Year 4 - Spring 1 - Week 1
Date: 9th Jan 2024 @ 3:44pm
A Happy New Year to you all! It has been a delight to welcome Year 4 back into the classroom this week and we sure have had kicked things off with a bang!
To acknowledge of Collective Worship value of Wisdom, we identified the qualities wise people share and used critical thinking to discuss ‘Do you have to be clever to be wise?’ We discovered that although we do need knowledge, our experiences sand judgements are what give us wisdom. With a focus on Authority, we began our RE topic by comprehending what authority is and experiences of authority in our own lives or in professions of people around us. We concluded that the King, Government, Police and teachers all hold authority as they have the power or right to give orders and make decisions.
It is apparent that our focus on volcanoes this term is a huge interest and we are intrigued in all aspects of the curriculum to discover more about volcanoes to support our learning. In English, we have discovered a wealth of vocabulary this week to describe volcanoes and the environments they might be found in. We have defined and illustrated words such as barren, tremors, eruption and pumice, in order to remember their connection to volcanoes and how we can use them in our writing. Using conjunctions, we formed sentences to explain what happened in the opening of our story ‘Escape from Pompeii’, ensuring that we used a range of conjunctions and stayed away from the word ‘and’ as much as we could. We considered the words in the story which would need to be considered in order to create an image of the setting, spotting vocabulary that explained what could be seen, heard and smelt in the Roman town. Using our ideas, we formed a descriptive piece of writing to tell the reader what they would be able to see, hear and smell if they were to visit Pompeii. Next week, we will compare our lives with that of Tranio, the Roman child in our story, and create a diary entry of his daily life.
Connecting our understanding of multiplying by 10, we began the week by multiplying numbers by 100. We discovered that in order to multiply by 100, we need to move our place value counters two columns to the left. Using our knowledge of place value and how the digits move on a place value grid when we multiply by 10 and 100, we recognised that to divide by 10 and 100, we simply moved our counters to the right instead. Using our knowledge from the week, we completed word problems by recording the multiplication calculation we needed to complete and demonstrating the multiplication on a place value grid. Next week, our focus moves onto written methods and how we can use the grid and column method to support us in multiply two- and three-digit numbers.
In Geography, we discovered that the Earth is made up of four layers; the crust, the mantle, the outer core and the inner core. We identified what each layer’s substance is and the distance from the Earth’s crust. PE saw us taking on a defence game of dodgeball. Working as knights, we had to defend our castles from the incoming cannon balls and aim for the opposition’s defences. It was also time to bring back a classic board game in PE, as we took on the TSP Cluedo challenge. We used our orienteering skills and process of elimination to discover which TSP teacher committed a crim in our school. After discovering that electricity comes from different sources, we created a Tree Map to show how appliances in our classroom and household are powered. We discovered those that are mains powered and battery powered before moving onto consider renewable and non-renewable energy.
All children across the whole school are encouraged to read each day both in and out of school. Some additional recommended Reading at Home resources can be found here.
We look forward to seeing you next week, Year 4. Have a great weekend!