Year 4 Newsletter

Thank you to all the parents and students who came to school to celebrate the children's learning at our 3-way Conference!

This week, students have been tuning into a very thought- provoking unit about human migration.

CENTRAL IDEA:

Human migration is a response to challenges, risks and opportunities.

An inquiry into:

• The reasons why people migrate (causation)
  

• The challenges, risks and opportunities of migration (perspective)
  

• The impact of migration on individuals and communities

  (change)
  

Students will continue to consider the different pull and push factors for why people migrate, and consider the challenges faced by migrants moving into a new city or country.

This week, Year 4 teachers and EAs have started to share their migration stories with the different classes. Students will be asked to consider if these are risks, challenges and/ or opportunities.

In the near future, we are also very much looking forward to welcoming a visitor from Christian Action to share his story.

Maths: Fractions

Students will continue to revise and extend their knowledge of fractions.

Learners will develop an understanding of fractions as representations of whole-part relationships by referring to a fraction wall for comparison and will develop their understanding by initially investigating fractions of shapes, as well as modelling equivalent fractions.

Students will have the opportunity to develop their understanding that fractions and decimals are ways of representing whole-part relationships and will demonstrate this understanding by modelling equivalent fractions and decimal fractions to hundredths or beyond.

They will have the opportunity to also be able to model, read, write, compare and order fractions, and use them in real-life situations in different worded problems.

Our focus with language in this unit is looking at visualising and inferring when reading. We are working on creating images in the reader's mind to help us understand a text better. We are thinking about what descriptive language authors use to help paint a picture.

We will transfer this skill into our story writing to create migration narratives with detailed descriptions of characters and settings.

A key focus is on dialogue and how direct speech is used in narratives.

As part of the unit, students have been reading an enthralling book, 'Boy Overboard' which gives many apt examples of speech, contractions, and other grammatical features.

This story depicts a very challenging journey of a young family leaving Afghanistan and their plight trying to get to Australia.

We are now coming to the end of our Games sessions. After the next two weeks, each class will then commence swimming lessons on the week of 2 May 2023.

Please read the school newsletters which are published every Thursday on the ESF App for more information about the swimming programme and the day and time for each class's swimming lessons.

We ask that each student has the correct items brought to school, clearly named. Since the weather is getting increasingly hotter, students will need to wear a hat and a t-shirt to walk across to the pool at Stanley Ho. Plenty of water is also required.

Over the last few weeks, the Year 4 students have really enjoyed learning about the fascinating artwork of Wu Guanzhong. They used watercolours and black ink to create very effective urban night scenes.

From next week, students will have the opportunity to learn about and study the incredible artist, Jacob Lawrence.

His Migration Series shows the migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North during and after World War I.

The students will create their own migration collage panel, using a variety of coloured paper.

After School Activities

After school activities have begun, so please inform Steven Chen at bus@kennedy.edu.hk if your child is NOT taking the school bus home. Knowing which children are not taking the bus helps buses to depart on time.

Unlabelled items left on buses

We had a few lunch bags left on buses, some without labels. Please label ALL items your child brings to school, so we can get them back to your child.

For school bus-related matters please email Steven Chen at bus@kennedy.edu.hk