Grade 4 News
An insight into life in Grade 4 at BMS...
Dear Friends of Berlin Metropolitan School,
It is a time of change in Grade 4, with Lynne Hope taking a break from her teaching commitments and Andrew Comerford replacing her in 4a following his return from paternity leave. We hope that the transition is an easy one for both.
There is also a change of Unit on the horizon, with three of the Grade 4 classes working on summative assessments. These will give the children the opportunity to demonstrate and reflect upon what they have learnt. If all goes to plan, the Grade 4 classes will begin their next Unit of Inquiry during the week beginning 7th December. It may seem strange to start a new Unit so close to the Christmas break, but this is necessary to allow us to cover the whole of the PYP Grade 4 curriculum before the conclusion of the academic year.
News from the German Team
Dear parents,
We have almost come to the end of our unit - as an end assessment students are to present a little speech about their very personal value or belief, whatever this might be, trying to be as convincing and enthusiastic as possible. All the information from various field trips and class discussions should be reflected on and taken as a foundation for creating this final piece of work.
We are quickly approaching Christmas and the winter break. Therefore we will focus during the coming weeks on different traditions that are related to this special season. Children will hear about St. Barbara, Nikolaus, what Adventkranz and Adventkalender are for and the customs related to them.
We are looking forward to preparing and celebrating with the children in order to lead them towards a meaningful Christmas time.
Warm regards,
Andrea Lucic and Gabriele Pointner
4a's amazing summative assessment presentations
Well done to 4a on your summative assessment presentations - they were fantastic! It was also lovely to see so many parents watching and enjoying the final presentations, thank-you for coming.
What a lovely way to end my time teaching 4a. I am very proud of how principled, independent and reflective 4a students were whilst preparing for these presentations.
I wish you all the best for the future,
Lynne Hope
4b
4b have continued to explore the beliefs of non-religious groups to help us gain a broader understanding of systems that define beliefs. Using the internet websites and videos, we explored the beliefs related to animal rights, child rights and environmentalism to name a few, and recorded their findings on a class data grid. Viewing the information in this way helped us to identify similarities and differences between the different systems. 4b are now preparing their summative assessments and are excited to present the beliefs that are important to them.
The fornight in 4c...
As part of our Unit of Inquiry, Who We Are, the children have visited a number of different places around the city. They have been learning about and representing religions, and are now in the process of developing their summative assessments to show what they have learned. We plan to present these during the primary school assembly on December 8th.
During English lessons, we have been reading and unpicking comparison texts, in preparation for writing a short comparison of two religious faiths.
In Maths, the children recently completed a short assessment about Place Value. This should be coming home to you - please ask your child about it if you have not yet seen it. We are now taking a short break from number work to investigate the properties of 2D and 3D shape. This maths topic should take us up until the Christmas break.
4d update
As part of our “Finding out” step in the Inquiry Cycle for our unit “Who We Are”, 4d students have done some research about different belief systems. They later presented their findings to the rest of the class. The same belief systems are now being compared and contrasted. It has been amazing to observe how tolerant and respectful of others’ belief systems they have become.
As the end of the unit approaches, 4d has started working on their Summative Assessment in which they are going to show their understanding of the Central Idea. We cordially invites 4d parents to attend their presentations on Monday, December 14 at 11:30 in our classroom.