It’s Chriiiiistmaaass! And what a lovely build up the festive season we’ve had in Year 4. The children have worked very hard on their songs in preparation for the carol concerts, which put a lovely festive feel in the air. We also enjoyed munching on our Christmas dinners together as well as partying the afternoon away alongside Year 3. There was music, games, prizes and some fantastic dance moves!
Year 4 have worked incredibly hard this half term and I very much look forward to seeing them again in January. 2023 will bring great things for this lovely lot, I am sure. Have a restful and joyful festive season and see you all in the New Year.
Over the past two weeks, we have been using our DT skills to design and create pavilions. In teams, the children carefully planned what their structure would look like, created the frame out of a range of materials and the added cladding to it using woven paper or folded paper to create a corrugated look. The end-products were great and the children were also able to develop their teamwork skills.
In our other lessons, we have been learning about biomes and how they are formed due to the different geographical climates zones we have in the world; science allowed us to look at the effects of environmental changes in our world; and in PSHE, we looked at visualisation as a relaxation technique as well as celebrating mistakes. The children have been very enthusiastic learners and have entered into mature discussions about some of these subject areas.
In PE, the children’s gymnastics skills have improved and they have been developing routines using their different movements and putting them to music.
What an exciting last two weeks we’ve had in Year 4! The England match, a brass band event at The Sage and Anti-bullying/Children in Need, UK Parliament week as well as all our usual lessons. Phew!
The brass band event at The Sage was incredible and the children behaved impeccably performing some well-known songs alongside lots of other schools. This was a tremendous opportunity for the children and one that I am sure they will remember for a long time to come.
We also took part in Anti-Bullying week and played games of rounders to demonstrate … as well as creating a mini representation of ourselves for an up-coming whole-school display. This also coincided with UK Parliament Week where we found out facts about Parliament and how it works in order to play a game of “Big Ben Bong-o” – there were some surprising facts that none of us knew before.
11/11/22
Year 4 News
Over the last two weeks, the children in Year 4 have been working incredibly hard with all the new units of work we’ve started.
In English, we have been challenging ourselves by writing a narrative based on “Ruin”. We’ve created ruined cities that have been the victims of a virus, war or natural disaster where our character must make a plan to reveal the evil minds behind it. Are they successful? Well, we have been working on cliffhangers to keep our readers entertained. This has certainly stretched our vocabulary, as has the new class novel we started: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo.
Maths has introduced us to rounding to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000, with which the children have done really well. They have also excellently recalled their knowledge of addition and subtraction and can now apply this to 4-digit numbers.
Throughout our afternoon lessons, we have been exploring how animals are adapted to their environments in science; climate zones around the world according to certain lines of latitude; Hinduism and their deities; as well as expressing our opinions of fruits in French.
24/10/22
Year 4 News
In the run up to our half term holiday, the children have continued to impress and many adults around the school have commented upon how excellent Year 4 have been! Well done Year 4!
During our English lessons, we finished and published our persuasive leaflets for the Grand High Witch’s new academy and they were thoroughly enjoyable to read. We used features such as the “rule of three”, rhetorical questions to engage our readers and conjunctive adverbs to create cohesion within our work. In the run up to our harvest assembly, the children have been working on their performance poetry, which we very much hope you enjoy on Friday morning.
In maths, the children have continued with place value and looking at thousands as well as exploring the use of Gattegno charts, part-part-whole models and bar models to apply our understanding in different ways.
We also had a lovely visit to our new library last week. The children were very excited and enjoyed a book (or three) in the comfort of the new bean bags and reading corners.
7/10/22
Year 4 News
We have been VERY busy here in Year 4 but the children continue to be enthusiastic learners.
In English, we have written some very entertaining character descriptions about our eerie, witchy character and have now moved on to persuasive writing. The Grand High Witch is opening an Academy for witches and it is our job to persuade them to go there. As such, the children used hot-seating to get into character and think about what a witch might really want from their school. We are now using these ideas to inform our writing and learning persuasive techniques such as rhetorical questions, conjunctive adverbs and “the rule of three”.
In maths, we have completed our current unit on 3-digit addition and subtraction and will soon be moving on to place value of numbers to 10,000. We also looked at using our knowledge to decide whether a written or mental strategy could be used to solve a problem.
In our afternoon subjects, the children have become immersed in Ancient Greek culture by looking at the age-old battle of Spartans vs Athenians - some of us were less than impressed by the lack of rights Athenian women had!
In computing, we have been exploring how the internet works to connect different computers across different buildings, cities and countries as well as seeing what we can find on a website.