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The Year 3/4 class continue to work very hard as we move into the final week of Term 3. They’ve also been enjoying the ABC Countdown to Summer, with lots of fun activities along the way. Highlights this week included a water fight, a QR code scavenger hunt, and some exciting teamwork games, all great opportunities for laughter, collaboration, and making lasting memories.

In Maths, we began a new unit on Position and Direction. The children learned how to describe positions using coordinates, plot points, draw 2-D shapes, and translate shapes on a grid. They especially enjoyed the challenge of plotting coordinates to create more complex images. It was a fun and creative way to apply their learning.

In Literacy, the children used their planning notes to write persuasive texts aimed at encouraging people to visit either Busan Aquarium, Gyeongju World, Busan Luge, or the Zoo. They worked hard to include persuasive language, rhetorical questions, and engaging descriptions to sell their chosen destination. They had fun with each extension activity, taking their writing further by creating a survey or a new part of the attraction.

In IPC, our focus was on Life Cycles and Adaptations. The children explored and compared the life cycles of different animals, and they drew and wrote about each stage. Then created eye-catching posters to show how various species have adapted to survive in their environments.

The Year 3/4 class have had a very exciting week with two special events: our class trip to the Busan Aquarium and the HFS Art Exhibition.

The trip to the aquarium was a great success! The children were thrilled to walk through the exhibits and see a wide variety of sea animals up close. Their enthusiasm and curiosity made the day especially enjoyable.

Today, we were treated to a fantastic display of creativity at the HFS Art Exhibition. A big thank you to Ms. Yuli for putting together such a wonderful showcase of the children’s artwork. I was truly impressed by the creativity and talent on display.

Reminders

• Reports went home Friday. If you haven’t yet made an appointment for a Parent-Teacher Conference, please do so at your earliest convenience, using this link: Parent-Teacher Conference Form.
• Our school trip to Gyeongju World will take place in the last week of term. If your child is attending, please remember to fill out the permission form sent out by Mr Green in the newsletter.
• Ready Steady Splash is happening on Tuesday, June 17th. Please ensure your child comes prepared with:
  • Swimming clothes
  • A towel
  • A full change of clothes
  • Shoes that can get wet
  • A water gun

It’s going to be a fun and busy end to the term!

Here are some other highlights from the week:

Maths
We have started a new unit on shape. The children have been learning about angles, the properties of triangles, quadrilaterals, and polygons. To help with this, they made different shapes using straws, which really helped them identify and name each one.

Literacy
In Literacy, we continued our work on persuasive writing, using Zeffafa Giraffa as inspiration. The children designed merchandise, created persuasive posters, identified key features in a model text, and planned their own persuasive piece based on a place they had visited recently.

IPC
In our IPC topic, the children explored the life cycles of different animals, comparing and contrasting them. We also began learning how to use classification keys. To finish the week, we played a Kahoot quiz to see how much the children had learned so far—it was a fun and lively way to review!

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has signed up for the trip and sent money to school, the Year 3/4 class will have a great time.

We’ve had another busy and exciting week full of hands-on learning, creativity, and collaboration. Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve been up to across the curriculum. The class have also enjoyed the ABC countdown to the end of the year, thank you so much for your efforts with this. Monday is G for Games, so everyone is welcome to bring in a board game or card game to play.

In Maths, the children continued their unit on money, with a focus on using their skills in real-life contexts. They practised adding and subtracting different amounts, including solving multi-step problems. A key focus this week was calculating change, where the children used number lines and counting strategies to find the difference between amounts. They worked on interpreting word problems, using bar models and part-whole models to help visualise the problems. Many children also began to develop their mental maths strategies, particularly when working with coin combinations and rounding to estimate totals and change.

In Literacy, the children used their creativity to design an invention that could help transport Zeraffa from Marseille to Paris. They then made persuasive posters to promote their inventions, using persuasive language and rhetorical questions to engage their audience. The class also explored the writing technique Show, Don’t Tell, learning how to describe a character’s feelings through actions, dialogue, and body language rather than simply stating emotions. To support this, they took part in an acting game where they mimed different feelings, helping them to better understand how emotions can be shown rather than told. Additionally, the children created a timeline to track the key events in the story, developing their sequencing and summarising skills.

In IPC, the children launched their new unit, The Nature of Life, by creating a mind map to show their existing knowledge about animals and living things. They then began to explore how animals can be classified. The class worked on sorting animals into different groups based on their features. Following this, they created informative posters that demonstrated their understanding of the five main vertebrate groups: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.

Hello everyone!

We’ve had a busy and exciting week in class, full of new learning and exploration across our subjects!

Literacy

We began a new unit based on the beautifully illustrated book Zeraffa Giraffa by Dianne Hofmeyr. The children have enjoyed engaging with the text through image-based predictions and vocabulary building. They particularly enjoyed writing diary entries from the perspective of Atir, the boy tasked with escorting Zeraffa the giraffe to France as a royal gift. Their writing showed great empathy and imagination!

Maths

In Maths, we started our unit on money. The children explored pounds and pence, worked with decimals in the context of money, and practised converting between the two. To support their understanding, we used laminated play money as manipulatives. This hands-on approach helped them visualise and solve more challenging problems with greater confidence. It’s been a great way to make abstract concepts more concrete and relatable.

International Primary Curriculum (IPC)
We wrapped up our previous unit, Our Life, by completing our Exit Point activity. The children added information to their model islands, showing what they learned throughout the unit. We then launched into our new topic, The Nature of Life. For our Entry Point, we headed out to the school garden to observe and identify various living things, sparking lots of curiosity and discussion. 

On Friday, we kicked off our ABC Countdown to Summer with A for Art! The children created beautifully crafted egg baskets in preparation for E for Egg Day next week. We also had a fun team-building activity designing our team T-shirts for Sports Day. The creativity and teamwork on display were wonderful to see!

That’s all for the week have a great weekend.

Hello everyone!

I’m happy to share that the ABC Countdown schedule was sent home as we celebrate the countdown to the end of the school year.

We had an exciting Friday afternoon as the Sports Day teams were announced. Each team began preparing for the big day by designing their t-shirts, complete with a team name, badge, and slogan. The excitement and creativity on display were fantastic to see!

We’ve had a creative and productive week in class as we near the end of our current units!

In IPC, the children completed their Exit Point for our Island Life unit. They worked with great enthusiasm in groups to create model islands, using plaster of Paris, clay, and paint to bring their designs to life. The children thought carefully about their recent learning, including various geographical features. It was a wonderful hands-on project that allowed them to apply what they had learned about island life in a fun and memorable way.

In Maths, we continued exploring decimals. The children have been learning to recognise and represent halves and quarters as decimals, partition decimals, and make whole numbers by combining decimal parts. We also practised comparing and ordering decimals, and the children did very well with rounding decimals to the nearest whole number.

In Literacy, the focus was on planning and writing our Hot Task fiction narratives, inspired by Aaron Becker’s ‘Journey’. The children used all the skills they’ve developed over the past few weeks to create imaginative and well-structured stories. We’re very proud of the effort they put into both their planning and final pieces!

It’s been a brief yet action-packed week in Year 3/4! Although we only had two days together due to national holidays and our staff development day, we made the most of every moment—filling our time with learning, and lots of fun.

Maths
The students continued to explore decimals in Maths, focusing on tenths and hundredths. Students practised placing these values on a place value chart and developed a solid understanding of how decimals relate to fractions—a key step in building number sense and confidence with more complex maths concepts.

Literacy
In Literacy, we continued our shared writing journey as students wrote Paragraph 4—the solution to their stories. They worked hard to build tension and resolve the main problem in a clear and engaging way, applying the techniques we’ve been learning to make their writing vivid and effective. Thinking carefully about descriptive devices.

IPC
In IPC, we continued our Island Life unit. Students moved around the classroom to investigate a range of islands, gathering information to answer key questions such as: Is the island inhabited or uninhabited? Is it urban, rural, or a protected area for wildlife? They also explored the main industries on each island, ranging from agriculture and mining to tourism and military use, and considered any threats these islands face, such as climate change or natural disasters.

Hello everyone.

Next Thursday, 8th May, we will be taking individual student photos as well as a class photo. Please ensure that all children come to school in full uniform and looking their smartest!

It’s been a busy and engaging week in our classroom, filled with exciting learning across all subjects. Here’s a snapshot of what the children have been working on:

Literacy
This week in Literacy, the children used their plans to write an adventure story inspired by Journey by Aaron Becker. To support their writing, we completed a shared write to create a class story and focused on writing one paragraph each day. This approach allowed the children to carefully consider their learning and ensure it was reflected in different parts of their stories.

Maths
In Maths, we completed the unit on time, finishing with lessons on calculating duration and exploring different units of time such as years, months, and days. We concluded the unit with an end-of-unit assessment. The students then began a new unit on decimals, where they learned about tenths as decimals, solved problems using number lines and place value charts, and were introduced to hundredths as decimals.

IPC
In IPC, the children researched how different types of islands are formed. They wrote about each type, provided examples, included additional facts, and drew diagrams. They also learned about Charles Darwin and his exploration of the Galapagos Islands. The children moved around the classroom to read information and complete a flip book about him. To check their understanding, they completed a QR code domino quiz, where each correct answer led to the next question.

Hello everyone!

We’ve had another busy and exciting week in class, full of creativity, problem-solving, and hands-on learning. The children have continued to engage enthusiastically across all subjects, building on their knowledge and skills through a range of fun and purposeful activities. Here is a brief overview of this week’s learning.

In Literacy, the children continued to draw inspiration for their writing from our class text Journey by Aaron Becker. They worked on writing a description that created atmosphere using a particular image. The children role-played again to help them craft an ending where two characters with magical crayons meet, leading to the story’s sequel. After that, we explored an example story and identified key learning points and features. To end the week, the children storyboarded their ideas for a story and then used this to help them plan, ready to write next week.

In Maths, we continued our unit on Time. The children worked on solving problems involving a.m. and p.m., converting between analogue and digital clocks, and converting between 12-hour and 24-hour time. They then moved on to looking at units of time, converting between these, and calculating duration. The children used different resources, such as clocks and key learning mats, to help them be successful.

During IPC, the children finished their presentations on an island, focusing on geographical features. They then learnt about the water cycle, exploring the key stages and what happens at each one, and crafted a model to show this learning. They also learnt how to use an atlas and completed an activity where they used the index to locate the page number and the coordinates to help them find different places.

That’s all for the week, have a great weekend.

Hello everyone!

We’ve had a fantastic and engaging week in Year 3/4, full of hands-on learning and memorable moments across the curriculum! From creative writing to collaborative problem-solving, our classroom has been buzzing with curiosity and enthusiasm. Here are some highlights for the week.

In Literacy, we continued exploring the wordless picture book Journey by Aaron Becker. As the character moved through the magical setting, the students used the story to inspire their writing. They described a castle in detail, carefully considering its different parts and how to express them vividly. Next, the children took on the roles of the main character and a guard through roleplay, helping them practise writing direct speech and develop character interactions. Following this, they focused on creating atmosphere in their writing by describing how the scene changes throughout the story.

In Maths, we concluded our Fractions B unit by working on finding fractions of amounts. The children used their knowledge of division facts to solve problems, using counters to support their understanding. Next, we began a unit on Time, where the children will work on telling time to five-minute intervals, and then to the nearest minute. They are already becoming familiar with key vocabulary such as quarter past and quarter to.

In our IPC lessons, the children began a research project on an island. Their focus was on geographical features, such as the island’s location, landscape, and climate. We then moved on to learning about rivers, exploring their key features and developing subject-specific vocabulary.

That’s all for the week, have a great weekend.

Hello everyone!

It’s been a super busy and exciting week as we kick off Term 3 with new units in each subject. The children have returned full of energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity to start the third and final term of the year. Here are some highlights from this week’s learning:

In Literacy, we began exploring the wordless picture book Journey by Aaron Becker. The children will use this as a stimulus for their writing as they create their own adventure stories. We started by making predictions using objects from the book and looking at the front cover. Then we explored the first few pages to understand the main character and wrote descriptive passages as the character enters a new world. Each group was given their own magical door, leading to a new world, and the children wrote two descriptive paragraphs based on where their door led.

In Maths, we are revisiting fractions in Unit B. The children are getting to grips with adding and subtracting fractions, including those involving mixed numbers. To support their understanding, we’ve been using models and pictorial representations to help visualize the calculations.

In IPC, we launched our new unit Island Life. As an entry point, we played an island survival game—children worked in groups to solve different scenarios and explain their reasoning for the choices they made. Afterwards, the children completed a knowledge harvest to reflect on what they already know about the topic. We then began exploring maps, first labeling the continents and oceans, followed by identifying and labeling islands using atlases. We also introduced key vocabulary such as “equator” and “hemisphere” to deepen our understanding.

That’s all for the week, have a great weekend everyone.