Grade 4 News
An insight into life in Grade 4 at BMS...
Dear Friends of Berlin Metropolitan School,
Welcome to the latest edition of Grade 4's fortnightly newsletter.
The Grade 4 classes have been hard at work, and have completed the summative assessments for the Unit of Inquiry titled How We Express Ourselves. They are now tuning in and finding out about their next unit, a science unit based around the concept of energy. The central idea for this unit is that Energy must be converted and transformed to support sustainable human life on Earth.
The children have also, of course, been continuing their development across a full range of subjects, and the details of some of these studies can be found in this newsletter.
By the time this newsletter is published, we will have met with many of you to discuss your child's progress during our Three Way Conferences. We hope that you found the experience a valuable one, for yourselves and particularly for your child.
Finally, please take the time to look carefully through the important upcoming dates at our school. Please also remember to return your child's permission slip for the Grade 4 camp at your earliest convenience if you have not already done so.
Grade 4 Team
Upcoming Events at BMS February 2016
Monday 15th - Friday 19th February - International Random Acts of Kindness Week
Monday 22nd February - Grade 2 - 5 Digital Workshops begin
Thursday 25th February - Grade 3 - 5 Outward Bound Camp presentation 18.00
Wednesday 2nd March - Roundtable: Assessment for Learning
Thursday 3rd March - World Book Day
Unit of Inquiry
Over the fortnight Grade 4 has introduced our new unit, How Our World Works, examining energy and the way we, as humans,harness and utilize energy in environmentally friendly and unfriendly ways. Students have been enjoying exploring science through hands-on experiments. This week, the entire grade level executed a fair test, examining the reaction between mentos and various types of soda.
Additionally, our classes have begun talking about puberty and the changes that will occur over the next few years to our bodies. This will be an ongoing topic throughout the rest of the year and we would encourage you to talk to your children about the discussions we have in class. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions relating to this.
English
Mathematics
With our new unit, How Our World Works, students in 4th Grade are dipping their toes into the world of Perimeter and Area. Our children are enjoying measuring, constructing and identifying appropriate unit of measurement for different objects in their environment.
Students are simultaneously exploring double-digit multiplication calculation, along with complimentary mental multiplication strategies such as partitioning, doubling and using near numbers.
News from the German Team
Dear Parents,
We started the second semester by practicing direct speech and the correct use of speech marks on dialogues, which some students even re-enacted in a very amusing way. The students also wrote stories in which they used direct speech in order to make the plots livelier and more interesting.
This week we started our brief Puberty Unit, during which we will be exploring the body changes that happen during puberty, stress the importance of hygiene and try to create good understanding of human sexuality and reproduction. We began with an introductory Q&A circle, during which the students could share what they already knew and ask questions about what they wanted to know or were not sure about. However, the aim of this unit is not only to inform but to create a safe environment for further questions or concerns the students might have in the future and we encourage them to inquire about this throughout the whole school year.
Our next unit will again be a German stand-alone unit, which is aimed at preparing our students for the theoretical and practical bike test, that is part of the German State Curriculum. You will be informed about this in more detail soon. Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.
Many thanks for your ongoing support.
Warmest regards,
Frau Pointner and Frau Lucic