Miss Jordan has set up a new blog for her class at Barwon Heads Primary School.

Please update the links on your blogroll to the new blog address

http://missjordan.global2.vic.edu.au

You might also like to subscribe to the 4B Blog to keep up to date with what is happening in Miss Jordan’s class. Simply enter your email address in the box on the right hand side of the blog.

The students start school on Thursday 30th January and the 4B Blog will begin being updated from that date.

Thanks again for your fabulous support on the 4KJ blog and I look forward to seeing you at my new address!

Today is our final school day for 2013. 4KJ have had a wonderful year and Miss Jordan is so proud of the students’ efforts and achievements!

This blog has been a big part of 4KJ for the past two years, and for 4KM in 2012 and the first half of 2013.

Since the beginning of last year…

• We have published 180 posts
• We have received more than 6,700 comments
• We have had nearly 80,000 visitors!

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To conclude our year the grade four students had a special lunch on Wednesday. Everyone brought a plate of food to share and enjoyed celebrating a fantastic year together.

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There have been so many highlights in 4KJ this year. The students have learnt so much and improved their skills in all areas. Here is a poll forthe 4KJ students to complete to find out what the most popular event of the school year was.

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After ten wonderful years at Leopold Primary School, Miss Jordan has decided to move on to explore other educational opportunities in 2014. Next year, Miss Jordan will be teaching grade four at Barwon Heads Primary School. She will miss everyone at Leopold Primary School, but she is excited and looking forward to the new experiences at Barwon Heads.

Miss Jordan would love to stay in touch with the students in 4KJ and all of our blogging buddies! She will post the link to her 2014 class blog on this blog in January, so look out for it! Miss Jordan would love to see some quality comments from her Leopold students next year!

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The 4KJ students, along with Miss Jordan, wish everyone a very Merry Christmas a wonderful holiday break!

What was your highlight of 2013?

What are you looking forward to next year?

Do you have any learning goals for 2013?

4KJ wrote cinquain poems today.

Cinquain poems have five lines and follow this structure:

Line 1: Noun or subject of poem (one word)

Line 2: Two adjectives that describe line 1

Line 3: Three verbs that describe line 1

Line 4: A short phrase about line 1

Line 5: A synonym of line 1 (one word)

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Read our Christmas cinquain poems below…

What do you think of our cinquain poems?

Can you write a cinquain poem in your comment?

As the end of the 2013 school year approaches, we have been reflecting on all that we have learnt this year.

We have covered so many learning topics this year! Every day we do two hours of literacy and one hour of maths, and we have specific learning intentions for each lesson. We like to relate our learning to real life, and of course everyone enjoys using the netbooks for many of our classroom tasks.

All of the 4KJ students have thoroughly enjoyed our four inquiry topics this year. We started the year focussing on Information Technology, before moving onto Smooth Moves, Plants in Action and concluding with First Contacts. The students’ research skills and knowledge has improved a lot this year!

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To reflect on our learning, students created mind maps using Freemind, which is a program on the netbooks. Mind maps are a great way to organise your thinking.

Below are a few mind maps that show just some of what we have learnt this year. Click on the icon in the bottom right hand corner to view the mind maps.

Paris

Mitchell C

Liv

Connor F

Jess

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What have you really improved at this year?

How else could you use a mind map in your learning?

We are excited to announce that the 4KJ class blog has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Edublog Awards.

Voting is now open for the worldwide 2013 awards. 4KJ need your support to help Leopold shine!

This year, you need to vote on a site called List.ly. Please note, you need to be 13+ to sign up for List.ly, so get your parents and other adults to sign up and vote!

To vote for us:

1. Go to the Best Class Blog nomination page.

2. Scroll down until you find the 4KJ Blog in the list of nominees.

3. Click the little upward “Vote up” arrow in the bottom left hand corner on our nomination icon. You may be asked to sign into your List.ly account. Remember, you need to be 13+, so if you are a student, get an adult to sign in.

This image shows what you need to look for to vote for the 4KJ blog.

Please remember:

• You can only vote for a nominee (eg. the 4KJ blog) once per IP address/location.
• To vote for our blog more than once, you need to vote at different locations and/or use different computers or devices.

Voting closes at 11.59pm on Wednesday 18th December.

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Thank you for your support!

This morning, the grade four students were scheduled to participate in an hour of tabloid sports outside, which was organised by the grade six P.E elective group.

Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and it started pouring with rain just as we were about to head out! Instead, we made our way to the LINC (our school gym) for some indoor fitness with our P.E teacher, Mr Hair.

Watching the big screen, the first challenge was for students to complete a fitness routine using the website Fitness Blender. The instructor modelled each exercise and the students followed his moves. The workout included sets of four different excercises:

• Burpees
• Side lunges
• Push Ups
• Jumping lunges.

We started at 10 repetitions for each exercise and decreased it by one each time. We definitely worked up a sweat by the end!

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Afterwards, Mr Hair put Just Dance on the screen and students showed off their dancing skills whilst following the actions on the screen. There was lots of singing, dancing and fun!

Here are some photos of the students enjoying their morning of fitness!

It was great to see every single student in 4KJ particpating and having fun, while working on their fitness!

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What did you enjoy about our morning fitness session?

What is your favourite kind of exercise?

Why is it important to exercise?

Today the grade four classes hosted parents and family members for our final Celebration of Learning afternoon.

You can read about our two previous afternoons here and here.

The purpose of this afternoon was for students to showcase and present their group projects, which were PowerPoint presentations based on our inquiry topic, First Contacts.

A variety of topics were covered, including life in 18th Century Britain, life for the First Australians, indigenous artwork, the First Fleet journey and convicts.

Students have been working hard for the past week on their presentations. The steps involved in creating the presentation were:

1. Form groups and decide on a specific topic to present.

2. Plan the presentation.

3. Research the topic online and in library books.

4. Put the information you researched into your own words.

5. Design an interesting and visually appealing PowerPoint presentation (including image attributions and a bibliography).

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Everyone did a fabulous job presenting their projects to their classmates, parents and family members. Prior to the afternoon, we discussed the important elements of a quality presentation.

All students worked hard at:

1. Speaking clearly and loudly.

2. Making eye contact with the audience.

3. Elaborating on information when necessary.

4. Engaging the audience with a smile!

Here are some photos from our afternoon. Thanks to our photographer, Ava!

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After each presentation, students and parents provided quality feedback to the group. Presenting in front of an audience, which is called public speaking, is not an easy task, but it can be very rewarding. Miss Jordan is so proud of all of the students in 4KJ for doing such a wonderful job with their presentations!

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What did you enjoy about our special afternoon?

What did you learn about First Contacts from watching the presentations?

How do you feel about public speaking?

In 4KJ, many of our learning tasks involve collaboration. Collaboration means working together to produce something.

Collaborating on tasks in the classroom has many benefits, including:

• Students develop their “getting along” skills.
• Students feel a sense of achievement from working as part of a team.
  
• Students can learn from each other.
• Students can teach each other new skills and strategies.
• Students can get peer feedback from their classmates.
• Students can take on different roles in group tasks.

This week students have been working in collaborative groups to make a presentation about our inquiry topic, First Contacts.

Everyone is enjoying discussing this interesting history unit, compiling information, gathering resources and creating interesting presentations in their groups.

Here are the groups hard at work!

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What collaborative tasks have you enjoyed this year?

What do you like about working as part of a team?

What skills do you bring to group tasks?

Do you collaborate or work together in tasks outside of school?

Today the grade four students enjoyed an incursion presented by Cultural Infusion.

The focus of the incursion was for the students to learn more about indigenous Australians and to listen to some dreamtime stories.

Everyone enjoyed listening to the didgeridoo and the storytelling.

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Today was also “Toss out Tuesday” and “Tidy Tub Tuesday” at Leopold Primary School.

Students and teachers were encouraged to clean out tubs and tidy up classrooms by recycling paper. In 4KJ we like to have a very tidy and organised classroom, so we were happy to participate in this event.

More information about recycling week can be found here.

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What did you enjoy about our incursion?

What do you know about recycling?

We have recently been learning about shape in our maths lessons.

The world around us is made up of space and shape and these are very important concepts for students to understand.

We used Jenny Eather’s Maths Dictionary for Kids a lot to learn and revise vocabulary such as:

• 3D shape
• 2D shape
• prism
• pyramid
• vertices
• edge
• face

We have enjoyed drawing and labelling shapes, making 3D shapes with nets, counting edges, faces and vertices and playing a range of games to learn about shapes.

If you would like to try some more activities about shape, you can find a collection of games on the Woodlands site here.

Shapes are all around us! What 3D shapes can you see in this photograph?

Geometry for Dummies – Attribution CC BY-SA 2.0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasclaveirole/538797534/lightbox/

Can you name any 3D shapes in the photograph?

Can you define any of our shape vocabulary?

Can you name and describe some 2D and 3D shapes?

Did you try any of the games on the Woodlands site?