writing journey has taken us on a trip to learning how to persuade our readers. Students in Year 4 are learning about persuasive writing with a focus on ‘planning for success’ and ‘sizzling starts’, to engage and grab the reader’s attention. Throughout the term, our year four writers have learned to use persuasive devices such as rhetorical questions, statistics, hyperbole, the rule of three and slogans. It has been a pleasure seeing their persuasive writing progress and have them use statistics, which was a challenge – indeed!

Year fours are being introduced to measuring area and perimeter and solving multiplication questions and long division from 2 digits by 1 to 3 digits by 1. Students are deciphering multi-step addition and subtraction word problems using the cube strategy. They warm up before starting each lesson by recalling maths facts such as multiples, factors and formulas of area, volume and perimeter.

In our numeracy investigations students have employed their skills experientially. Students have conducted surveys on preferred ice cream flavours, tallying up the results and representing the results on a bar chart. Students are dealing with real world situations in numeracy to help prepare them for the future.

Overall, this term in HASS students have understood and explored the journeys of world navigators such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama – in the late 18th century. Students have learned to connect sequence of historical events on a timeline. Our year 4 historians have carried out extensive research on Vasco Da Gama, they explored trade routes and cruciality of spices during the 15th and 16th centuries in the world. Across this eventful term, we were engulfed in inquiry-based learning when exploring these intriguing topics. It has been a wonderous journey in year 4 – to learn about the navigations of historical explorers.