Music Count us in 2015

We joined thousands of students today to sing the song Gold, as part of the 2015 Music Count us in program. 

Buddies

We went and helped our buddies today with some messy craft. It involved cutting up pieces of colour from a magazine and then pasting these onto their design. Since year two couldn't be involved today, we had a chance for year 3 to share some of their buddies with year 4. Everyone worked really well and were very encouraging and helpful to the year one class.

Below is an overview of the buddy session from Abigail:

Today, at school, we got to meet our buddies. As an activity, we got to help our buddies finish their mosaic. All we had to do was cut out bits of magazine or glue it on. I had two buddies, Mia and Olive. But since the year fours didn't have their buddies with them, I gave up Olive to Millie. I didn't choose to give her up, but Olive wanted to do it. And so I only got to help Mia :( . I only got to stick a few pieces of magazine on until the mosaic was quite full. So Mrs Butler got her another mosaic. When the small bell rang, Mia wouldn't let go of the magazine. When we finally got it off her, she crawled under the table and wouldn't come out until the recess bell rang. 

Making sherbert

We had a no bake, very little fuss cooking session. Only four ingredients and delicious! It gave us a chance to talk about the parts of a procedure or recipe and then had to write our own 'Sherbert' recipe. A small spoonful of Sherbert was the reward and the rule was that they had to eat it on the balcony. A very messy and sticky treat. 

Welcome back!!

I can't believe that we're about to head into week 3 of term 4! Where has the year gone? We've been very busy already and really have hit the ground running!!

Unfortunately I wasn't at school on Monday (thanks to Hamish having a nasty stomach bug) to be part of the SISA social skills program but heard it was a great success and lots of fun too! Everyone got to work together and learn to cooperate with one another while learning to play some really cool games. The best part was that year three got to hang out with the rest of year three and the year fours got to hang out with the rest of year four. What a great opportunity for everyone in each year to hang out with their friends from other classes!

In class we have begun to look at writing procedures. Today we were lucky enough to be sent some iBooks to read from a class at North Ryde primary. They had written procedures on how to make origami after their class had read the book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. They had turned their procedures into digital books which included short videos that helped with the steps. After watching/reading one we made some paper cranes. Unfortunately we don't get to keep them as I have promised that we'll give the class the origami that we make so that they can see how effective their procedures were. You can see the three books we were sent via the itunes links below.

How to Fold an Origami Dove

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-fold-an-origami-dove/id1046818738?ls=1&mt=11

How to Fold an Origami Butterfly

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-fold-origami-butterfly/id1047636174?ls=1&mt=11

How to Fold an Origami Iris

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-fold-an-origami-iris/id1047552523?ls=1&mt=11

 

Next week we'll be combining procedures and measurement by reading a recipe to make something yummy to eat. We'll then write our own procedures that explain how to make the recipe. Yummo! We looked at what 'mass' means today and practiced writing the shortened form of kilograms and grams as well as changing weights from kilograms to grams and from grams to kilograms.

We have begun to read the novel, The Inventions of Hugo Cabret, which has wonderful black and white pictures in it which add to the story. We have begun to read the images by looking for the salient parts, reading the characters body language and facial expressions as well as looking at how the use of light and shade can add meaning to the images and hence to the novel. 

We're fine tuning our comprehension strategies and skills by revisiting some in more depth and also introducing some new ones. This week we're looking at identifying the main idea of a text and the details that support the main idea. We're joining 4S twice a week while we explore our comprehension skills and strategies. 

As part of library research we are looking at people that have made a difference in some way to the world. At the beginning of this term we made a poster of our 'famous' person and later this term we will be using the information we have found to create a large cardboard poster that we will show off to other classes.

During science we'll be looking at packaging. What is it used for? Why do we have packaging? What is the design process when companies look at packaging products? We'll have to design a package to contain an egg and stop it from breaking when we drop it from our classroom to the concrete below. This has really excited everyone!!