Year 4 Team: Miss S McVey (Class Teacher), Mrs McRae (Class Teacher) Ms V Coates & Miss C Rawlinson : Blog items
Date: 29th Nov 2023 @ 10:28am
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 bringing 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 Christmas Service rehearsals are fully underway, with our excitement building to showcase our singing and acting talents in church.
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.
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 our 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.
We recapped our understanding of negative numbers in Maths, ensuring that we always counted zero as a number before heading into the negative numbers. We identified how negative numbers can be seen on a thermometer – especially on chilly days like we have experienced this week! We took on mastery challenges to test our recall of the 4 times tables and reminded ourselves of how to use the Smile method to calculate two numbers first, in a multiplication where we have to times 3 numbers together.
Such incredible imagination and creativity were showcase din our Art lesson, as we were challenged to turn the components of an old train and clock into our own artistic piece. We also enjoyed a visit to the Scholastic Book Fair that took place in our school. We enjoyed taking the time to delve into books we hadn’t read before and discover different genres of interest.
Have a wonderful weekend, Year 4!
Date: 22nd Nov 2023 @ 9:48am
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. Thinking about our Collective Worship value of Justice, we watched the Kid President clip ‘For the Heroes’ and discussed what sort of heroes are the real heroes today.
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.
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 even played board games with our friends to test our times tables knowledge of the 11 and 12 times tables and also looked at what happens when we multiply and divide a number by 0 and 1. Next week, we will use the smile method to support use in multiply 3 one-digit numbers.
Our Scientific vocabulary vastly expanded this week, as we discovered what the Digestive system was and the purpose it has in our body and compared the system to that inside another animal. 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!
In recognition of Road Safety Week, we headed out onto the playground to give our guidance to Year 2 on how to identify road signs and the meaning behind them. As they whizzed around on their scooters and bikes at speed, we reminded them of the importance of slowing down and looking out for signs to guide them to what dangers may be around them.
We are starting to get into the festive spirit with the arrival of our Christmas Present Room! Thank you to the incredible Team TSP for helping us with our Christmas gift shopping.
Have a lovely weekend, Year 4! Keep shining!
Date: 15th Nov 2023 @ 9:52am
With so many events to celebrate and recognise this week, it sure has been a busy one!
We arrived to school ready to celebrate Kindness Week on Monday, following a delightful weekend showcasing out Kindness Video to our loved ones at home. With the understanding that this week marked Kindness Week, Anti-Bullying Week and also Children in Need, we knew spreading kindness was our top priority throughout our week.
We love to nurture others in Year 4, so this week we decided to spread kindness in the community by donating our unwanted toys, games and books to Barnardos Children’s Charity. On Friday, we headed into the village to deliver our donations and we overwhelmed by the grateful response we were given by the volunteers in store. We are thrilled to see our unwanted items displayed on the shelves, ready to be purchased and given to a loving home. We truly hope our donations bring joy to other children in our community. We also arrived at school in our Pudsey ears in aid of Children in Need. After designing our own Pudsey eye patches, we reflected on those less fortunate than us and the gratitude we have for the lives we live.
In support of anti-bullying week, we designed our own image of a heart filled with bright colours and all things that make us smile. It was a shock for us to see how our hearts can become crinkled after hearing unkind words and even after attempts to smooth other the paper, the crinkles are always there. This reminded us of the importance of nurturing those around us and ensuring our choice of works leave footprints on others hearts and not a crinkle. Continuing our focus on kindness, we used a Diamond 9 thinking strategy and our yellow thinking hats, to organise statements about friendship to show those that are most important to us and those that are least important.
The children have worked extremely hard this week to complete assessments to showcase their learning so far this term. 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.
Our Spanish knowledge is greatly developing with the understanding of how a phrase changes to suit a male or female person, we unpicked what the term ‘revolt’ means in History and recognised the causes and consequences of Boudicca’s revolt against the Romans. After exploring the components of the body that make up the digestive system, we used a double bubble map to compare and contrast the system inside a human and a cow.
We are so proud of all your achievements this week, Year 4! Have a wonderful weekend.
Reminders:
- Our final swimming lesson takes place next week. Following this, our PE lessons continue to take place on a Tuesday and Wednesday.
- As the colder days are upon us, please ensure your child arrives to school with a coat to wear on the playground.
- Weekly spellings continue to be uploaded onto Google Classroom every Friday and tested the following Thursday.
Date: 8th Nov 2023 @ 10:46am
What a wonderful week we have had in Year 4!
We connected the value of Peace with Remembrance Day this week, as we created a WW1 newspaper article background and lay a mosaic poppy to rest on our created backgrounds. We then discussed how the poppy is a sign of both remembrance and hope for a peaceful future.
On Monday, we casted our votes at the TSP polling station using our very own polling card. We are so proud of all the children who put forward themselves forward to be nominated as a committee representative and the incredible speeches they delivered. Our school value of Hope truly shined through and with recognised the British Value connection we made to democracy by casting our votes.
In English, we have been focusing on ensuring we are using the correct tense in our writing and selecting whether it is best to use ‘was’ or ‘were’ in a range of sentences. Using a thesaurus, we located synonyms to uplevel our writing and focused again on the importance of precise detail to give the reader a detailed picture of the environment and characters we are writing about. We thoroughly enjoyed illustrating the high street outlined in our text ‘The shop from nowhere’, only able to draw what was heard in the given descriptions. Inspired by this text, when then designed our own, writing a descriptive piece to detail the shops that made up our high streets. Next week, we will be focusing on using an adjective and an adverb to describe the appearance of movement of different acts in the circus.
It has been all about the times tables in Maths this week. We first looked at the 3 and 6 times tables and the correlation between them, learning some catchy songs to help with our recall of multiplication facts. We created fortune tellers and used times tables wheels as methods to also support of recall and learnt a handy trick on our fingers to help us remember the 9 times table.
Using some real-life teeth moulds, we identified the names and functions of teeth in Science and even showcased our missing teeth along the way! We moved on to look at the parts of the digestive system and the primary function of this system within our bodies. In History, we created a conscious alley, to give our opinions on why Claudius should invade Britain and used our knowledge of feminine and masculine spelling in Spanish to distinguish sentences.
We also had our first Healthy Habit session this week, led by Active Sefton. We thought about eating a balanced diet and leading a healthy lifestyle. We discovered that foods we thought were healthy, turned out to have excessive amounts of sugar in them!
Our trip to Laurel’s Wood was simply INCREDIBLE! From roasting marsh mellows on a fire, building shelters and learning lots of survival methods, our smiles never stopped beaming throughout the day. We are so thankful to the wonderful instructors who taught us wood carving, how to signal for rescue, and some essential outdoor first aid skills.
On Friday, we had the delight of watching the premier of this year’s TSP Kindness Video. We cannot wait to get home tonight and share the joys of our filming and exceptional dance moves with our loved ones at home!
Have a lovely weekend, Year 4!
Reminders:
- Year 4’s last swimming lesson is Wednesday 22nd November. Following this, PE lessons will remain on Tuesday and Wednesday. Children should continue to come to school in their PE kit on Tuesday and Wednesday.
- Donations to Barnardos Children’s Charity, as part of our Kindness Project, should be in school by Friday 17th November.
Date: 1st Nov 2023 @ 11:24am
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We are back, ready to start the new term ahead and we sure are having fun!
Our week began with a look at our new RE topic. With the knowledge that Jesus is the Light of the world, we unpicked how Jesus brings light to our world and what support and guidance Jesus brings. We popped our ideas into a candle, with a bright flame to represent the idea of light being brought into our lives.
Connecting our understanding of negative numbers, this week in Maths we completed missing number sequences spotting the numbers needed below zero. Our attention then turned to Word Problems, with a focus on problems that required us to count backwards to numbers below zero. Later in the week, we were introduced to Area and what Area is by measuring the surface area of objects in our classroom, using squares. We learnt that to measure Area in Year 4, we simply count the squares inside a given shape or object. We practised drawing our own shapes with a given area and connecting our understanding of arrays to support measuring area in a quick and efficient way. Next week, we will focus on individual times tables and pop songs in the charts that we can sign along to with a times tables twist!
In English, we had an exciting morning at the TSP Circus. We used our sense to stimulate some fantastic ideas for our creative writing, linked to our new book ‘Leon and the Place Between’. We learnt about the importance of using adjectives in our writing so our readers can understand just what it is like to visit a circus and can grasp what the atmosphere is like. By using a double bubble map, we were able to showcase adjectives to highlight the similarities and differences between two images of a circus tent. Laughter filled the air as we played a game of truth and dare, to help us understand what dare Leon might be undertaking as the sign appears in our story asking ‘Do you dare to go to the Place Between’. We made some great predictions about what the Place Between might be and next week, we will create a survival guide for anyone who dares to visit.
Our Science lessons brought an insight into the different types of teeth and their functions, giving us an opportunity to explore where they are positioned in the mouth with some real-life teeth moulds! Our term will also be filled with all things Romans! So, we began with a by deliberating the advantages and disadvantages Claudius will have considered when deciding whether or not to invade Britain.
There is no doubt that this week has been the best so far, as we filmed our Kindness Week Video. From sequins and glitter to disco balls, our hairstyles and props brought the disco theme to life as we sang, danced and boogied throughout the week to some classic disco songs. We can’t wait to see our joyful efforts be brought to the screen next week when our video premiers.
Rest those dancing feet this weekend, Year 4 and get ready for our Kindness Video premier next week!
Reminders:
- Recorders, PE and Swimming lesson remain the same as last term.
- Year 4 will be attending their School Trip to Laurel’s Wood next Thursday.
Date: 18th Oct 2023 @ 9:52am
They say time flies when you are having fun and hasn’t it done just that!
To reflect on our RE focus this term, we outlined the main roles and responsibilities we have discovered David held from reading about him in Psalms and Bible Stories. He sure was a busy man! In Collective Worship, we took a look back at all we had achieved during the term and discussed what enabled us to reach those milestones and continue to do our very best. We explained how the things and people who support us in life are the most powerful assets we can have and those we are truly thankful for.
In English, we recapped our understanding of speech from last week, ensuring we understood the rules of creating a speech sentence and the punctuation needed. We then began to plan our very own Gorilla stories, replacing the characters, setting and plot with our very own, imaginative ideas. Consideration was made in our plans as to which fronted adverbials, speech sentences and adjectives we would use in our stories. As the week progressed, we began to write our stories in broken down steps and we look forward to finishing this next week before writing our stories in our Author Books.
Connecting our understanding surrounding Martin Luther King, we concluded the week with a recognition to Hate Crime Awareness Week by symbolising with handprints how we are all equal, no matter the colour of our skin. We also had a great Junior Tax Facts session, led by the HMRC. We were intrigued to discover what services our taxes pay for in the UK and what happens when we buy our favourite sweet treats at the till.
Our Spanish lesson was a spooky delight, as we entered the Language Angels escape room and tried to free ourselves from the haunted house by learning and recalling Spanish words and phrases. Thrills filled the air as children began to discover keys and learn new Spanish words for the spooky festive period. The spooky celebrations continued on Thursday night, as we danced the night away at our Monster Mash Disco and some of us even wore some rather spooky attire!
A huge congratulations to our fantastic readers how completed the Summer Reading Challenge. Your dedication to reading is admirable and we are so thrilled to see such a passion for reading in our class!
A reminder that spellings for the first Thursday back after half-term are on Google Classroom. The Year 4 ‘virtual classroom’ is attached to this blog and all the pupils' individual login passwords can all be found on Google Classroom.
Year 4, you have been a delight to teacher this term and it already feels like we have spent a lifetime together. Have a wonderful week and we look forward to hearing all your exciting news when you return!
Reminders:
- Year 4 PE lessons will remain on a Tuesday (PE) and Wednesday (Swimming)
- Recorders will continue every Monday. Children should continue to bring their recorder to school for their lesson.
Date: 11th Oct 2023 @ 11:11am
The rain definitely hasn’t dampened our spirits this week!
Taking on the role of David, we defeated Goliath in our RE lesson. With tennis balls at the ready, we took aim at our Goliath targets and shouted out the Christian values that David displayed when defeating Goliath. When thinking about our Collective Worship value of Thankfulness, this week, we decided to spot values in our friends that we are so thankful to be able to share with them, such as kindness, caring, nurturing and happiness.
After finishing the story ‘Gorilla’ and finding out about the change of events in Hannah’s life following the gorilla’s visit, we set to the task of dividing the story into its opening, build up, problem, resolution and ending. Using copies of the pages of the book, we divided the story up and then summarised the events within each of a story map groups. This helped us to create a story plan of the Gorilla story, which we then edited to put our own twist on the original story. Even though the main events of our stories remained the same as the original book, our character ideas and settings changed to create our own twist on this much loved classic. Next week, we will write our own versions of the Gorilla story, using our plans to help structure our paragraphs and apply our understanding of fronted adverbials in our writing.
In Maths, we took the time to recap the steps of setting up the column addition model to support our addition calculations. We reminded ourselves of the importance of putting one digit in each box, to keep our place value columns clear. When adding, we considered if any exchanges needed to be made and hid any numbers needed to be ‘carried’ under the carpet we created by drawing two distinct lines under our calculation. Later in the week, we considered how we can connect our understanding to alter our method slightly, to support us with subtraction. Next week, we will use of column method to subtract two numbers where an exchange needs to take place, before thinking about how we count back into negative numbers.
We had a great day we have celebrating Hello Yellow Day in support of mental health awareness. To acknowledge the day, we designed a very special mini-me, to show the special connection we have as a class and the TSP Family we are so proud to be a part of.
Mrs McCardle from Sefton Music Services continues to be impressed with the amazing progress we are making in reading musical notes and the notes we can play on our recorder. When swimming, we are recapping the three main strokes over 10m and 25m, using our school value of hope to not give up on our strokes until we reach the very end of the pool.
The Year 4 virtual classroom can be found on Google Classroom but will also be attached to our blog this week and next, should your child wish to carry out any additional learning at home over half-term.
Date: 3rd Oct 2023 @ 12:04pm
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Year 4 have SHINED this week!
In RE, we unpicked the Christian values and our School values that we felt were most important for God to see in our hearts. From kindness to nurturing, we justified what values we felt others should show and those closest to our hearts. To remind ourselves of the importance of our Collective Worship value ‘Thankfulness’ we created a Thankfulness Tree. On one side of a leaf, we wrote down something we are thankful for. On the other, we thought about what we could do to show thankfulness even more.
Taking on the role of Hannah in the story ‘Gorilla’, this week we wrote diary entries to express to the reader the events leading up to Hannah’s birthday in the story. Our writing was full of fronted adverbials to specific when, where or how an event took place, and we used the first person to write as if we were Hannah. We also discovered that Macaroni makes the perfect speech marks, as we used the pasta to symbolise where speech marks should go in a sentence. Next week, we will begin to plan and write our own interpretation of the story, Gorilla. This story will include features of writing that we have focused on this term.
We revisited Roman Numerals to start the week in Maths, recapping the numeral for 1, 5, 10, 50 and 100. We were quick to discover that the sequence on numerals impacts on whether we add or take away a number. It was then time to show off our knowledge of rounding to 10, 100 and 1000, working hard to use a number line to support our thinking. We love using rhymes to help us remember facts in Year 4, why not ask us to perform the Roman Numerals song or even our handy rounding rhyme at home. Next week, we begin to look at adding and taking away numbers and the formal methods we can use to support our calculations.
What a fantastic afternoon we had with the incredible coaches from UNITE. They took us through a self defence session, reminding us of the importance of respect and how we can safely perform defensive moves. On Friday, we celebrated National Poetry Day with a poem in our pockets. As we transitioned through school or onto the playground, we took out our poem from our pocket and share it with an adult or peer to brighten up their day with some poetical words. We certainly had lots of sharing faces who were overjoyed to hear our poetry.
We hope you have a wonderful weekend and look forward to seeing you on Monday, Year 4!
Reminders:
- Year 4 PE days are Tuesday and Wednesday. Please ensure your child arrives to school wearing their PE kit on these days.
- As the colder weather sets in, please ensure your child brings a coat to school for break times.
- Parent-Teacher Meetings go live on Monday. Your allocated appointment is to be made with the teacher who predominantly teaches your child for Maths and English. If you would like to request an additional meeting with the other teacher, please email the Y4 account to arrange this.
Date: 27th Sep 2023 @ 10:42am
What a wonderful week here in Year 4, filled with so many exciting learning opportunities and not to forget …. A CIRCUS!
In RE, we read about how God chose David to be the new king, after Saul let God down. We learn that God rejected him, because he does not judge as people judge. People look at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. We comprehended what God saw in David’s heart and recognised that lots of our school values were values that David held.
In English, we took a moment to pause and reflect on some of our misconceptions, to help us improve our writing. Using our creativity, we make tricks and tips to help us remember whether to use their, there or they’re and also revised when and why an apostrophe is needed. Looking back at our story ‘Gorilla’ to revisit the pages we have read so far, we used a Flow Map to outline the main events that have took place in the story. We then began to plan a diary entry for each of the main events, using expanded noun phrases to add detail and fronted adverbials to inform the reader of when the events took place. Next week, we will be learning the rules for adding speech into our writing and ensuring every sentence we right have the correct punctuation.
After researching the mountains in the UK, we ordered their heights to demonstrate our ability to order numbers to 10,000. We also used our knowledge of greater than and less than, to compare different numbers whether they were shown pictorially or in written words or numbers. We encountered a Roman in our Maths lesson this week, who helped us to march around the classroom reciting Roman numerals and we even learnt a song along the way to help us remember them! Next week, we will recap rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000 before moving onto formal methods of adding numbers.
On Friday, we attended our Harvest assembly, led by our fantastic Year 5 class at St. Peter’s Church. We supported Southport Foodbank with our donations, accompanied Year 5 by singing some beautiful hymns and took the time to show gratitude to God and those around us for the things we are grateful for.
Of course, the highlight of the week was experiencing the construction of the Big Top Circus Tent on our very own school field. We were thrilled to cheer across the field as the tent was erected and experience the hustle and bustle of the set up. Not to forget the incredible stalls, fire show and main Circus event we were giving the opportunity to attend after school.
A busy week, Year 4! Rest those happy feet ready for Monday.
Reminders:
- Spellings continue to be uploaded onto Google Classroom every Friday at 3pm and are tested the following Thursday in class.
- PE continues to take place on a Tuesday and Swimming every Wednesday.
Date: 22nd Sep 2023 @ 11:57am
What a busy week it has been! Take a look at some of our highlights:
We had a fun time learning about God's creation story and making decorative globes during our collective worship time on Monday. We worked as a team to design and construct our own Creation Globes to showcase the 7 days of creation.
In English this week, we have been using our laptops to research interesting and informative gorilla facts. We organised all of the information we discovered into a classification tree, categorising our research into facts about habitat, diet, appearance and fun facts. Using that facts we had learned, we created expanded noun phrases and sentences with fronted adverbials to show off our new factual knowledge.
In Maths, we continued our work on place value. Our tasks this week involved partitioning the same thousands number in different ways, estimating number placement on a number line with numbers up to 10,000 and adding/subtracting 10 and 100 to larger 4-digit numbers.
On Tuesday, we learned about the wonderful charity Jeans for Genes. There are definitely a few budding fashion designers in our midst. The children showed thoughtfulness in their discussion of the charity and in the choices they made for the images drawn on their jeans.
We we're delighted to be visited by the incredible Bring the Fire and given the opportunity to run away with the circus (to the hall) and learn how to perform tricks that put our coordination skills to the test. We had so much fun learning together, encouraging one another to do our best.
Have a wonderful weekend Year 4. We look forward to seeing you all on Monday!
Date: 13th Sep 2023 @ 10:41am
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What a fantastic week we have had in Year 4!
Focusing on our Collective Worship monthly value of ‘Creation’ we created a 7 days of creation globe to represent the creations God made from light, to the sky, lands and sea to the moon. By day seven we realised that God has finished his work of creation and rested, making the seventh day a special holy day.
Our English focus book this term is ‘Gorilla’, written by Anthony Browne. Oh, how excited we were to discover the main character in the book was a big, hairy gorilla! We took the time to explore a range of different images used in the book and create expanded noun phrases to describe and specify the things we could see. Putting our thinking hats on to support us in comprehending emotions, we began to read a poem all about a silverback gorilla and explained how the author felt about gorillas. It was fair to say, our opinions of gorillas changed after reading the poem and we are all now HUGE gorilla fans. Next week, we will recall what makes an expanded noun phrase and begin to look at how we can use pronouns and adjectives to write about a gorilla, without using the word gorilla!
This week’s focus in Maths has been Place Value and showcasing what each number is worth, within a given number. We have been working hard to break down numbers into their thousands, hundreds, tens and ones, find numbers to 1000 on a number line and partition them using a part whole model. Next week, we will represent and partition numbers to 10,000 and find 1, 10, 100 and 1000 more and less.
We celebrated Roald Dahl day on Wednesday and we were inspired by the fantastic story ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’. In the story, George encapsulates our school value of Imagine and just like George, we are curious and creative too, so we created our very own marvellous medicine! We also continued our swimming lessons this week. We have been truly focusing on our school value of ‘Hope’ to have belief in ourselves that we are all fantastic swimmers.
With two weeks to go until the Trinity St. Peter’s Community Big Top Circus, we decided to look into a few of the performing acts. With out favourite performers being those who take on the Flying Trapeze, we made our own mini-me acrobats. We were also thrilled to be joined by Outline Arts who guided through an Art workshop to design a large drawing of silhouettes to form the crowds in the backdrop of our circus installation that will be proudly displaying in our school.
A poster containing 100 recommended reads for Year 4 children has been attached to this blog. By providing 100 quality texts at an age appropriate level, this list may be useful when choosing your child's next book. We hope it inspires the children to continue on in their reading journeys whilst further encouraging a lifelong love of books and stories.
Thank you for such a lovely week, Year 4. Have a restful weekend.
Reminders:
- Individual Photographs take place on Tuesday 19th September. Children should come to school wearing their uniform, not their PE kit.
- Swimming lessons take place every Wednesday afternoon.
- Spellings have been uploaded onto Google Classroom and can be found under the ‘Spelling’ section. Our weekly spelling test will take place every Thursday in class.
Date: 7th Sep 2023 @ 10:22pm
Wow, our first week in Year 4 has been full of smiles, joy and laughter. We have had so much fun finding out about our new class and catching up with our friends and teachers.
We started the week with a Year 4 favourite, as we took part in our first book tasting session. We were delighted to indulge in a range of book from our class library to decide which of our ‘courses’ we would like to read first in class. It got a little messy practising our handwriting, as we used shaving foam to practise forming different letters. We were sure to make our capital letters bigger and taller than their lower case forms.
It was important that we took the time this week to be kind to ourselves and reflect on how great we are. Using mirrors that we had designed full of all the things that make us so special we stopped to look at what we love about ourselves. The classroom later filled with anticipation when we found out that the teachers in the room were going to give us an opportunity to see who their favourite pupils were... little did we know that we would be staring back at our own reflections when we peeped inside the box.
In Maths, we reminded ourselves how we can use arrays to support our knowledge of multiplication. In order to complete our buildings in our ‘Array city’, we painted an array to show how many windows each building should have, based on a given multiplication question. We also popped on a hat and high visibility jacket as we entered the Year 4 construction site. On the building site, we sorted through building materials to match the multiplication question located on our buildings to the missing part of the house.
Feeling like the weather was a little too hot for lots of running about at break times, we decided to make our own Adventure Path in our shaded area. Each group created an activity to complete as we ventured down the path. Our activities included jumps on lily pads, spins around the spiral circles and forming shapes to copy the shadows mirrored on the floor.
Connecting with our school values of Nurture and Enjoy, we wanted to ensure that everyone in our class has a very special day on their birthday. We set out a plan to make each and every child in Year 4 a birthday card so we can send our birthday wishes their way when their special day comes.
It has been a real pleasure to welcome the children back this week and we look forward to making our learning journey an enjoyable and exciting year. Don’t forget to follow our Twitter account @Year4TSP to see our learning highlights throughout the week and watch out for notifications on Google Classroom.
A reminder that our PE lesson will take place on Tuesdays and our swimming lessons will take place on Wednesdays. Weekly spellings will also begin to be posted every Friday at 3pm on Google Classroom.
For your reference, the Year 4 Successful Start PowerPoint is attached at the end of this blog, should you need to refer to it at any point.
Well done for all your hard work this week, Year 4! We can’t wait to see you on Monday! Have a great weekend!
Reminders:
- Children to wear PE kits every Tuesday for PE and Wednesday for swimming.
- Recorder lessons take place every Monday.
- To encourage the children to drink plenty through the day, we ask that children bring a water bottle to school with them.
Date: 14th Jul 2023 @ 2:03pm
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Just a quick message to say a big thank you! The joy and sheer love for learning Year 4 have brought to the classroom has been admirable. The memories we have made together and the laughter we have had along the way will be cherished by us all. Thank you to all the fantastic parents/careers who have supported us all this year. Your kind words of support and encouragement really have not gone unmissed. We thank you so much for all your thoughtful gifts and well wishes for the new year. We look forward to watching you all continue to grow as you head into Year 5. Love and big hugs from all in Year 4.
Date: 13th Jul 2023 @ 9:33am
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!
Date: 4th Jul 2023 @ 9:31am
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!
Date: 29th Jun 2023 @ 5:09pm
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!
Date: 20th Jun 2023 @ 10:21am
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
Date: 13th Jun 2023 @ 10:15am
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.
Date: 6th Jun 2023 @ 9:53am
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.
Date: 23rd May 2023 @ 9:24am
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.
Date: 16th May 2023 @ 12:57pm
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.
Date: 10th May 2023 @ 2:35pm
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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.
Date: 3rd May 2023 @ 8:52pm
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!
Date: 25th Apr 2023 @ 10:30am
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
Date: 18th Apr 2023 @ 11:56am
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