Year 4 News
This week… (Week beginning 25th March)
Dear Parents and Carers,
Well what a week it has been for Year 4. The children have had an absolutely fantastic time at Dukeshouse Wood. Every member of staff they worked with, commented on how fantastically well behaved the children were and they all did themselves proud. Mr Todd, Mrs Mallaburn and Mrs Strachan were all singing their praises when they returned so I was very proud of them. The teaching staff have posted dozens of photos and videos on Class Dojo if you have not seen them. I asked the children what their favourite part of the trip was and they answered with a mix of high ropes, zip line and nightline. Please watch the videos of the children completing the Nightline course blindfolded as these are pretty funny.
Residentials like this are such an amazing opportunity for the children to work on their resilience and teamworking skills and it is something they will always remember. It’s brilliant that it has been such a positive experience.
Finally, thanks to all parents who attended the STEM workshop run by Woodhorn Colliery. The children loved preparing the challenges for you to solve.
All that is left to say is have a lovely and restful Easter break. Thanks again for all your support this term.This week… (Week Beginning 11th March)
Dear Parents and Carers,
Hope you are all well and have managed to avoid the coughs and colds that are going around. The Year 4s have had a fantastic start to the half term and as always they have been working incredibly hard. We have had assessment week in school this week, the results of which I will be able to share with you at Parent Teacher Interviews next week.
Also, we had a fantastic visit to Woodhorn Colliery. I put lots of pictures on the @EllingtonTweets twitter page if you have not seen them. In addition to the trip, we have had a follow up STEM workshop visit from Liz from the Woodhorn Museum to talk to us about the Bulby Mine at Whitby which is a modern salt mine. It turns out that the mine is used by scientists including NASA to test if machines and rovers they have developed could one day work on Mars.
As part of the STEM programme, we worked with robots called Earl and used our knowledge of grid references that we have been working on in Maths to create a map with a start and end point for Earl, obstacles for Earl to avoid and set challenges for Earl that have included visiting certain grid references and completing certain actions. Parents are to be invited into school to try in a fortnights time to try and complete these challenges with the children (letter to be sent out about this).
In other news, we have been really enjoying writing and editing our own monologue based on the true story of Philippe Petit who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers during their construction in 1974.Year 4 News (Week ending 9th February)
This week…
Dear Parents and Carers,
Another busy fortnight in Year 4. We have, as always been working our (odd) socks off. We have had a couple of nice events in school this week. We had our Internet Safety Day on Tuesday which involved watching a BBC live lesson on artificial intelligence. Some children also designed some great posters for the classroom.
We also had our Dress to Express Day in celebration of Children’s Mental Health Week. As part of this, we reviewed our Zones of Regulation which the children use to help regulate their emotions.
In Maths, last week we had NSPCC number day. The children were challenged to complete a Maths investigation. They were posed the question, would you rather have a shallow but wide box of popcorn or a thin but deep box? The children had to make their own popcorn boxes using a template and they then had to decide how they would measure which box held the most popcorn before presenting the results in a table.
In English we have been preparing to write a newspaper article based on the book Arthur and The Golden Rope by Joe Todd-Stanton. We looked at the features found in a newspaper (including using a catchy song) and started to write simple, compound and complex sentences to help make up the main body of the text. We have also looked at the difference between direct and reported speech and we have written examples of both.
In History we have been learning about Sutton Hoo as part of our work on Anglo-Saxons. We looked at different artefacts that the British Museum have removed from the burial site and made inferences about the Anglo-Saxons based on these.
Year 4 News (Week ending 26th January)
This week…
Dear Parents and Carers,
Hope you are having a fantastic start to the new year and welcome to our first newsletter of 2024.
It has been an incredibly busy start to the term but the children have settled in really well. We recently completed a practice multiplication check to help prepare for the real thing in the summer and we saw a lot of children make huge progress in learning their times tables. The average score in Autumn was 10 out of 25 it's now 18 out of 25 so we still have a bit of a way to go to hit our target of an average of 21 out of 25.
In PE we had a fantastic workshop with Skip for Life. The children learnt lots of new skills in skipping and I had about 5 children tell me their muscles were sore the next day so it must have been good exercise!
In Maths we have been recapping column methods for addition, subtraction and multiplication. The children are becoming really proficient in these procedures.
In English we have been writing poetry inspired by William Blake's Tyger. The children have generated alliteration, metaphors and similes to use in their poems about an animal they have chosen.
In Science we have investigated melting times in cold water compared to warm water. We have also been learning about the water cycle.
In PSHE we have now completed our unit on health and relationships. We have learnt about how we can take initiative to help reach our goals that will make us happy. We have also looked at types of emotions and we have looked at what is mental health and who can we talk to if we or someone we know is struggling with their mental health.
In RE we have continued to study Hinduism. We have learnt about puja and the items found on a puja plate. We have also learnt about bhajans and how and why Hindus celebrate the festival of Diwali.