Grade 4 News
An insight into life in Grade 4 at BMS...
Dear Friends of Berlin Metropolitan School,
The Grade 4 classes are now approaching the conclusion of their latest Unit of Inquiry, based around the form, application and sustainability of energy. The central idea for this unit is: Energy must be converted and transformed to support sustainable human life on Earth. The children will be presenting their summative projects during their first week back following the Easter break.
The children have also, of course, been continuing their development across a full range of subjects, and the details of some of their endeavors can be found within the contents of this newsletter.
Please take the time to look through the important upcoming dates for our school, as well as the information regarding the bike test in which all Grade 4 children will be participating.
A safe and happy holiday to all!
Grade 4 Team
UPCOMING EVENTS AT BMS MARCH/APRIL 2016
Thursday 17th March - school ends at 13.00 for all students.
Friday 18th March - Spring holidays begin - no school
Monday 4th April - School reopens
Monday 11th - Friday 15th April - Grade 5 Camp
Mathematics
Through the use of poster-making, word problems and student-led discussions, 4th Grade has started to explore double-digit by single-digit division. Simultaneously, students continue to develop their understanding of inverse operations to solve both multiplication and division equations. Students continue to work towards mastering their mental math strategies of multiplying and dividing whole numbers by 10 to 100. As a summary, students are now combining their knowledge of Perimeter and Area by working with composite figures.
News from the Grade 4 German Team
Dear Parents,
We are working on the upcoming bike test and children have done great answering several quizzes about safety rules, traffic signs and necessary parts of a bike.
After the Easter break we will start our practical work by visiting the bike parcours in Wedding applying everything we have learned while actually riding bikes, all under the supervision of a police man. About a month later, at the beginning of May, the actual bike test will be taking place. More information about this will be coming soon.
In support of our main topic we have discussed location plans and how to get from point A to point B using the necessary linguistic features the German language provides.
In addition we will be looking into the semantic field of FAHREN and discussing and practising words with "silent h".
We wish you a happy and relaxing Easter break and are looking forward to seeing all the children back on April 4th.
Warm regards,
Frau Lucic and Frau Pointner
Unit of Inquiry
Our next unit will focus on significant events in history and our community's response to these events. The German team will focus on the Berlin Wall throughout the unit while homeroom teachers will start with a similar focus but by week 2 start to look at the unit from a worldwide perspective. If you have any experience of Berlin during this time or feel you can contribute to the unit in other ways, please do not hesitate to contact us.
English
Besides exploring author’s purpose through reading and writing different text types, Grade 4 has also been writing explanation texts based on one aspect of Energy or on the steps for an experiment they have conducted.
Among all the language skills the students need in order to support the current Unit of Inquiry, they have identified relevant, reliable and useful information found in books, computer and web-based applications. They are now in the process of deciding on appropriate ways to use the information they found in their Unit Summative Assessment.