Year 4 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

Thank you all for participating in our Pyjama & Bedtime Story Day, raising $12,400 for enrichment activities in class!

Thank you all also for attending the online parent consultations, on Tuesday or Thursday this week, to discuss your child's learning journey with your class teacher.

We do hope you found it rewarding and informative.

The Year 4 team all wish you a very relaxing October Mid-Term break. We hope you have an opportunity to spend quality time with family and friends.

The Year 4 Team

Central idea: The dynamic changes of Earth have an impact on people's lives.

The children will learn through a variety of learning engagements based on the following inquiry questions:

• The structure of the earth
• The effect of the Earth's continuous changes
• People's reactions to the Earth's changes

So far in this unit, the children have been exploring the related concepts of the earth's structure. We will soon be moving on to exploring natural disasters and people's response to them.

Students will be working towards creating a Mini-Exhibition to showcase their understanding as “experts” of how a community responds to different Earth's dynamic changes. They will be able to work in small groups to develop their communication, collaboration and creative skills and will be asked to make 3D models to illustrate their learning.

If you have any expertise in any aspect of this learning, please contact your class teacher.

We would love to hear from you!

This week, students had an opportunity to further develop their understanding of addition strategies.

They have been solving addition problems using a variety of strategies including the column method, jump strategy and partitioning.

Students have enjoyed creating and answering their own word problems and setting challenges for each other.

Students have shown very skillful writing techniques as they have completed their summative writing task about a chosen body system.

Much thought was needed to ensure each report contained examples of the positive and negative choices people have on their bodies, such as ensuring they exercise regularly or choosing to smoke...

Key concepts that were included:

Function - How does this body system work?

Connection - How is this system connected to others?

Responsibility- how can we select healthy choices to maintain a healthy body?

Their reflections culminated with a final piece of homework where they pledged to make better choices for their body. We hope that students continue to make positive, healthy choices to benefit themselves and their health.

We will start our Games sessions on Wednesday, 26th October and will continue until the start of Term 3.

The children will need to wear their P.E. kit every Wednesday in addition to their regular P.E. days.

PTA offers games equipment (mouth guard, shin pads, sports socks)for sale here https://www.schooluniform.hk/collections/kennedy-school-sale?page=2

• Pickleball - No equipment needed
• RUGBY - Mouth guard
• FOOTBALL - No equipment needed
• NETBALL - No equipment needed

Below is the first rotation starting on Wednesday, 26th October.

Several sporting tournaments and matches between schools in Hong Kong are finally resuming. After more than three years without school competition, we are extremely pleased to see this.

In light of this, it is crucial that the PE Department at Kennedy School has a deeper grasp of what our kids are up to in terms of their extracurricular sporting activities. This information is crucial and will allow us to provide our students with opportunities to represent Kennedy School in their preferred/strongest sport.

To assist us in making more informed decisions on the selection of sports teams, especially so early in the school year, we would appreciate it if you could offer a brief description of any current sporting activities your child participates in outside of Kennedy School.

If you have more than one child at Kennedy School please fill in the form separately for each of your children.

Extra Curricular Sports Form

The students have now completed their ISA Assessments and have done a fabulous job demonstrating their learning. We expect the results from the ISA's to be available in December.

As part of our standardized assessment cycle, InCAS will be kicking off after the midterm break this year. For those new to InCAS, InCAS is a collection of online assessments that include General and Mental Maths, Reading and Spelling. The assessment period will run from 24th October - 18th November. Please note, that InCAS requires sounds to be played during the assessments. As these assessments will be conducted in class we ask that students bring in headphones from home. The headphones must have an audio jack to plug into a laptop. Please ensure your child brings them in on Monday, 24th October.

Parent Volunteers are an important part of the library, who help us accomplish many core tasks required to provide high-quality services. The library is having a makeover this year, therefore we hope to have as many volunteers as possible.

* Games will commence - Wednesday 26th October.
* All students to bring in headphones - Monday 24th October

The full listing of PTA events is available at the school website at https://www.kennedy.edu.hk/pta/