Year 4 Home Learning Statements

Reading

Students will focus on  reviewing the reading strategies and skills used to comprehend texts. The reading strategies include:

• Predicting
• Inferring
• Identifying themes and main ideas
• Facts vs opinions

Students are encouraged to ‘track their thinking’ using these strategies in their reading journals each day. 

To support this learning at home:

Encourage your child to read daily at home if possible. If they are a reluctant reader, you could take it in turns to read a page each. Ask questions from time to time to monitor comprehension. Some examples are:

• What do you know about the characters?
• What do you think will happen next?
• How did the characters feel and how do you know?
• What was the main message the author was trying to communicate?

Writing

Students will focus on persuasive writing. Students compose as authors and secretaries when they are writing.  They have been learning that memoirs are about sharing an important time or event in their lives.

• As an author, students will be working on expanding and sequencing their ideas in order to persuade a reader to their point of view. They will be encouraged to use topic specific vocabulary to add meaning to their writing, and explore persuasive devices.
• On the secretarial side, students will be encouraged to proofread and edit their texts with a focus on using correct punctuation at all times. They will be reminded to use correct grammar and accurate spelling, including contractions and homophones e.g. their/there.

To support this learning at home:

• Encourage your child to write at home. Praise what you notice they can do. E.g. “You wrote a persuasive text, you used capital letters most of the time, you explained your arguments and used emotive language.”
• For persuasive texts, encourage them to create strong and detailed arguments by including persuasive devices such as: rhetorical questions, alternative suggestions, exaggeration, and facts and statistics.
• Reinforce the use of capital letters and full stops correctly at all times, particularly for the word ‘I’. 
• Look at letters to the editor from the newspapers. These are real-life examples of where a person is trying to persuade people to see their point of view. Advertising is also a form of persuasive text that you could discuss with your child.
• Create discussions where your child is encouraged to give an opinion. Help them with elaborating on their ideas.

Mathematics

This term students will be building their capacity to efficiently solve subtraction problems mentally by using a variety of strategies. These strategies include: doubles/near doubles, bridging to nearest 10, split, jump and hop, think addition, and vertical subtraction. They will also be learning how to solve worded problems.

In Term 2, the students will be consolidating their understanding and use of the Mathematical Proficiencies; Understanding, Reasoning, Fluency and Problem Solving through participating in open-ended challenging tasks. 

To support this learning at home:

• Give your child opportunities to subtract mentally 2 and 3 digit numbers with a focus on building efficiency by selecting the quickest strategy. E.g. 56 -32:  think ‘50-30=20,6-2 =4 so it equals 24.
• 51-37: Think ‘what do I add to 37 to equal 51?’ We can mentally add on 3 to make 40, then add 11 to get to 51. So, 3 and 11 equals 14.
• Encourage your child to practise the vertical subtraction strategy to solve larger subtraction equations. 
• Practise multiplication facts up to 10x and to improve their fluency in recall of these.

Reading

Students will focus on reviewing the reading strategies used to comprehend texts. The reading strategies include:

• Prior Knowledge
• Questioning
• Predicting
• Connecting
• Summarising
• Visualising

Students are encouraged to ‘track their thinking’ using these strategies in their reading journals each day. 

To support this learning at home:

Encourage your child to read daily at home if possible. If they are a reluctant reader, you could take it in turns to read a page each. Ask questions from time to time to monitor comprehension. Some examples are: Who are the characters? What is the plot? What do you think might happen next?

Ensure your child has a good supply of suitable books. The local library can be a great resource.

Writing

Students will focus on writing memoirs. Students compose as authors and secretaries when they are writing.  They have been learning that memoirs are about sharing an important time or event in their lives.

• As an author, students will be working on expanding and elaborating on their memoirs in order to entertain a reader. They will be encouraged to use adjectives and similes to add imagery, and detail to their writing. They will be exploring building their capacity to use verbs, in order to elaborate on action, in their memoir.
• On the secretarial side, students will be encouraged to proofread and edit their texts with a focus on using correct punctuation at all times. This includes correct use of apostrophes and commas.

To support this learning at home:

• Encourage your child to write at home. Praise what you notice they can do. E.g. “In your writing, you used paragraphs, and you had lots of description and action. I could really visualise what was happening.”
• Encourage them to use interesting adjectives and verbs (action) when writing.
• Encourage the correct use of full stops, commas and apostrophes.
• Encourage your child to edit their work for mistakes before they show you. They should also make sure the writing makes sense. Getting your child to read their writing aloud is a good technique to find mistakes in writing.
• Using a dictionary helps with spelling mistakes.
• Using a thesaurus helps to expand your child’s vocabulary.
• Encourage your child to practise handwriting at home, to improve neatness.
• Provide your child with pens, pencils paper and a spot to write at home.

Mathematics

Students will be learning how to apply place value to partition, rearrange and regroup numbers to at least tens of thousands to assist addition and subtraction calculations, and solve problems. Future learning for later in the year will involve recognising that the place value system can be extended to tenths and hundredths.

Students have been exploring two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional objects and linking them to real life examples.

To support this learning at home:

• Encourage your child to teach you the place value games they have learnt at school including:
  • Just Gridding
  • Number Mastermind
  • Four Move Wipe-Out
• Enter a 5 or 6 digit number on a calculator e.g. 67,543. Encourage your child to read the number, and write the number in words. Ask your child to remove a digit, for example, the 7 from the number. What would they have to do to remove that digit? Subtract 7000. Extension: Enter numbers involving decimals. For example, 67.34 should be read as sixty-seven and thirty-four hundredths or 5.6 is read as five and six tenths. Ask your child to remove the digit 3. What would they need to enter? Subtract 0.3 (three tenths).
• Encourage your child to find two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional objects around the home. For example, a toothpaste box is a rectangular prism.