Year 4 Team: Miss S McVey (Class Teacher), Mrs McRae (Class Teacher) Ms V Coates & Miss C Rawlinson
: Blog items

Year 4 - Summer 2 - Week 6

Date: 13th Jul 2023 @ 9:33am

end.jpeg

We finish our final full week of term with smiles on our faces and excitement for the new ventures to come, as we begin our transition into Year 5.

To celebrate our last full week together, we filled our time with our favourite activities and took a look back at our learning from the year. We enjoyed watching ‘How to draw’ videos, copying the drawing skills and getting top tips from some great illustrators. We were delighted at how our drawings came out and how much they resembled the characters and objects we had drawn. Using lots of creativity, we also completed our Minecraft project. Working as a class, we produced our own school design complete with different classrooms, art studios and even a school swimming pool.

In our Mindfulness lesson, we discovered that in the story, The Dot, a little girl named Vashti feels frustrated in art class because she thinks she can't draw.  Her teacher encourages her to make a mark on the paper and this begins her journey into discovering that you can make beautiful art with just DOTS. The story inspired us to make our own artwork, starting with a simple dot. We used the growth mindset we have developed over the year and our increased confidence in knowing we are capable of anything to make some fantastic pieces of art. What imagination and creativity we showed!

What a delight it was to watch the Year 6 Leavers Production this week! There certainly were lots of tears of pride and sadness, as we sent our best wishes for their next steps into High School and thanked them for the memories they have helped us to make at TSP.

This week, the children also enjoyed a visit from Rob from Formby Library who informed the children about this year's Summer Reading Challenge. Very exciting! There are two ways you can take part in the Summer Reading Challenge:

  • You can join at Formby Library and take part in person. The librarian will give you a collector folder, stickers, and other special rewards, and help you find books to read.
  • Or, take part online by signing up here. Set a reading goal and log your books on your profile. When you reach your goal, you will unlock a virtual badge and certificate.

Please note, the in-person and online challenges are separate. Medals and certificates are only available via the library, for those taking part in the in-person challenge. We hope the children enjoy completing the reading challenge and this will be celebrated when we return to school in September.

In preparation for the next academic year, please see the Year 5 Successful Start PowerPoint attached at the end of this blog.

Have a wonderful weekend, Year 4!

Year 4 - Summer 2 - Week 5

Date: 4th Jul 2023 @ 9:31am

sum24.jfif

It has been as busy as ever in Year 4 and we are certainly making the most of our time together before the Summer Break.

In order to understand our new monthly value of Service, we connected our knowledge of our School Value of Serve. After creating our own footprints, we outlined the ways we follow Jesus’ example in our daily lives and recalled the characteristics we show to fulfil our school value of Serve throughout the school day.

We have welcomed the fantastic Scholastic UK Book Fair to school over the past week and were overjoyed to visit and explore the books on offer. After taking a glimpse into some of the fantastic reads on offer, some of use even headed back after school to make some purchases.

After discussing the areas we have found trickiest to master in Maths, we used this week to refresh our understanding of key mathematical terms and to revisit those trickier concepts. We used positional language to describe the transition of a shape from one location to another on a grid, made our own clocks to confirm the minutes past and to, before revisiting rectilinear shapes. Next week, our focus turns to revisiting fractions and ensuring we are secure in our knowledge when using written methods to calculate using the four operations.

This week, we moved onto poetry in English and enjoyed spending some time exploring different poems and spotting rhyme and other poetical features. We a keen interest in animals, we know that this would form the perfect topic to centre our own poetry around! We chose to write a Kenning using phrases of two words to replace a noun. Our Kennings formed a riddle which our peers were very excited to guess.

Within our Art lessons, we have loved using different colours to create an ombre effect to represent the sunrise and sunset. This week, we utilised this skill to form a backdrop to the silhouette of a famous London landmark and left two white lines to create the look of lights being projected from the building, into the night sky.

Meeting a lifeguard from Formby Beach on Tuesday allowed us to reflect on the importance of water safety and the careful attention we need to take when visiting our local beaches. Thank you to the local lifeguards who continue to keep us safe and help us understand how we can keep safe when enjoying our time outside.

After the success of last year, this week we saw the return of the TSP talent show. We couldn’t be prouder of all the hard work the children put into practising their acts and the entertainment they brought to our class talent show!

The week was complete with a visit to Year 5, as we were given the opportunity to visit our new classroom and meet our new teacher, Mr McCabe. We are so excited to start our new ventures in September in our new classroom.

Have a brilliant weekend, Year 4. See you on Monday!

Year 4 - Summer 2 - Week 4

Date: 29th Jun 2023 @ 5:09pm

sum23.jpg

So much fun and games this week as we celebrated two highlight events of the year; Sports Day and our school Summer Fair.

To kick start the week, we considered how religions carry out their prayer. After identifying that prayer mats are used inside mosques, we considered what our prayer mat might look like using symbols and colours special to us. We continued our focus on Koinonia and recognised this value by working as a team to design our own marble mazes. Using straws and lots of tape, we created a marble track on the bottom of our upside-down tables and guided the marble from start to finish using great communication.

In Maths, we have been thinking about positional and directional language including forward, backwards, left and right and understanding the direction of a turn. We loved using Bee-Bots to reinforce our use of this language and move the Bee from one position to another. We have learnt how to find and record co-ordinates and even direct our partners over and under different obstacles using positional language. Next week, we are going to recap topics such as time, measurement and shape.

After receiving a letter from a curious caver, we set to the task of researching facts to form a reply to the many questions the caver has asked. He claimed he had tripped on a stalactite, but we know that can’t be possible as they are located on the cave ceilings!? But don’t worry, we explained in full detail that this couldn’t have been the case and in fact, it may have been a stalagmite he tripped on.

We were bubbling with excitement during our Science lesson this week, as we made our very own bubble snakes. Experimenting with different approaches, we watched as our bubbles grew longer and longer and we even tried making rainbow coloured bubbles with splashes of food dye.

What a fantastic Sports Day full of laughter and smiles! Thank you to everyone who attended and made it a day to remember. We truly had the best time racing and the joy on our faces was clear to see.

After reaching the top of our Secret Student ladder, we were thrilled to bring our own games into school on Friday, to share with our friends to celebrate our incredible achievements. The excitement built through the morning with the anticipation of our school Summer Fair and WOW, wasn’t it just brilliant. Our arms were filled full of goodies, as we made our way around the many incredible stalls on offer. We are so thankful to the amazing Team TSP for making our afternoon so wonderful!

Have a fantastic weekend, Year 4!

Year 4 - Summer 2 - Week 3

Date: 20th Jun 2023 @ 10:21am

IMG_7313.JPG

This week has flown by! It must be all the excitement leading up to our fantastic Summer term events.

In our RE lesson this week, we unpicked the Lord’s Prayer to comprehend the meaning behind the prayer and the terminology used. We identified that the Lord’s Prayer is a Christian prayer which Jesus taught his disciples to say. The prayer begins by making it clear who people are praying too because Christians believe that God is the Father of everyone.

Our focus in Maths this week was symmetry. With the knowledge that a line of symmetry is a line that cuts a shape exactly in half. This means that if you were to fold the shape along the line, both halves would match exactly. We then moved onto finding symmetry with coloured squares and completing half of a given image. Next week, we will focus on interpreting graphs and reading statistical information.

We have continued to be inspired by the story ‘Blue John’ when writing and have loved delving into the four chapters we have read so far. We considered what we might see and hear if we were the child dancing in the cavern with Blue John and incorporated the use of similes to describe what our senses would experience. Later, we moved on to creating an explanation text to outline how Blue John was created using Geographical vocabulary associated with the aspects of a cave.

Connecting out understanding of symmetry in Maths, we explored the design features of the Taj Mahal. Using half of an image outlining the Taj Mahal building, we then created the basic structure of the building on the other half of the blank page to create symmetrical artwork.

To celebrate National School Sport Week, our Sports Ambassadors devised a plan to set up different sporting activities on the playground for us to enjoy at breaktimes this week. From dodgeball to tennis, we spent our breaktimes playing with friends, developing our skills and enjoying time taking part in team games. We are thrilled to have been given the opportunity to grow in confidence and take part in sports we might not normally play.

Thinking like a Historian, we examined how the Vikings tried to take over the country and explored how close they got. We grasped that Vikings kept coming to Britain for almost 300 years first as raiders then as conquerors. We identified a period of time when the Vikings were successful and another when they were not. Using terms such as raiders and settlement, we discussed the importance of the Danelaw as an area of Viking settlement and analysed turning points in the Viking’s fortunes.

The countdown is now on to Sports Day and we are looking forward to inviting our loved ones to come and watch us race next week! Have a great weekend, Year 4.

 

Reminders:

Sports Day – Wednesday 28th June

Summer Fair – Friday 30th June

 

Year 4 - Summer 2 - Week 2

Date: 13th Jun 2023 @ 10:15am

b273.jpeg

The sun might be shining, but the heat hasn’t stopped our productivity this week!

In RE, we discussed how we have all had opportunities to pray in many different ways, through our school assemblies, time in church and our own reflective time. We explained what prayer means to us and concluded that a prayer is an expression of belief and commitment. Using our handprints, we unpicked using our five fingers, five things we pray for including those who teach us, lead us, those who love us and those who are sick and weak.

This week we have carried out lessons to recap our learning and completed assessments to showcase our knowledge. The positivity and passion for learning that fills the room when the children are tasked with showcasing their thinking is incredible to see!

We are delighted to announce that our Multiplication Check is officially over and we couldn’t be prouder of the commitment and dedication the children have shown towards recalling their times tables. What a joy to hear from all of the children that the test ‘Really wasn’t anything to be worried about!’

In PE, we have been working hard to prepare for our up and coming Sports Day. From the egg and spoon race to the sack race, we smiled and laughed throughout as we raced our way to victory against our friends and even mastered a three-legged race. We cannot wait to show our parents and careers the races we have been practising in a couple of weeks.

For our History lesson this week, we thought about the perception people have of the Vikings and why this might be so. We unpicked different accounts of Vikings and noticed that they differed depending on whether they were written by a Saxon or a Viking. Later, we found that the Monks had lots of wealth giving them the ability to write their version of what happened to them and therefore, sheading a bad light on the Vikings.

Continuing with our focus on the wonders of bubbles, we investigated whether or not bubbles can change in size and the science behind why a bubble pops.

A week full of hard work and smiles, Year 4. Thank you for shined brighter than the stars in the universe!

 

Reminders:

  • As the weather is becoming warmer, please ensure your child brings a sun hat, water bottle and sun cream to school.
  • Children reading on the school book band should ensure their book is brought back into school to be changed on their reading day each week.

Year 4 - Summer 2 - Week 1

Date: 6th Jun 2023 @ 9:53am

IMG_7209.JPG

The final term is upon us and we are delighted to be spending lots of opportunities learning and having fun in the sunshine.

With a focus on shape and space, it was time to recap our understanding of angles and how we can determine whether an angle is acute, obtuse or a right angle, focusing on 90 degrees as our guide point. With the help of Pac-Man and his right-angled mouth, we found the types of angles in the letters of our names and identified that a full 360-degree turn can be split into four lots of 90 degrees. Our attention then turned to comparing the sizes of angles, before identifying the different types of triangles. Next week, we will identify the names of quadrilaterals and make different 2D and 3D shapes using art straws to determine their properties.

Moving on from stories surrounding the wonders of volcanoes, we now delve into the depth of caves and caverns with inspiration from the wonderful book titled ‘Blue John’. The story sees us venturing down into the caves where the Queen of Darkness lives and we follow the adventures of her rare and precious baby, Blue John, who has been created using the blue of a glacier and the gold of the sun. Using the text, we discussed what stalactites are and used similes to describe how they grow. We used aspects of the text to correct the use of past tense and used commands to write a set of instructions.

We observed and investigated bubbles in Science, exploring whether all bubbles rise and if bubbles can change colour or shape. In Art, we remembered that the heaviness or lightness of the shading we use can change with the pressure of our pencil and/or making the lines and dots closer together or further apart. In PE, it was time to start preparing for our up and coming Sports Day by completing some speed running races to increase our pace and carrying out different obstacle courses to enhance our speed and agility.

Our History lessons this term all stem around our perspectives of the Vikings and the stereotypes we hold. We generated a range of adjectives and nouns used to describe Vikings and reinforce the chronology of the times of the first Viking raid using a timeline of events. In the role of Saxon spies, we draw from memory, a Viking ship and then posed questions to analyse its features. Next week, we will examine why Vikings have such a bad reputation.

A huge thank you to the incredible Simon Hunt who joined us this week to share the delights of his book which is titled'Delilah Rose: the Bogey Princess' and some wonderful and inspiring poetry. 

An excellent week and we hope that the sun continues to shine long into the weekend. Enjoy and see you on Monday!

 

Reminders:

  • Due to the sunny weather, please ensure children bring a water bottle, hat and suncream to school.
  • PE days continue every Tuesday and Friday.

Year 4 - Summer 1 - Week 6

Date: 23rd May 2023 @ 9:24am

END.JPG

The end of term is upon us, our spirits are high and we have lots of reasons to feel proud of ourselves this term.

To reflect on our Collective Worship value of courage this term, we considered all the times we have been courageous by facing your fears and showing strength in the face of adversity. We recognised how courage refers not only to physical courage but also to moral or emotional courage. As a class, we decided that our favourite courageous moment this term was our efforts to face our fears and enter the Bat Cave at Chester Zoo!

Our Maths lessons have focused on supporting our ability to recall the times tables up to the x12 times tables. With a specific focus on the 6 and 8 times tables, we used times tables wheels to fill in the gaps to show the answer to a given times table, we performed raps and songs that left us singing the same song all day long and even recapped our calculation methods with chalk on the playground. We understand how tricky it can be to answer a given multiplication question so quickly, but we know if we keep working hard on all the tips and tricks we have been practising, we will be confident in recalling times tables quicker and quicker each day.

It was a joy to revisit some of our English books from Year 2 and look back at a piece of poetry we wrote inspired by the Matilda Musical song ‘When I grow up’. From Lamborghinis to flying off to space, our dreams had no limits! We adopted our poems from two years ago and changed the verses to include a more up to date focus on our future hopes and dreams, consider the hopes we have for others too. We used a repetitive pattern and the phrase ‘so that I’ to add justification for our hopes and dreams. Our poems are definitely worthy to be read aloud on the West End Stage!

In Spanish, we learnt the Spanish words associated with the items we use daily in the classroom and the equipment we need to support our learning. We learnt how we can use the phrase ‘Tengo’ to mean ‘I have’ and add the Spanish word for the equipment in front of us to finish the phase to explain to someone the things we have in our pencil class. Our focus turned to considering whether to use ‘un’ or ‘una’ and how ‘mi’ should be used if we are talking about an item that is mine.

On Friday, must to our delight… we used Minecraft Education to complete a series of challenges that enabled us to develop our coding skills. In order to build our very own version of TSP using the software, we had to collaborate online to create digital content and create a 3D structure using the Minecraft tools.

To conclude the week, we spent time as a class making valuable memories and sharing our highlights from the term. It was also time to say goodbye to Miss Bradford and Miss Hadwin as we wish them well as they continue their teacher training.

Wishing you all a lovely half term break. We can’t wait to hear all about it on our first day back!

 

Reminders:

  • Please ensure that children come to school with a water bottle each day, especially during these hotter days. 
  • Year 4 PE lessons will remain on Tuesday and Friday each week.
  • Year 4 Multiplication Check Week 1 commencing Monday 5th June.

Year 4 - Summer 1 - Week 5

Date: 16th May 2023 @ 12:57pm

chester.jpeg

Another great week in Year 4!

It was time to get crafty in RE and design our very own churches. Taking a step by step approach to outline the church building, we then added the finer details to show our awareness of the features in a church. Our churches came to life with the addition of stain glasses windows, created using coloured tissue paper to make our desired effect.

With the understanding that deforestation has a negative impact on the Amazon Rainforest, we acted by planning and writing letters to the tree surgeons in Brazil airing our concerns about the action they are taking. After setting out our letters using the formal letter writing features, we used exclamation sentence types, rhetorical questions and factual information to make our plea. In Geography, we supported our letters with an accompanying poster that highlighted the layers of the rainforest and the specific animals and habitats effected by deforestation.

As we draw closer to carrying out our Multiplication Check, we are focusing on the tricky times tables that require a few tricks and tips to help us master. Learning through songs, games and number lines are all strategies we are finding help us grasp the trickier facts we need to recall. We have also been confirming our understanding of converting between the 12- and 24-hour clock, writing in digital time and drawing the hands on an analogue clock face.

What a day we had on Friday! If the coach trip itself wasn’t exciting enough, our smiles filled the zoo as we watched the elephants showering, tigers roaring and penguins gliding. We headed off to explore different enclosures, spoke to many of the Zoo Keepers and ventured through their very own rainforest. To conclude the day, we mustered up the courage to enter the free flying bat cave.

You may also have noticed the installation of our Community Book Swap Box here at Trinity St. Peter's. This has been installed in memory of Margaret Blake, a past Governor here at TSP, who loved coming in to school and hearing children read. It is located on the wall (near the defibrillator) and the idea is for the whole community (adults and children) to use this book swap box so we can share our love for reading with all!

 

Reminders:

  • Mufti Day on Friday 26th May
  • Term ends Friday 26th May 3.05pm.
  • KS2 Cross Country Race open to all KS2 children – Thursday 25th May 4pm at Stanley High School.

Year 4 - Summer 1 - Week 4

Date: 10th May 2023 @ 2:35pm

Image (21).jpeg

We may have only been together for 4 days this week but boy have we had fun!

Continuing to think about our Collective Worship value of Courage, we thought about the courageous steps we can take towards overcoming our fears. We designed our very own church notice board in RE, displaying vital information about community activities, church events and worship times. We ensured that throughout our church notice board, Christians values were promoted and encouraged.

Excitement filled the classroom as our preparations and research projects for Chester Zoo got underway. After analysing virtual information boards around the zoo, we created our own information board bursting with factual information about the rainforest and the wildlife that might be found inside it. We selected our own catchy headings, pictures, 3 second summary and sub-headings to support the factual information we recorder to share with the reader. We recognised the importance of making the information board engaging to read and discussed how the use of questions, alliteration and both headings and sub-headings can contribute towards this.

We have recalled lots of facts about time this week, thinking about how many days are in each month of the year, the number of months in a year and also the conversion between seconds, minutes and hours. Later in the week, we considered why the numbers 13-23 are used on a clock and recognised that this meant the clock was in a 24 hour format. Next week, we will be converting times from their 24 hour format and considering the different ways we can represent times in the AM and PM.

In Science, we learnt about the water cycle and the process of evaporation, condensation and precipitation. We enjoyed representing the water cycle using sandwich bags and sticking them to the classroom window so we can observe the process over time and see how the water progresses around our cycles. To showcase the wildlife in the rainforest, we took inspiration from Henry Rousseau to create a water coloured backdrop to place our stencilled silhouette animals onto. Continuing with our focus on rainforests, we learnt all about the tribes who called the Amazon their home and compared their way of living to that in our modern society.

Taking all of our learning surrounding rainforests in to consideration, next week, we will be writing a letter to express our concerns regarding deforestation in rainforests and the knock-on effects deforestation has on wildlife, people and communities.  

Have a wonderful weekend, Year 4. See you Monday!

 

Reminders:

  • Class Photographs – Wednesday 17th May.
  • Chester Zoo Trip on Friday 19th May. Children need to bring a packed lunch and water bottle with them.
  • Mufti-Day – Friday 19th May.

Year 4 - Summer 1 - Week 3

Date: 3rd May 2023 @ 8:52pm

skate.jpg

A short, yet productive, week for us in Year 4!

Thinking about the colours we spotted when visiting St. Peter’s church last week, we reflected on why these particular colours are used within the church and the meaning behind them. After exploring what each colour signifies, we connected the colours to events in the Christian calendar such as Advent, Lent and Easter and identified the colour we would associated with each event or celebration.

In Maths, we compared amounts of money and recognised the notes or coins needed to make an amount greater than or less than a given amount. Using our understanding of rounding, we focused on recognising the nearest pound our amounts were closest to and visited the Year 4 TSP Sweet Shop again to check the change was correct when we purchased an item. Bringing all our learning together, we finished the week by solving money world problems.

After reminding ourselves of the key features of a non-chronological report, we identified the heading and factual information about the amazing Amazon rainforest. We were challenged to create a 3 second summary to explain what the page described and create our own sub-headings, for the numbered paragraphs. With so many words ending in the ‘ous’ spelling, we reminded ourselves of the spelling rule when using this ending changing words such as danger and poison into dangerous and poisonous. Later in the week, we turned our attention to a group of cute Sloths and researched factual information we could use in our very own non-chronological report. Our facts were then grouped into paragraphs, as we allocated a suitable sub-heading to each paragraph.

We were thrilled to have been given the opportunity to have a Skateboarding lesson on Wednesday! With our helmets and knee pads on, we used our balance and coordination skills to not only control the movement of the skateboard but keep ourselves balanced when taking our feet off the ground. Another delight took place on Thursday, as we were introduced to the new Lego club starting next term with a taster to see how Lego can be a fun and interactive experience to enjoy with our friends.

Friday brought our very own Coronation picnic! We thoroughly enjoyed sharing this memorable experience with our friends and recognising the significance of the weekend ahead. Following our lunch, we completed artwork inspired by the future King by collaging a template of his face with all things British!

We look forward to seeing the new king lead our country and the fun celebrations we are taking part in this weekend. Have a great one, Year 4!

 

Year 4 - Summer 1 - Week 2

Date: 25th Apr 2023 @ 10:30am

IMG_6759.JPG

Another fantastic week in Year 4, here are some of our highlights:

To support our understanding of our new topic in RE, ‘Are all churches the same?’ we took a visit to St. Peter’s church to identify different features inside the church and were greatly helped by Reverend Gordon with some of the special names these features are given. We then connected our visit to help use label features in a given church image before comparing the features found with those in a Mosque. Thinking critically, we identified similarities and differences between the two, ensuring we justified the importance of this feature being present to the Muslim and Christianity religions.

We concluded our focus on decimals and fractions this week, by pairing up a fraction with its equivalent decimal and ensuring we understand how to find a fraction of a given amount. We know the importance of checking how many groups the fraction is outlining but also the number of groups the numerator is representing, that we need to count. We then moved onto thinking about money and how we can make different amounts in multiple ways. With a visit to the Year 4 class toy shop, we made our very own wish lists of things we wanted to buy and used the least about of coins to make our purchases. Next week, we will be ordering and rounding amounts of money.

In our focus story, ‘Where the sea meets the forest’ the book refers to the forest both in the past, present and future. With this in mind, we created our very own expanded noun phrases to accompany the sentence starter ‘I once was in a place where...’ to outline what the forest looked like at that time. We connected our understanding of deforestation to the future forest image, as we noticed no trees were shown simply buildings and new developments. Thinking about possessive apostrophes, we created a list of the top 10 things we would take on an expedition to a rainforest and used apostrophes to show the items we would lend from our friends e.g. Bob’s torch. We also listened to a fantastic documentary narrated by the incredible David Attenborough, listening to the language and word choices he makes to describe the habits of a Draco lizard. With his inspiration, we were then tasked to write our own narration to read alongside his documentary surround a hungry tree shrew.

In Geography, we divided a diagram of a rainforest into its four layers and discovered the animals and wildlife living in each layer. Our Art lesson moved onto focusing on a leaf print and how we could overlap the leaves on our page to create the image of an overgrown rainforest. We discovered that we could use the end of the paintbrush to imprint the veins onto our painted leaves. In PE, we had great fun created partner balances. It was vital we used a secure and safe wrist grip to keep our partner balanced and developed our core strength through some fitness exercises to enhance our stability.  

Following the Multiplication Check Parent Briefing this week, all information regarding the check has been shared via School Spider. We ask that for the remaining weeks of this term, times tables are a big focus for any additional learning taking place at home.

Have a lovely weekend and Bank Holiday Monday, Year 4. See you back in class on Tuesday 2nd May!

 

Reminders:

  • Wednesday 3rd May – PE kits for the Year 4 Skateboard session
  • Multiplication Check Briefing information sent via School Spider

Year 4 - Summer 1 - Week 1

Date: 18th Apr 2023 @ 11:56am

golf.jpg

What a fantastic first week back we have had! It was so lovely to see all the children back and enjoying spending time with their friends, excited to hear all about the new things we will be learning this term.  

This term, our focus turns to looking at different churches in RE and considering if all churches are the same. Through research, we discovered this week that not all church buildings look the same from the outside but some have similar features according to denomination. We also used religious vocabulary to names features of a church we already knew from visiting St Peter’s and Holy Trinity Church.

We have continued to develop our knowledge of decimals in Maths. We now understand that when dividing, numbers can be shifted into the tenths and hundredths and we must show this by using a zero and decimal place before the number. After identifying the fractions for a half, quarter and three quarters, we identified the correlating decimal and rounded decimals to the nearest whole.

Our new focus book ‘Where the Forest Meets the Sea’ by Jeannie Baker connects to our Geography and Art topics this term and is full of beautiful illustrates to showcase the wonders of a rainforest. We have explored the sounds associated with a rainforest and used descriptive language to outline what our senses can see and hear. Later, we took sentences from the book and changed the pronouns to ensure there was a varying range of pronouns used before creating our own glossary of words in the book we wanted to learn the meaning of.

To reflect on our learning surrounding greenhouses last term and enhance our understanding of seasonal food for our DT topic in the coming weeks, we visited a local allotment and met with the gardeners to grow their plants and vegetables on the site. It was amazing to see such a diverse range of greenhouses, all fit for the same purpose and the range of fruits and vegetables that are being grown at this time of year. We learnt some handy tips on how best to care for the seeds we are growing in our greenhouses and the different ways of growing vegetables in our climate.

In Geography, we focused on identifying the location of rainforests on a world map. We first identified the line of the equator and learnt that the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn are located above and below the equator line and it is within this zone that the rainforests are located. In Science, we showcased the make up of particles in different states of matter and considered whether it is only liquids that can be poured.

Using the artist Henri Rousseau as inspiration, we explored his famous painting ‘Tiger in a tropical storm’ and discussed the techniques used in the image. With our sights set on making the animals in the forest scene ‘pop’, we made our colour choices and began making the parrots drawn in our forest scenes stand out amongst the over growth. In PE, we began to take on the sport of Tri-Golf, creating a mini golf course around our school field with the aim to develop of aiming skills towards a given target flag.

It has been so lovely to have you back, Year 4! Have a restful weekend.

 

Reminders:

  • Clarinet lessons take place every Monday.
  • PE lessons take place every Tuesday and Friday
  • Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check Parent Briefing – Tuesday 25th April

Year 4 - Spring 2 - Week 6

Date: 28th Mar 2023 @ 10:28am

IMG_1430.JPG

We the end of the Spring Term upon us, we spent some time reflecting on our fantastic achievements and our goings on this week.

This term, we have been working hard to consolidate our knowledges of our times tables ahead of the Year 4 Multiplication Check. We have found that we learn our times tables best through games such as Battle Ships, Monopoly and Top Trumps. We also found a great resource which enabled us to make times tables fortune tellers which meant we could continue to practise our times tables at break times and through the school day.

It was time to take on our DT project, designing our very own greenhouses with a specific design criterion in mind. First, we explored a greenhouses’ function and the requirements it needs to have in order for the plants inside to grow. We identified the part of the greenhouse which allows the sunlight to enter and how we can ensure the plants do not overheat. In our design process, we outlined the materials and tools needed to create our greenhouses, how we will ensure we have a resealable opening and the colours and patterns we will use to decorate our product. After a great morning creating our designs, we then reflected on our successes against the design criteria and any areas of improvement we would note for next time.

On Friday we attended our Easter Service led by the fantastic Year 3 children. It was amazing to watch their performance and see their incredible acting and singing come to life. We did a great job supporting Year 3 with the lovely songs in our service and celebrating this wonderful time of the year.

There was only one way to end the term… with an Easter Egg Hunt! On the sound of the horn, we set off finding clues around the school which directed us to a teacher or classroom where the next clue could be found. We used fantastic teamwork and inference skills to deduce that the final clue led us back to our own classroom where winning Easter vouchers were awaiting our arrival. At the end of the day, we were able to exchange our voucher for an Easter treat!

What an amazing term we have had, Year 4. Go make some incredible memories with your family and friends this Easter and we look forward to seeing you back on Monday 17th April. Best wishes from us all x

 

Reminders:

  • School commences on Monday 17th April.
  • Clarinet lessons continue in the Summer term.
  • Year 4 PE lessons are on Tuesday and Friday each week.

Year 4 - Spring 2 - Week 5

Date: 21st Mar 2023 @ 10:03am

spring 7.jpg

As the half term draws closer, let us take a look at some of this week’s highlights…

Coming to the end of our RE topic, we summarised the key Christian values of trust and forgiveness making the connection that Christians believe that they can trust Jesus. We recalled the events of Holy Week and Easter, before remembering incidents of betrayal in the Easter story, through the actions of Judas and in movies we like to watch. To further reflect on our Collective Worship value of Forgiveness, we looked closely at the symbol of the cross and discussed how it reminds Christians that God wants to forgive the wrong things that people do so that they can live in peace and friendship with Him and with others.

It was time to start our story writing in English, to create our own versions of our focus text ‘When the Giant Stirred’. We began by planning the opening, build up, problem, resolution and ending to our stories and noting any dialogue we would expect our characters to have in each part of our story. We ensured we thought about the possible fronted adverbials we could use to help set the scene or time of day events were taking place and how we could use a range of nouns to make our writing more exciting to read. Each day, we ensured we wrote a chunk of our story to form a paragraph so our stories went on a slow and steady, yet detailed journey, from start to end.

This week in Maths, we have explored how to find fractions of given quantities or amounts using bar models to help us understand how many parts the number is split into and what amount is within each part. We then identified tenths on a place value chart and began to understand tenths as a decimal and fraction, noting the jump on the place value chart when we divide a one-digit number by 10 or 100.

We continue to shine in Mrs McArdle’s clarinet lessons! We now understand how to construct our clarinets and are building speed in doing so, the sounds we are producing are becoming more of a perfected tone and we are even incorporating a range of notes by moving our finger position on the instrument. Our History lessons have also been packed full of evidence huting, as we focused on the push and pull factors that show reasoning for Saxon settlement and we uncovered the mystery of the empty grave in Sutton Hoo. This week we delved deeper into the story of how Christianity to Britain and it took about 70 years for English kings to give up pagan ways and become Christian.

A popular board game made an appearance in our PE lesson, as we used our OAA skills to solve a TSP Cluedo game. After discovering the suspect teachers, weapons that could have been used and the place where the crime may have taken place, we set off around our school grounds to find evidence of who or what could be crossed off the suspect list. Mr Brindley continues to put us through our paces on a Thursday and is extremely impressed with our developments in our knowledge and understanding of key skills and fitness components.

Before we take on the last week, Year 4, have a wonderful weekend!

Year 4 - Spring 2 - Week 4

Date: 14th Mar 2023 @ 10:36am

Spring 2 Week 4.jpg

A week of reflecting about the power of the brain this week in Year 4 and reminding ourselves just how creative and critical we can be.

Reflecting on our Collective Worship value of Forgiveness and connecting the value to our RE lesson, we focused on Peter’s denial and Jesus’ forgiveness. We questioned why Peter betrayed Jesus and the denial he showed in the courtyard. We the importance of forgiving others and why Jesus encourages forgiveness too.

Focusing on the thoughts, feelings and dialogue one of the villagers may be experiencing in our story, we created a Bridge map with the support of some fantastic villagers in our classroom room, roleplaying the role to support our writing. We deduced from a given text different spelling, punctuation and grammar elements that should be present in our writing and looked at the power of using different nouns/noun phrases to enhance our writing.

Continuing our focus on fractions, we unpicked different ways to represent a mixed fraction and how in turn, it shows an improper fraction. Then our focus shifted to adding and subtracting a fraction with the same denominator before securing our understanding using the Learning by Questions website. Next week, we will begin to develop an awareness of decimals and their relationship with fractions.

To acknowledge Brain Awareness Week, we looked into our own brains by creating Brain Hats. Placing the hats on our heads, we were able to look at both sides of the brain to help us recognise its essential functions, as well as how the different lobes support us every day. We also reflected on our thinking maps, thinking hats and unique 4C model with focus on how these tools we have in school support us with our learning and enable our brains to create deeper thinking.

The classroom was full of dancing gloop on Wednesday, as we joined the rest of the school in celebrating British Science Week with a theme surrounding the weird and wonderful creations in George’s Marvellous Medicine. Our experiment not only allowed us to feel like George in the story but also developed our understanding that cornflour is made up of lots of tiny starch particles and when it is mixed with water, the starch particles become suspended in liquid as the water moves in between them.

In support of the work we have been carrying out with the LFC Foundation, we headed down to the National Trust and toured the environmental areas that are of a concern to the National Trust due to littering and animal habitats. After being set the challenge of thinking of strategies we could use to encourage visitors to the site to use the bins or take their rubbish home, we presented our Litter Slogans to The National Trust for use around the beach area. We are hopeful that our catchy slogans encourage visitors to “Not be the pollution, be the solution!

Red nose filled the classroom on Friday as we completed lots of fun and games – all with a red theme – in aid of Red Nose Day. It was our mission to ensure we came together to raise smiles in recognition of helping others through tough times in their lives. We should did have the best afternoon!

Sending our best wishes to all our TSP mums, nannas, grandmas and inspirational women in our children’s lives. We hope you have a lovely Mother’s Day and a fantastic week!

Year 4 - Spring 2 - Week 3

Date: 6th Mar 2023 @ 9:22pm

Image-1 (8).jpg

A week full of determination to achieve and a positive outlook towards all of our learning tasks this week… even if we did have a test or two to complete.

This week, the children have worked incredibly hard to complete assessments to showcase their learning so far this year. Our school value of Hope was certainly achieved by all, as they tried their best and were determined to complete their assessments to the best of their ability.

Reflecting back to the moments of betrayal and trust we identified in popular children’s films last week, we connected our understanding to help us identify when trust and betrayal were apparent in the Easter story. We recognised that Jesus trusted his disciples and they trusted him, yet he was betrayed to the Roman authorities by one of his disciples, Judas.

In Collective Worship, we discussed how sometimes people do and say things that hurt us and how it can be difficult when someone has hurt us to forgive. Using the analogy of a fizzing vitamin tablet, we dropped a tablet into a bottle of water. As it fizzed away, we let the hurt feelings go and imagined forgiving the person as the hurt disappeared. We then reflected on how it feels to forgive others and the relief it brings to our hearts and mind.

Thinking about how we represent a new speaker when writing speech, we created a conversation between the villagers in our story ‘When the giant stirred’, reinforcing our knowledge of how to write speech and also adding the addition of a new line for a new speaker. Next week, we will look at how we can incorporate expanded noun phrases and front adverbials into our writing, alongside speech sentences.

Our Maths lessons have helped us to understand how to add and subtract fractions when the denominator is the same and how convert a improper fraction into a mixed number. Next week, we will start to explore decimals and what fraction and decimal amount are equivalent.

In recognition of International Women’s Day, we delved into books from the Little People, Big Dreams Series to find shared characteristics of inspiring women in history, politics, music, arts, design, science, and sports. Characteristics we identified included bravery, ambition and empowerment.

In our latest session with the LFC Foundation, we took are campaigns in support of endangered animals to the next level by creating campaign t-shirts to wear to enable us to spread to word regarding the importance of caring for our planet and the habitats of animals in our environment. We can’t wait to visit our local National Trust site next week to see some of the animals in our local area and provide the National Trust with our catchy anti-litter slogans to put around the site.

We hope that you make the most of your weekend, Year 4 and we look forward to seeing you again on Monday!

Year 4 - Spring 2 - Week 2

Date: 28th Feb 2023 @ 10:32am

IMG_1268.JPG

What a delight to hear that our week in school has been “One of the best weeks ever!” World Book Day, a School Trip and our very first Clarinet lessons have all added to a great week in Year 4.

On Monday, we were introduced to our new musical instruments and Mrs McCardle discussed with us the different parts of the clarinet and how we can make a sound using the wooden reed inserted into the top of our mouth piece. She showed us how to put the pieces of our clarinet together and the way in which we need to blow into the mouth piece to make a sound. Each week, we will be working hard to learn some musical compositions which we can shared with our loved ones at home later in the year.

Continuing with our focus on trust and betrayal in RE, we watched clips from popular children’s movies and discussed the times we could see the characters displaying trust or moments of betrayal. Clips included the trust Wendy had in Peter Pan when taking her first flight and the betrayal Lotso showed to Woody in Toy Story 3.

After reflecting on the daily chores the villagers undertake in the film Moana, we began to write diary entries to document their daily lives. We ensured each paragraph started with a fronted adverbial to indicate the time of day being referred to and structure our writing. We looked back at some of the STAR Vocab we learnt last week and set ourselves a challenge to incorporate our newly learnt words into our writing. Later in the week, our focus switched to writing speech and recalling the rules associated with using inverted comma’s. Next week, we will be working hard to ensure that when we are writing speech, we use a new line when a new character begins to speak.

In Maths, we have been converting improper fractions to whole numbers and identifying equivalent fractions. We made the connection that in order for a fraction to be equivalent, we multiply the numerator and denominator of the original fraction by the same amount. This has ensured we have not only been learning about fractions this week, but also recalling lots of our times tables. Next week, we will be converting improper fractions into Mixed numbers.

We were amazed by the incredible costumes on show as we celebrated World Book Day on Thursday. It was a joy to see how so many characters from our favourite books were brought to life… some personalists and characteristics were also portrayed too! We stumbled upon a damaged book surrounded by hazard tape and endless amounts of glitter streaming from the inside. We were informed that a character had escaped from the book and it was our job to find clues to solve the mystery. With out critical eyes at the ready, we hunted for clues and spent the day crossing of the suspect teachers until just one was left… Mrs Molloy the lion! We also participated in a book bingo, hunting for books in the class libraries across school to cross of our bingo cards. Books we had to find included one with a dragon, a book with a green cover and a poetry book. We definitely left on Thursday night with an increased loved for reading and an eagerness to delve into new books we discovered during the day.

To acknowledge Fair Trade fortnight, we discovered what happens to a banana before it reaches the consumer and discussed the reality of ‘who gets what’ from the sale of bananas. We were shocked at just how little workers receive and how some workers do not earn enough to meet their basic needs. On our next shop, we are keen to look at for Fairtrade labelling as we know that this is a way we can guarantee that workers get a fair deal for their work and products.

What a week, Year 4! Have a restful weekend and we look forward to seeing you all on Monday.

 

Reminders:

  • If your child would like to take their clarinet home after their Music lesson each week, please confirm permission by returning the attached form or via the Year 4 email account (y4@tsp.sefton.school).
  • Multiplication Times Tables Check Practise resources can be found on Google Classroom, alongside additional, optional Maths and Reading learning that can be completed at home.

Year 4 - Spring 2 - Week 1

Date: 22nd Feb 2023 @ 5:24pm

Spring 2 - Week 1.jpg

What a fantastic first week back!

After learning about Shrove Tuesday and why we refer to the day as Pancake Day, we tasted some scrumptious pancakes flavoured with maple syrup. What a tasty was to start the week! With Ash Wednesday in our sights, we then reflected on how Lent allows Christians to remember Jesus’ fasting in the desert and the things we would give up as a test of our self-discipline. Our focus in RE is to focus on trust and betrayal and how this can be seen in the Easter story, but first we needed to understand what the two terms meant. To do this, we had such fun guiding our trusted friends around our trim trail… blindfolded of course!

Fractions have been our focus in Maths, reminding ourselves of how to represent a whole and beginning to find patterns on number lines to be able to count beyond 1, by adding and taking away fractions. It has been important for us to connect our prior knowledge to recall terms such as equivalence, denominator and numerator. Next week, we will begin to partition mixed numbers and compare and order mixed numbers. With a big focus also on Times Tables this term, we are working hard to complete a daily Multiplication Times Table Check and use our school value of Hope to beat our score each day.

It was time to discover what our new book is for the term and make predictions regarding the setting, character and plot in this term’s English book ‘When the Giant Stirred’. By looking at two variations of the front cover, we soon identified the importance of using expanded noun phrases to describe and specify. We found rich vocabulary to help us use topic specific nouns such as Macaws, Loggerhead Sea Turtles and the Pacific Ocean. Next week, we will use the Moana film to help us understand the duties of villagers and begin to complete diary entries, using fronted adverbials, to outline the daily goings on in the tribal village.

Continuing our project with The Liverpool Football Club Foundation, we created bird feeders to place in our school grounds. We worked together to decorate, prep some bird seed and find the perfect place for them to hang. We hope that we have some little visitors to our mindfulness area soon. We also designed our own hanging wooden plaques to remind us of the important things in our environment that we need to nurture and protect.

In Science, we discovered how our devices, appliances and technology are powered by either the mains or batteries and discovered renewable and non-renewable energy sources. Thinking about the Anglo Saxons, we used a Circle Map and our Black thinking hats to recall any facts we already know about the Saxons and place their time in History on a timeline, adding events before and after 410-1066AD.

A jam packed week, Year 4. Have a restful weekend!

 

Reminders:

  • If your child would like to take their clarinet home after their Music lesson each week, please confirm permission by returning the attached form or via the Year 4 email account (y4@tsp.sefton.school).
  • Multiplication Times Tables Check Practise resources can be found on Google Classroom, alongside additional, optional Maths and Reading learning that can be completed at home.
  • World Book Day – Thursday 2nd March

Year 4 - Spring 1 - Week 3

Date: 17th Jan 2023 @ 11:10am

17th.jpg

This week has been a chilly one, but nevertheless, we have had a burning desire to learn new facts and to our best in all we do this week.

Through mindfulness, we reflected on our Collective Worship value of Humility, by thinking about how we may have shown this value in the classroom or on the playground. We discussed how some children find this a difficult value but as a class, we recognised the importance of being humble. Using our school value of Nurture, we discussed how an outward display of humility can make others feel.

In RE, we identified clues in artwork which suggest that Jesus has authority over the others illustrations that can be seen in the artwork. We were quick to realise that Jesus is stood above or in front of the others in the illustrations, is painted in white and often has a graceful, angelic and powerful pose.  

Later in the week, it was time to compare our lives with the life of a Roman child. We focused on the activities, games and jobs Roman children carried out and found similarities and differences to our lives. Using fronted adverbials, we created a diary explaining what Tranio, the Roman child in our story, did at different points of the day. Using speech, we also explored the conversations that Tranio and Livia, the two characters in our story, may be having at different points. We ensured our speech sentences used inverted commas, had the correct punctuation and always noted who the speaker was. We are beginning to write a new speaker on a new line and will continue to implement this rule into our writing next week.

To support our multiplication calculations when multiplying two and three digit numbers by 1, we have learnt how to use the grid method and column multiplication method. We have completed lots of fluency questions to become confident in using these methods and at the end of the week, selected the method we felt most confident in using to support us in completing problem solving questions.

A huge thank you to our Reading Ambassadors for sharing our brand-new Inclusion and Diversity books to read in class. We loved exploring the books this week and selecting our favourite to become our whole class read. To support our understanding of Volcanoes, we have also been reading an information book packed full of interesting facts about earthquakes, tectonic plates and the layers of the Earth. Our writing in English in bursting with technical vocabulary to describe volcanoes, as we have transferred vocabulary and facts learnt in our Guided Reading lessons, to our English lessons.

We carried out an investigation in Science to discover how sound travels through different mediums, make predictions, and draw conclusions on which state sound travels best through. After drawing a diagram to show the particle make up and identifying the state of matter being investigated, we hit metal spoons together in the air, under water and against a solid to find which medium the sound travelled best through.

What a lovely week we have had, Year 4! We look forward to seeing you all on Monday.

 

Reminders:

  • Parent-Teacher Meetings will take place in the School Hall. Please arrive early in order to have time before your appointment to take a look at your child’s books.
  • Children should return their Reading books to school weekly, on their reading day.
  • Spellings continue to be posted on Google Classroom every Friday at 3pm and tested the following Thursday in class.

Year 4 - Spring 1 - Week 2

Date: 9th Jan 2023 @ 8:31pm

FmRoEY-WAAUfN0S.jfif

We have had a fantastic week, here in Year 4.

After recognising what authority looks like to us, this week, we identified Jesus’ authority in a range of Bible stories. By reflecting on Bible stories such as Jesus calms the storm, it became evident that Jesus has authority than just humanity, as well as creation and life. It was clear that his authority is respected and admired by others, all hoping he will assert his authority to benefit them. In Collective Worship, we discovered that Humility is equally important in all religions and is one of the virtues of Sikhism. Sikhs believe that ‘Nimrata’ or ‘Humility’ is an important characteristic of a person, and they should ensure they develop this virtue with their actions.

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 layers substance is and the distance from the Earths 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 oppositions defences. After discovering how sound travels from a sound source to our ear drum, this week, we investigated how sound travels through different mediums – solid, liquid and gas. Our predictions were put to the test as we discovered that sound travels best through a solid.

We also took the time to watch ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’, a hand-drawn animated film based on the children's book by Charlie Mackesy on BBC iplayer - It is a must watch! The story reminded us about the importance of kindness, friendship, courage and hope

Have a wonderful weekend, Year 4. 

 

Reminders:

  • Parent-Teacher meetings can be booked via School Spider.
  • Children are encouraged to bring a water bottle to school and a healthy snack for breaktime.
  • PE days remain on a Tuesday and Thursday this term. Please ensure children arrive to school dressed in their PE kit on these days.

 

Year 4 - Spring 1 - Week 1

Date: 3rd Jan 2023 @ 9:23pm

IMG_0848.JPG

It was so wonderful to welcome everyone back to the classroom this week. We were so excited to get back to our learning and catch up with our friends. 

To begin our RE topic, we explored what the word ‘authority’ means and how we portray authority in our community and across the world. Gathering photos to showcase what we know authority to be, we explained to our classroom who has authority in the world and what traits someone with authority holds. Year 4 produced some fantastic examples, connecting their understanding of people who hold power such as prime ministers and the police to even their older siblings stating that with age comes authority.

Escape from Pompeii by Christina Balit is our focus book in English this half term. Just from looking at the front cover, we were able to deduce that this story links to our Geography topic about volcanoes and the characters emotions show that a disaster is set to take place. We researched where Pompeii is and discovered that as we predicted, Mount Vesuvius is the volcano we can see on the front cover of the book. Using dictionaries, we found the definition of words we will encounter in our story that we might not have heard before and drew pictures to help us connect our understanding of the word to its definition. Next week, we will use fronted adverbials to recall the events that take place at different points in the day when we consider the life of a Roman boy.

We were introduced to Factorpillars in Maths as a memorable way to help us find factor pairs of a given number. After naming our caterpillar, we drew its face and body, before finding factors to create the caterpillar's legs. We made sure that the adjacent legs made a matching pair e.g. 10 and 2 are a factor pair for 20 and therefore would be a pair of legs for our caterpillar. Once we were confident in finding factor pairs, using dienes blocks for support, we investigated whether it was true that the bigger the number, the more factor pairs we can find. Next week, we will focus on how the place value of numbers changes when they are multiplied and divided by 10 and 100.

After creating an A-Z of sounds we can hear in different environments, we questioned where sound actually comes from. After watching rice bounce on top of a beating drum, it became apparent that the vibrations of the drum made the sound we could hear. We then went back to our A-Z sound list and identified what was vibrating in order for us to hear the sounds we noted down. In Geography, we identified the layers of the earth and labelled a cross section diagram highlighting the thickness of each layer and what it consists of.

On Friday, we acknowledged the Christian celebration of Epiphany. We learnt that the word Epiphany comes from the verb ‘to appear’. This means that the feast of Epiphany is a celebration of the time that Baby Jesus was seen by the visitors who had travelled to see him. We studied the stars and constellations, and discussed how stars were used to navigate the world and find directions. We were also thrilled to commence our outdoor and adventure activities in PE, using teamwork, diagrams and maps to help us problem solve and navigate our way around tasks. 

We are looking forward to a full week back in class next week, Year 4. Have a lovely weekend! 

 

Reminders:

  • Year 4 PE lessons take place every Tuesday and Thursday. Please ensure your child arrives at school in their PE kit on these days.
  • Spellings set before Christmas will be reposted on Google Classroom on Friday and tested next week.
  • If your child is reading from the school books bands, please ensure their book is returned to school on their Reading day.

Year 4 - Autumn 2 - Week 7

Date: 13th Dec 2022 @ 10:37am

IMG_5514.JPG

Our time in Year 4 this week has truly ensured we are in the festive spirit, ready for Santa’s arrival.

Our week began with a Movie Afternoon watching the fantastic Christmas Chronicles 2. Popcorn, candy floss and hot chocolate made the perfect accompaniments to this festive treat. A huge thank you to Team TSP for the delightful treats we have been able to enjoy in school this week.  Tuesday brought out ‘House Sing Off’ enabling us to battle it out against the other houses delivering our own renditions of traditional, festive songs.

What a fantastic surprise we had! On Wednesday, we were visited by some enchanting elves with a special message from Father Christmas himself. We also filled our boosts full of Christmas dinner, celebrating the festive period with our teachers and friends as we wore our Christmas hats and pulled Christmas crackers. If that wasn’t enough, we even gathered together to watch the incredible Churches Together Nativity and were blown away by the cast and their performance.

What a better way to end the term than with a celebration of our amazing Christmas Service performance. We are so proud of each and every one of you. You were truly remarkable and gave TSP the best Christmas send-off possible.

On top of all the festivities, Year 4 also completed their DT day by creating their very own Christmas stocking. After designing what our stocking would look like and selecting a suitable material, we learnt how to complete a running stitch and got to work joining our stocking templates together. With a fluffy white top and even our very own initial on the front, our stockings will shine brightly on our fireplaces for Christmases to come.

Can you hear the ring of jingle bells? Love Reading 4 Kids have released their mid-December newsletter. There's still time to order your Christmas books; their Christmas Gift Guide is full of festive treats for all ages, and you can also find more ideas for your perfect presents in their round-up of the best fiction and non-fiction books of 2022.

We hope our class Twitter page has reflected all the laughs and wonderful learning that has taken place since September. Thank you for the gifts and well wishes sent our way, we are truly grateful!

It has been a delight to count down to Christmas with you all, Year 4. You have made December such a magical experience for us all and we cannot wait to welcome you all back in January. From us all here in Year 4, we wish you a very happy Christmas and a safe and enjoyable festive period. Keep shining like the stars that you are! See you in 2023!

 

Reminders:

  • Please find a copy of our virtual classroom attached for next half term.
  • Return to School Wednesday 4th January 2023.
  • PE lessons will take place on a Tuesday and Thursday in the Spring Term.

Year 4 - Autumn 2 - Week 6

Date: 6th Dec 2022 @ 2:05pm

IMG_5393.JPG

A full week of having Sparkle the elf in Year 4 can only been one thing… magical mischief has been taking place in the classroom. Sparkle has truly been having lots of fun wrapping toilet roll around our Christmas tree, taking a glitter bath in the sink and even making a slide with our reading books. We cannot wait to see what she gets up to next week.

We explored the symbol of light in the Jewish religion by finding out all about the Hanukkah festival and talking about the stories and traditions of Hanukkah. We used our black thinking hats to call upon facts we know about Christians believes about light and how this is similar and different to that of the Jewish religion.

We used expanded noun phrases in our writing this week and selected appropriate nouns to describe the events that took place before Leon entered the mysterious box in our story ‘Leon and the Place Between.’ We have been remembering how to punctuate our speech and ensuring that we only close our speech marks one a comma, full stop, question mark or explanation mark has been used. We even devised our own poetry inspired by the 'Zoo Dreams' poem written by John Foster. We found similarities to the Christmas carol. '12 days of Christmas'. We wonder if our animal themed renditions will be performed around the Christmas tree instead. 

In Maths, we proved that when you multiply a number by 0 the answer is always 0 and when you multiply a number by 1 the answer is the same number you multiplied. To learn how to efficiently multiply three numbers together, we developed our own smile method. We recognised that by joining two numbers with a smile, it helped us to remember to multiply two numbers first, before then multiplying the answer with the last number.

We have thoroughly enjoyed opening our Environmental Advent calendar sent to us by SOUTHPORT Eco Centre. We have loved revealing the eco messages from stars in the Atkinson theatre’s Aladdin pantomime and learning about the effects our festive habits have on the environment around us. A big thank you to our Kindness Committee who again this week continued to spread more positivity around our classroom by delivering positivity postcards that had been sent to our class. Our hearts are so full after reading the kind and joyful messages sent our way.

In recognition of International Day for Persons with Disabilities, our PE lesson focused on inclusivity and how sports can be accessed and enjoyed by all. In History, we questioned Emperor Claudius regarding his intentions to invade Britain and deliberated the advantages and disadvantages for the invasion. Thinking ahead to next week, we began planning our festive stocking designs ready to complete our DT day next week. We thought about the material and colours we would like to use and the design that will be prominent on the front of our stockings.

As part of the Picture News Christmas campaign, we thought about the things that really matter to us and what gifts we can give this Christmas, that don't cost anything. It was a wonderful end the week, with our Christmas Party, Christmas jumper day and even Santa Dash. We were thrilled to be able to wear our festive outfits and enjoy games, songs and crafts with our friends to celebrate our coutdown to Christmas.

One more week together before we say our goodbyes for the festive period. I hope your elves are on their best behaviour this week, Year 4!

 

Reminders:

  • Year 4 completed their final recorder lesson this week. Any recorders purchased from school can now remain at home and are yours to keep. Year 4 will recommence their Music lessons in the Spring 2 term, when they begin to learn the clarinet.
  • Christmas Church Service at 9.15am.
  • School finishes at 1pm on Friday 16th December.

Year 4 - Autumn 2 - Week 5

Date: 30th Nov 2022 @ 11:15am

FivEtJJWIAEDicW.jfif

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

We arrived to school on the 1st December to find our classroom full of festive decorations and a cheeky little elf hiding amongst our tree. With lots of deliberation and a few clues spotted around our room, we identified that the elf’s name was Sparkle and she had been awake all evening bring festive joy to our classroom. Excitement filled the room when we discovered a note from Sparkle informing us that she had left the North Pole and made a new home in our classroom this Christmas. She informed us she will be on her best behaviour, if she can become part of our class. In typical Year 4 TSP style, we welcomed Sparkle with open arms.

Our festivities really took off, with a trip to the Christmas Extravaganza on Friday. We loved taking part in the various activities, spending time with our friends and singing along to our favourite Christmas songs. A big thank you Team TSP for organising such a fantastic event and helping us kick start our advent countdown in such a brilliant way.

Our visit to Liverpool Cathedral was truly incredible and supported our understanding of the symbolism of light. From learning about Christingles, to the gifts brought by the three wise men, we learnt so much about the meaning of light in such a beautiful Cathedral. We were in awe of the Cathedral’s size and beauty. After finding a deserted fire, alongside some lost belongings, we discovered that shepherds had left their sheep in the hills to head to Bethlehem to see the new born King. After admiring the incredible stained-glass windows in the Cathedral and the bible stories that are told through the windows, we got the chance to make our own window to represent The Nativity Story. We all left eager to visit the Cathedral again!

It was time to recall the 9’s, 7’s and 11’s in Maths, identifying numbers that are within each of these times tables and connections we can make to support our understanding. We applied our knowledge to problem solving questions, completed a dominos activity to connect questions with their answers and even played board games with our friends to test our times tables knowledge. Next week, we will be focusing on the 12 times tables, looking at what happens when we multiply and divide a number by 0 and 1 and also using the smile method to support us when multiplying 3, one-digit numbers.

In English, we ensured our sentences were using the correct tense throughout and verbs were used to describe the movements and actions of animals in a circus. We critically looked at how we spell words with the ‘ed’ and ‘ing’ endings, forming a table of evidence to suggest the rules associated with adding these endings to given words. Later in the week, we took a look back at the events that have taken place so far in out story Leon and the Place Between, before mapping the events out on a flow map. Next week, we will look at the key features of diary writing in a modelled text, before planning our own diary entries.

Have a wonderful weekend, Year 4!

 

Reminders:

  • Santa Dash takes place on Thursday 8th December. Children are to come to school wearing suitable Mufti clothes to complete the Santa Dash in. Children can bring festive accessories or costumes to get changed into and race in.
  • Our Christmas Jumper Day takes place on Friday 9th December. We look forward to seeing all the festive jumpers in class.

Year 4 - Autumn 2 - Week 4

Date: 23rd Nov 2022 @ 5:03pm

Blog276.jfif

Another great week in Year 4!

In RE, we connected our understanding of what light means to Christians with the song ‘My Lighthouse’. We took the time to reflect on what the lyrics in the song mean and how they can support our understanding that Jesus is the light of the world. Connecting to our Collective Worship value of Peace, we enjoyed a calming and peaceful Yoga session with Dom from Active Sefton, recognising the importance of Mindfulness and taking a moment to ourselves.

We are thoroughly enjoying reading ‘The train to impossible places’ by the fantastic Peter Bell, as part of our Guided Reading lessons. This fast-paced fantasy adventure is supporting our prediction, retrieval and inference skills. When writing, we are enhancing our sentences with the use of verbs and adverbs and utilising a range of subordinating conjunctions to join two sentences together. We even played our own version of Scrabble this week, connecting our knowledge of sounds to create words from a selection of letters. This game really did help us to remember the importance of sounding out and breaking down our words into their smaller sounds.

Our focus continues to be on the times tables in Maths and how we can call upon our times tables knowledge to support multiplication and division calculations. Using our critical thinking, we discovered similarities and differences between the 3 and 6 times tables, completed times tables wheels to recall the 8’s and even spotted how arrays can support our understanding that division is the inverse to multiplication. Next week, we will look at multiplying a number by 1 and 0 and also what happens when a number is divided by 1 or itself.

In Year 4, it is our mission to nurture our world and in particular, our community. To support our wishes for a more environmentally friendly word, we attended a Christmas Recycling Assembly delivered by Mersey Recycling Discovery Centre. This assembly reminded us of key messages surrounding the impact of packaging at Christmas time and ways to make small changes that can make a big difference.

Our Scientific vocabulary vastly expanded this week, as we discovered what the Digestive system was and the purpose it has in our body. In Spanish, we learnt how to talk about our brothers and sisters, remembering the all-important Spanish difference we need to make when referring to a man or a woman. Our Swimming lessons have sadly come to an end, but the improved stamina and fitness we have gained has been beneficial in our Fitness lessons this week. We completed a range of fitness tests to gain our personal best score and we are determined to use our school value of Hope to beat our PB next week!

Have a lovely weekend, Year 4! Keep shining!

 

Reminders:

  • Year 4 School Trip takes place on Tuesday 29th November. Children will need to bring packed lunch and water bottle in a disposable bag.
  • As the colder days are upon us, please ensure your child brings a coat, gloves or any other winter accessories to keep them warm whilst enjoying their breaktime.

 

STAFF LOGIN