Year 4 - Spring 2 - Week 2
Date: 3rd Mar 2022 @ 11:51am
What a great week we have had in Year 4. Full of hard work, effort and of course, plenty of fancy dress!
To acknowledge Shrove Tuesday and the beginning of lent, we connected our new monthly value of Sacrifice to our learning. With Ash Wednesday in our sights, we began the week by reflecting on how Lent allows Christians to remember Jesus’s fasting in the desert and the things we would give up as a test of our self-discipline. In RE, we identified moments of trust and betrayal in films and in the teachings of Jesus. Through watching the Lion King when Scar betrays Mufasa, we recognised that betrayal can be a refusal of help or breaking of trust.
It was time to move onto Mixed fractions this week. Armed with the knowledge of what a fraction is, how we make fractions and the parts a fraction is split into, we began our conversion to Mixed fractions. We focused on converting from improper fractions to mixed numbers using counters and shape representations. We had to group parts into wholes again, using our knowledge that when the numerator and denominator are the same, the fraction is equal to 1 whole. Then,we were able to spot how many wholes there were and how many parts were leftover. Next week, we will count, add and subtract fractions.
We were thrilled to delve a little further into our new book 'When the Giant Stirred' to discover how speech can be used in a story. By connecting our learning back to our speech chcklist, we created speech sandwiches to explain what we could offer the Gods and the reponse we would recieve, remembering to put the response on a new line for a new speaker. We then recalled our knowledge of writing speech to give guidance on what we should do if the volcano erupted, remembering to keep exclamation marks, commas and full stops inside the speech marks.
It didn’t take us long to master how to play a game of Rounders. Our fielders sure did showcase some great teamwork and of course, joy filled the air when our batters gained a rounder! We have also been developing skills in Tag Rugby with Mr Brindley, focusing on how we can use different agility techniques to dodge our opponents to keep our tag on.
Continuing our focus on electricity in Science, our wishes for the bulb to light and the motor to spin came true, as we created electrical circuits. We discussed the importance of all the connections being secure, in order for the circuit to work. Next week, we will be thinking about materials that we can incorporate into our circuits that conduct or insulate the electricity.
A huge thank you to the fantastic authors, Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre, who we joined on Zoom this week. They gave us an insight into their new book ‘Kevin vs the Unicorns’ and definitely got us ready for World Book Day. We thoroughly enjoyed illustrating Kevin along with the authors and took pride in our finished designs.
It is with no doubts that World Book Day is our highlight of the term so far. The children looked incredible, as they arrived at school dressed as their favourite book characters. The time, effort and pride the children took to create their looks was admirable. After we discovered the book ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’ in the classroom, the children were made aware that the crayons had quit and were not coming back without our help. As a result, our morning was spent completing activities set by the crayons in order to restore the crayon pack. If that wasn’t enough, we then took on a Masked Reader challenge, spotting the hidden celebrity behind the book.
From us all here in Year 4, have a wonderful weekend!
Reminders:
- All login details needed to access learning programmes at home are kept as a password document on your child’s Google Classroom, should they wish to complete any additional learning at home.
- Please ensure your child is reading regularly at home. Should you wish to complete additional reading comprehension practise at home with your child, questions and texts can be found on the Google Classroom stream.