Australian Curriculum Overview
English
In Year 4, students experience learning in familiar contexts and a range of contexts that relate to study in other areas of the curriculum. They interact with peers and teachers from other classes and schools in a range of face-to-face and online/virtual environments. Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read, view and interpret spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is aesthetic, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These encompass traditional oral texts including Aboriginal stories, picture books, various types of print and digital texts, simple chapter books, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts, dramatic performances and texts used by students as models for constructing their own work.
Mathematics
Understanding includes making connections between representations of numbers, partitioning and combining numbers flexibly, extending place value to decimals, using appropriate language to communicate times and describing properties of symmetrical shapes. Fluency includes recalling multiplication tables, communicating sequences of simple fractions, using instruments to measure accurately, creating patterns with shapes and their transformations and collecting and recording data. Problem Solving includes formulating, modelling and recording authentic situations involving operations, comparing large numbers with each other, comparing time durations and using properties of numbers to continue patterns. Reasoning includes using generalising from number properties and results of calculations, deriving strategies for unfamiliar multiplication and division tasks, comparing angles, communicating information using graphical displays and evaluating the appropriateness of different displays.
Science
In Year 4, students broaden their understanding of classification and form and function through an exploration of the properties of natural and processed materials. They learn that forces include non-contact forces and begin to appreciate that some interactions result from phenomena that can't be seen with the naked eye. They begin to appreciate that current systems, such as Earth's surface, have characteristics that have resulted from past changes and that living things form part of systems. They understand that some systems change in predictable ways, such as through cycles. They apply their knowledge to make predictions based on interactions within systems, including those involving the actions of humans.
HASS
The Year 4 curriculum focuses on interactions between people, places and environments over time and space and the effects of these interactions. Students gain opportunities to expand their world knowledge and learn about the significance of environments, examining how people's need and want of resources over time has affected peoples, societies and environments. Specifically, students study European exploration and colonisation in Australia and elsewhere up to the early 1800s and life for Indigenous Australians pre- and post-contact. They examine the concept of sustainability, and its application to resource use and waste management, past and present, by different groups. The curriculum introduces the role of local government, laws and rules, and group belonging and how they meet people's needs. Themes of law and citizenship extend into their studies of diverse groups, the colonisation of Australia and other places, and how environmental sustainability is enacted.
Health and Physical Education
The Year 3 and 4 curriculum further develops students' knowledge, understanding and skills in relation to their health, wellbeing, safety and participation in physical activity. In these years, students begin to explore personal and social factors that support and contribute to their identities and emotional responses in varying situations. They also develop a further understanding of how their bodies grow and change as they get older.
The content explores knowledge, understanding and skills that supports students to build and maintain respectful relationships, make health-enhancing and safe decisions, and interpret health messages from different sources to take action to enhance their own health and wellbeing.
Technologies (Digital)
In Year 3 and 4 students develop a sense of self and ownership of their ideas and thinking about their peers and communities and as consumers. Students explore and learn to harness their creative, innovative and imaginative ideas and approaches to achieve designed products, services and environments. They do this through planning and awareness of the characteristics and properties of materials and the use of tools and equipment. They learn to reflect on their actions to refine their working and develop their decision-making skills. Students examine social and environmental sustainability implications of existing products and processes to raise awareness of their place in the world. They compare their predicted implications with real-world case studies including those from the Asia region, and recognise that designs and technologies can affect people and their environments. They become aware of the role of those working in design and technologies occupations and how they think about the way a product might change in the future.
Music
In Years 3 and 4 , students learning Music extend their understanding of the elements of music as they develop their aural skills. They match pitch and show the direction of a tune with gesture or drawings. Students recognise difference between notes moving step and by leap. They recognise and discriminate between rhythm and beat. Students explore meaning and interpretation, forms and elements including rhythm, pitch, dynamics and expression, form and structure, timbre and texture as they make and respond to music. Students will learn to listen as performers and as audience, extending their awareness of themselves and others as performers and as audience.
Dance
In Years 3 and 4, students' awareness of themselves and others as audiences is extended beyond the classroom to the broader school context. In Dance, students extend their awareness of the body as they incorporate actions using different body parts, body zones and bases. They explore and experiment with directions, time, dynamics and relationships using groupings, objects and props.
Students extend their fundamental movement skills by adding and combining more complex movements and using technical skills including accuracy and awareness of body alignment. They explore meaning and interpretation, elements and forms including shapes and sequences of dances as they make and respond to dance. Students use expressive skills including projection and focus when performing dance for themselves and others.
Media Arts
In Years 3 and 4, students' awareness of themselves and others as audiences is extended beyond the classroom to the broader school context. In Media Arts, students extend their understanding of structure, intent, character and settings. They use composition, sound and technologies to consider themselves as audiences and explore other audience groups.
Students explore institutions (individuals, communities and organisations) to understand purpose and process when producing media artworks. They explore meaning and interpretation, and forms and elements including structure, intent, character, settings, composition, time, space and sound as they make and respond to media artworks.
Students discuss the ethical behaviour of individuals when producing media artworks for a variety of audiences and recognise appropriate and inappropriate use of other people's images and work in the making of media artworks.