Year 4/5

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Welcome back to school everyone.

This term will be an incredibly busy one, wrapping things up ready for next year. Early this term, I shall be asking the students to provide me with a list of people that they would like to have in their class next year. This way, I can ensure that everyone will have at least one friend with them. Class composition has not been finalised for 2009 yet so teachers will not begin the class placement process for a couple of weeks. Please be reassured, we do our best to ensure that students are placed in an environment that will best suit the individual’s needs – socially and academically. There will be a transition program in weeks 8 and 9 for students to meet their new teachers and class mates – more of that nearer the time.

Class equipment

All students were given a full set of stationery for the year. Lots of items are lost and missing. Many students have had these items replaced but there is no more money left in our class funds for me to provide any more replacement stationery for the students. If your child comes home asking for a new pencil or pen or ruler, it is because they have lost at least 3 or more this year already. Please support my efforts to help them be responsible for their things by getting them to “work” for the money to buy the replacements. They could help out with some extra chores around the house or use their own pocket money to buy them. It may help the students to learn more about the value of such items. If your child has their class calculator at home, please remind them to bring it back to school as it is an essential piece of equipment for Maths. Now that we are entering warmer months, all students must have a water bottle on their desk each day. Most students still have the bottles that I bought for them at the start of the year but if your child has lost or broken theirs, please could you send in a replacement.

Learning program

In Maths this term, we are revisiting algorithms – the correct written way of solving math problems. We will also revisit time, money and decimals. The PE program incorporates orienteering this term so we shall complement this and study mapping in Maths at that time.

Literacy will focus on information report writing and information gathering. We are creating an online magazine called an e-zine. Hopefully some other schools in SA and USA will be contributing to our e-zine. The spelling program will continue to focus on letter-sound patterns and I still use the Soundations program to teach these sound-letter relationships to the students. There are lots of great literacy sites in our links section for students to improve their literacy skills.

The child protection curriculum content that I will be focussing on this term is media and internet safety. We will be looking at classifications of programs, films and games, revisiting “Cyberquoll” and cybersafety issues. To complement this we will be exploring the concept of copyright and other ethical issues around using ICT.

The Arts will still be a strong focus, even though we have finished our part in the DECS Music Trial. The CD launch was very successful and I’d like to thank the visitors who attended and made this a very special occasion for the students. I will be addressing visual arts this term with an exploration of famous artists and students producing their own versions of famous paintings. Another internet project that we will be involved with is one where we create our own postcards and upload them to a google maps project so that children in other parts of the world can learn more about the landmarks in our part of the world. Creation of the postcards will be part of our visual arts studies.

As well as attending Science with Ms Litzow, I’d like to do more Science in class this term. We will be doing some kitchen chemistry and explorations on solar power

Some sad news is that our little guinea pig, Randall, died in the last week of the school term and unfortunately Rocket, our rabbit, also died during these holidays. We will miss them. They were very lucky pets and got lots of love and attention from all the children. I got them from the Rabbit Rescue Farm at Smithfield Plains so we were able to give to 2 unwanted pets a very good home while we had them.

As always, please do not hesitate to make an appointment to see me if you have any concerns about your child.

Regards,

Louisa Guest