Camp!

What a way to finish Term 3. Our students long-awaited first Woodleigh camp experience did not disappoint. It was filled with challenge, laughs, and the opportunity to connect to each other in different ways. New friendships were forged as were memories that will last a lifetime.

Units of Inquiry

This term, we will continue our unit of inquiry How The World Works. Our central idea is that systems within the human body support it to function effectively. To begin with, we followed the line of inquiry – what the human body needs to function – and utilised our amazing kitchen garden program to help us go deep and look at how the food we eat influences the way our body functions. Many of our students were surprised to see the Australian Healthy Eating guide and realise that a large portion of what they eat falls under the ’sometimes’ foods category, and how this may impact their body and brain function.

We also utilised our mathematical skills to analyse nutritional information on food packages, and measured how many sugar cubes are in popular drinks; another eye-opener for our students.

In a short while, our school teams will compete in the Minimbah Team Athletics. To continue our inquiry, we posed a provocation to our students: Can you design a series of exercises for your school team that will enhance their chances of winning the team athletics?

To do so, our students will need go through the inquiry process: researching and understanding how the systems in the body work and how we can support these systems to function effectively – our other two lines of inquiry. They will be challenged to collect data about the effectiveness of their exercises on our body systems – a wonderful connection to real-world mathematical concepts. Finally, our students will have the opportunity to put their knowledge into action by taking exercise sessions with younger students to train them for Team Athletics day.

Here is an overview of the Approaches to Learning skills we will use through this unit.

Approaches to Learning

Thinking skills	Research Skills	Self-Management Skills	Communication Skills
Reflection	Researching & Interpreting	Self-Motivation	Reading & Writing

Our second unit of inquiry for the term is How We Express Ourselves. We will explore the following lines of inquiry:

• Ways people and communities express culture, beliefs, and values
• Interpretations and perceptions of expressions of culture, belief, and values
• Our responsibility when responding to the ways people and communities express culture, beliefs, and values

Mathematics

Our major unit this term in Mathematics focused on fractions. At this stage in our students’ mathematical development, we are inquiring into how fractions and decimals are quantities that can be ordered and compared. We will make explicit links between our number system and fractions, learning about how fractions and decimals can be placed on number lines and represented with different models. We are also exploring equivalent fractions, improper fractions, and finding strategies to compare and order common fractions.

Language

This term, we will lean heavily upon our language skills to support our inquiries – gathering and synthesising information, formulating questions, and summarising what we read. We’ll practice skills such as skimming and scanning for relevant information, interpreting diagrams and other visual texts, and using the features of non-fiction texts to help us navigate increasingly complex information. Additional to our inquiries, in the next short while our students will begin practicing their typing skills, will learning about the different uses for apostrophes, and engage in word inquiry, looking at how words are structured, common spelling patterns, word meanings, and generalisations that can be made in our language to help us when reading and spelling.

JAMES CLAPHAM
Year 4 Teacher