Year 4 Team: Miss S McVey (Class Teacher), : Blog items
Date: 3rd Mar 2022 @ 11:51am
What a great week we have had in Year 4. Full of hard work, effort and of course, plenty of fancy dress!
To acknowledge Shrove Tuesday and the beginning of lent, we connected our new monthly value of Sacrifice to our learning. With Ash Wednesday in our sights, we began the week by reflecting on how Lent allows Christians to remember Jesus’s fasting in the desert and the things we would give up as a test of our self-discipline. In RE, we identified moments of trust and betrayal in films and in the teachings of Jesus. Through watching the Lion King when Scar betrays Mufasa, we recognised that betrayal can be a refusal of help or breaking of trust.
It was time to move onto Mixed fractions this week. Armed with the knowledge of what a fraction is, how we make fractions and the parts a fraction is split into, we began our conversion to Mixed fractions. We focused on converting from improper fractions to mixed numbers using counters and shape representations. We had to group parts into wholes again, using our knowledge that when the numerator and denominator are the same, the fraction is equal to 1 whole. Then,we were able to spot how many wholes there were and how many parts were leftover. Next week, we will count, add and subtract fractions.
We were thrilled to delve a little further into our new book 'When the Giant Stirred' to discover how speech can be used in a story. By connecting our learning back to our speech chcklist, we created speech sandwiches to explain what we could offer the Gods and the reponse we would recieve, remembering to put the response on a new line for a new speaker. We then recalled our knowledge of writing speech to give guidance on what we should do if the volcano erupted, remembering to keep exclamation marks, commas and full stops inside the speech marks.
It didn’t take us long to master how to play a game of Rounders. Our fielders sure did showcase some great teamwork and of course, joy filled the air when our batters gained a rounder! We have also been developing skills in Tag Rugby with Mr Brindley, focusing on how we can use different agility techniques to dodge our opponents to keep our tag on.
Continuing our focus on electricity in Science, our wishes for the bulb to light and the motor to spin came true, as we created electrical circuits. We discussed the importance of all the connections being secure, in order for the circuit to work. Next week, we will be thinking about materials that we can incorporate into our circuits that conduct or insulate the electricity.
A huge thank you to the fantastic authors, Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre, who we joined on Zoom this week. They gave us an insight into their new book ‘Kevin vs the Unicorns’ and definitely got us ready for World Book Day. We thoroughly enjoyed illustrating Kevin along with the authors and took pride in our finished designs.
It is with no doubts that World Book Day is our highlight of the term so far. The children looked incredible, as they arrived at school dressed as their favourite book characters. The time, effort and pride the children took to create their looks was admirable. After we discovered the book ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’ in the classroom, the children were made aware that the crayons had quit and were not coming back without our help. As a result, our morning was spent completing activities set by the crayons in order to restore the crayon pack. If that wasn’t enough, we then took on a Masked Reader challenge, spotting the hidden celebrity behind the book.
From us all here in Year 4, have a wonderful weekend!
Reminders:
- All login details needed to access learning programmes at home are kept as a password document on your child’s Google Classroom, should they wish to complete any additional learning at home.
- Please ensure your child is reading regularly at home. Should you wish to complete additional reading comprehension practise at home with your child, questions and texts can be found on the Google Classroom stream.
Date: 23rd Feb 2022 @ 9:33pm
It was lovely to welcome the children back this week and hear all about their half-term adventures!
Building on from our discussions surrounding our monthly value of Joy, we reflected on the things that brought us joy and happiness this half term. With special things in mind that make us smile, we illustrated our own happiness jars with the special things in our lives that bring us joy. Our RE focus this term will provide us with an opportunity to focus on the significance of the incidents of betrayal and trust in the Easter story. To begin our RE work, this week, we played trust games. We had to lead a blindfolded partner around an obstacle course, put our hand in a feely bag and fall backwards into the arms of someone who was ready to catch us! This enabled us to reflect on who we trust and what qualities make a person trustworthy.
Curiosity filled the room on Monday, as clues were given as to what our new focus book in English will be this term. With pictures of tropical fruit, movie clips from Moana and Hawaiian flower garlands, we knew it must contain a tropical island! We were also excited by the discovery of a volcano in our new book ‘The Giant that Stirred’, giving us a moment to connect back to our cherished ‘Escape from Pompeii’ story from last term. After spotting different features on the front cover, we created expanded noun phrases to explain just what can be found on this tropical island. Every effort was made to not list colours from the rainbow to describe the nouns, instead the children used words such as vermillion, emerald and crimson - what great use of vocabulary this week, Year 4! Next week, we will be explaining what the villagers in the story do in a typical day, by writing diary entries.
After identifying and shading fractions of shapes, we've been putting our fraction knowledge to the test this week, by creating paper plate equivalent fractions. Alongside using fraction walls, our paper plates enabled us to visualise what fractions are equivalent. Later in the week, we identified that lots of equivalent fractions can be made by multiplying or dividing the top and bottom by the same number. When writing equivalent fractions, Year 4 know that whatever you do to the numerator, you do to the denominator too! Next week, we will be focusing on adding and subtracting fractions.
This Fairtrade Fortnight, we discovered where our produce comes from and celebrated the people who grow our food and drink.We then revealed just how little is paid to each worker in the banana trade, by creating a banana income split. Fairtrade Fortnight has provided us with a valuable opportunity this week to critically discuss what fair looks like in our world.
Why did the Romans invade? That is what we discovered this week in History, by finding facts in our outdoor area to explain why Britain was invaded by the Romans in AD43. We are thrilled to be learning about the Romans this term and thinking a little more about what we can learn from the Romans.
In PE this week, the children loved starting our tag rugby sessions. We began by figuring out the tricky knack to putting the belt and tags on! It truly is harder than you think! It was a delight to see the enjoyment from all the children as we played a game of cat and mouse, pulling the tags from the mouse’s tails.
Have a lovely weekend, Year 4. We look forward to seeing you next week.
Reminders:
-World Book Day will be next Thursday. Children are encouraged to come to school dressed as a character from their favourite story.
-Next Thursday, children will need to bring in their PE kits to allow them to participate in PE with Mr Brindley from FHS.
-Clarinet lessons start on Monday. Permission slips need to be returned if you wish for your child to take their clarinet home each week.
-Reading Comprehension activities can be found on Google Classroom if your child would like to complete any additional home learning.
Date: 10th Feb 2022 @ 5:45pm
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Just like that, the term has vanished! It is incredible to look back at how much we have learnt and the enjoyment, creativity and imagination we have encompassed throughout.
To continue our focus on Joy, we created our own prayers in class to thank God for all the things around us that bring joy to our lives. Our prayers focused on showing our gratitude to God for the feeling of great pleasure and happiness when we are filled with joy - that feeling when you just can’t stop smiling or jumping about.
We took to our Author books in English, to showcase our incredible writing this term, based on the fantastic bok Escape from Pompeii. We sure did connect our understanding of volcanic eruptions to create our artwork, before carefully copying across our imaginative and historical stories. Later in the week, we took to Kahoot to recall our knowledge of homophones. Enjoyment filled the room as we battled against each other to answer questions correctly, in order to climb up the leaderboard. We definitely are experts on the homophones their, there and they’re after some close competition.
Can you believe it!? A real life Author came to our school this week! What a privilege we had to have Luke Temple visit our school to instil a love for reading at TSP. A big thank you to Luke for giving us an insight into the adventures of Becky and her friends on Thistlewick Island, even if it did leave us with a spooky feeling! In our Reading lessons, we also started a new whole class read in Year 4 and we can’t put it down! You could have heard a pin drop as we delved into Chapter 2 of Jenny McLachlan's Land of Roar. We are excited to read more about Arthur and Rose’s magical land.
Our wonderful mathematics continued their exploration of area in Maths, by creating letters using rectilinear shapes. They then completed the challenge of calculating the area of their letters. We also used our creativity to make robots out of post-it notes, before calculating their area by counting the squares inside our shapes. It was great to see how Year 4 connected their learning with multiplication, to understand that we can also calculate the area of a square or rectangle, by multiplying the two sides together.
Connecting our learning in Music and Computing, we took on the challenge of making our own Music Video on Computing Day this week. With a green screen prepped and rap inspired accessories to hand, we brought our song ‘Stop Bullying’ to the screen by creating our very own music video. We worked hard to film different parts of the song and join them together using Movie Maker, ensuring the clips were joined seamlessly and the green screen background image created the perfect set for our video filming.
On Tuesday we celebrated Safer Internet day by discussing how we must stay safe online and the appropriate ways to respond to each other online. If you would like any further information about this, please see our Online Safety section of the school website or click here.
Love Reading have launched their 'top book picks' for this month. More, highly-rated children's reads, from a variety of authors for different age ranges, are shared with us all to enjoy.
Attached to this blog is also this month's Virtual Classroom - once again with links to various websites that can further support home learning. You can also find the Year 4 Virtual Classroom on Google Classroom.
We wish you a restful and enjoyable half term, Year. See you on Monday 21st February.
Reminders:
-PE days for Year 4 remain on a Tuesday and Thursday next term.
-Spellings can be found on Google Classroom and will be tested the first week back, after half term.
Date: 2nd Feb 2022 @ 9:45pm
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Yet another tremendous week. Well done, Year 4!
This week in RE, we identified how authority is symbolised in a range of different religions. We specifically focused on the Torah and discovered how it contains many laws that guide Jews on how to live a life that pleases God. We also connected our learning with our Collective Worship value of Wisdom, discussing how the Torah is the main source of wisdom to help Jews improve their relationship with God and to live good lives. We also revealed our new monthly value of Joy and described the things in our lives that allow us to showcase this value.
We grasped how to use the Bus Stop method in Maths, to provide us with a quick and efficient method for working out division with larger numbers. In this method, we placed the number to be divided under a bracket (or bus stop) to separate it from the number to be divided by. To fully understand this method, we ensured we connected our learning with our known Multiplication facts to calculate how many times a number goes into another number e.g. how many 8’s in 40. We know this method will come in useful when dividing 3 digit numbers and when solving word problems.
After unpicking the story ‘Escape from Pompeii’, this week, it was time to plan and write our own versions of the story. On Monday, we began by recalling the original story, splitting it into 5 parts; the opening, build up, problem, resolution and ending. We were great at retrieving key vocabulary and historical language from the text, that we could use in our own writing. Following this, we planned our story using the first person point of view, writing as if we were Tranio, the main character in the story. The rest of the week, we broke down our writing into 3 lessons to ensure we focused on making each paragraph as detailed and accurately punctuated as we could.
To celebrate Chinese New Year, we created dragon puppets to dance around the classroom. We took great joy in discovering our Zodiac Sign and discovering the attributes of those who are born in the year of the tiger. We are on the lookout for confident, competitive, brave and strong-minded tigers here at TSP. In recognition of National Storytelling week, alongside supporting Climate Coalition Month, we joined a Zoom with the fantastic author Dan Freedman. Dan is best known for his hugely popular series of Jamie Johnson football novels and inspired us with his insight into his inspirations for writing.
On Friday, we recognised Her Majesty The Queen who will become the first British Monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years of service to the people of the United Kingdom, the Realms and the Commonwealth. Taking inspiration from the Royals, we learnt how to bow, courtesy, wave just like the queen and even dance as if we were in the Palace’s ballroom!
Continuing our focus surrounding volcanoes in Geography, we learnt all about the 3 different types of volcanoes and how we can identify them based on their physical features. With this knowledge in mind, we then created our own illustration of a volcano, adding colour using oil pastels to symbolise the volcanic eruption taking place. Our favourite lesson this week has to be Science! We fully enjoyed creating Kazoos to investigate how changing the size of a straw can change its pitch. Not to forget the fun we had completing a Kahoot Quiz!
We look forward to seeing you next week for our final week of term, Year 4. Let's make it the best week yet!
Reminders:
-Y4, Y5 & Y6 Team TSP Spring Disco Wednesday 9th February 4.45pm - 6pm.
-PE Days next term will stay the same. Children should arrive to school dressed in their PE kit every Tuesday and Thursday.
Date: 26th Jan 2022 @ 7:31pm
Another wonderful week here in Year 4!
With a little help from some friends from Sesame Street, we learnt all about Shabbat, the Jewish Day of Rest. We discovered that Shabbat happens each week from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. During Shabbat, Jewish people remember the story of creation from the Torah where God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th day. Using a flow map, we sequenced the things that happen during Shabbat including family meals, prayers at the synagogue and drinking from the Kiddush cup.
It was time to write letters this week in English, showing off our knowledge of the events that unfolded in Pompeii after tremors could be felt on the ground. It has been heartwarming to see how passionate the children are about our book ‘Escape from Pompeii’ and the historical language they have used in their writing. Connecting our learning back to our speech writing checklists, we also took to the challenge of including speech in our writing. Our letter writing concluded by answering a critical question - should the children return to Pompeii? It was great to hear the debates the children formed surrounding the question and the powerful justification they wrote to support their answers.
It was time to open our new restaurant this week, for our first book tasting session. We were delighted to indulge in a range of books from our class library and decide which of our ‘courses’ we would like to read next week. Year 4 took great joy from their restaurant experience and it was a delight to see how many children discovered new genres of books they would like to read.
We have connected our understanding of using column multiplication in Maths, to now multiply a three digit number and a one digit number. Year 4 truly have mastered the steps they need to take in order to multiply accurately using this method. Later in the week, it was time to introduce division and practise using the bus stop method to help us to divide. Next week, we will be thinking about area and how it is calculated by multiplying the length of a shape by its width.
We also took the time this week to remember those who suffered in the Holocaust, under Nazi persecution. We created a flame to represent the candles we lit in class in remembrance and explained why it is so important to mark this memorial day.
A big thank you to Anne for welcoming us to the Eucharist Service at St.Peter’s Church on Wednesday. We learned more about why Christians gather at this service and the symbolism of the bread and the wine. Another thank you to the fantastic team from Mad Science, who delivered an inspiring assembly to showcase just how interesting, and sometimes completely mind blowing, Science can be!
Have a great one, Year 4!
Reminders:
-Please do comment on Google Classroom to showcase the fantastic reading the children are completing at home.
-Weekly spellings are accessible via Google Classroom.
Date: 20th Jan 2022 @ 8:12pm
We can’t quite believe it’s Friday again! Time sure does fly when you’re having fun!
Year 4 were set a task this week to reflect on their understanding of Wisdom, take inspiration from the wise people we have been thinking about and instill wisdom into their everyday lives. With this challenge in mind, the children have been using their judgements to choose right and wrong in different situations and sharing their knowledge with others to help them make wise choices. In RE, we focused on how artists portray that Jesus has authority in a range of pictures and paintings. We identified that Jesus is always illustrated higher above other people in the artwork, surrounded by light and quite commonly with his hands reaching out.
Using a checklist to ensure we have all elements needed, we created sentences including speech to show what the characters in our story ‘Escape from Pompeii’ might be saying to each other. We had to remember to always start our speech with a capital letter and include punctuation before closing the speech. It was great to hear how many variations of the word ‘said’ we could identify to make our speech sentences just that little more exciting to read. We then used a range of words to describe the mood in different points of the story and planned a diary entry to sequence how the eruption of Mount Vesuvius unfolded. Next week, we are going to include speech when writing diary entries and continue to include fronted adverbials to help sequence events in time order.
In Maths, we have learnt how to use a caterpillar to find factors of a number and factor pairs. We loved drawing our own caterpillars and finding out how many legs they had, represented by the factors of the number in the caterpillar head. We also met four new friends, who each showed us a written method to support us in completing multiplication calculations. In Year 4, we are proud to be independent learners and pick the most efficient method we like to use to help us.
In our spelling lesson this week, we used pyramid writing and played an odd one out, to practise some tricky words. We loved quizzing our friends to find the correct spelling, amongst some red herrings. We also had so much fun in Science, investigating how sound travels through solids, liquids and gases. I’m sure we will have lots of Year 4 pupils testing how good their family’s hearing is!
With a focus surrounding volcanoes, we completed illustrations in Art to symbolise a dormant and an active volcano. The colour choices were important, to clearly show the activeness of the active volcano.. Yes you guessed it, lots of yellows, oranges and reds were used! Not to forget the fun we had in Music, as we continued to learn our new song ‘Stop!’ which reminds us of the importance of kindness and stopping bullying. Our favourite part of the song has to be the rap in the middle!
This month's top book picks from 'Love Reading' have been released today. It shares exciting new story books from a variety of authors for different age ranges.
Year 4, you have worked your socks off this week! We hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Reminders:
-Parent-Teacher Meetings on Monday 24th and Tuesday 25th January, via Zoom.
Meeting ID: 954 0343 0490 Passcode: TSP
-Children should be ready at home daily and those reading on the school book band should return their books every Monday to school to be changed.
-Children are encouraged to bring in a healthy snack to school for breaktime and a water bottle.
Date: 12th Jan 2022 @ 8:39pm
This week has most definitely been all about ensuring we incorporate our school value of Enjoy into all of our learning.
After exploring how Jesus showed authority in a variety of Bible stories, we connected our learning by identifying people in our country who show authority. Just like Jesus, these people have the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience. We have been reading Aesop’s Fables in Collective Worship and identified the wisdom expressed in the stories. We highlighted how the stories provided wisdom of a practical nature and usually either stresses caution or provides a course of action which should be followed or avoided.
In Maths, we have been focusing on representations and methods we can use to support us in calculating multiplication questions. We began by using arrays to demonstrate how multiplication can be done in any order , before moving onto using the Column Multiplication method as an efficient way to quickly multiply a two digit number by a one digit number. Thursday afternoon was great fun, as we had our first extra Times Tables lesson this week to help us recall our Times Tables facts. This lesson consisted of playing Multiplication games with our friends in a carousel. Times Tables Monopoly was a definite favourite! Next week, we will be focusing on the 8 and 9 Times Tables and identifying factor pairs.
Escape from Pompeii is proving to be a Year 4 favourite, even though we are only onto the second page of the book! This week, we have focused on setting the scene by describing what can be seen, heard and smelt in Pompeii town. Using conjunctions, we also created sentences using historical words to emphasise that the events in the story unfolded many years ago. It was great to see the children using lots of our STAR Vocabulary that we unpicked last week!
We have been focusing on a range of question types in our Reading lessons this week, working hard to precisely retrieve information about the text using the exact wording used by the author. We later explored the importance and explained why events make us feel a certain way, taking evidence from the text to justify our answers. We also connected our experiences to events unfolding in the story to be able to deduce what is happening in the story.
To further explore why the Earth shakes, rattles and rolls, we used cards to represent tectonic plates and thought creately about the movements they might make. Using a cause and effect thinking map, we recorded the three ways the plates move and the effect the movement has on our planet. What fun we had in Science, creating our own string and cup phones, to explore how vibrations allow us to hear sound.
Mr Brindley from Formby High school was back to take our second Dodgeball lesson and this week was even more fun than the last! We continued to develop our over arm throw, with increasing accuracy to ensure the target was hit. Year 4 are already remembering so many of the rules associated with Dodgeball, although we do tiptoe a few steps forward before the whistle is blown to start.
What a week we have had, Year 4. I am sure you will agree it has been full of enjoyment and we can’t wait for more fun learning next week!
Reminders
-Year 4 recorder lessons finished in the Autumn term. Purchased recorders are to remain at home.
-Sibling photographs take place on Tuesday 18th. Year 4 should wear their school uniform on this day, instead of their PE kit.
Date: 6th Jan 2022 @ 7:42pm
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A very Happy New Year to you all! We hope you thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas festivities and made memories to cherish. We are back in action here in Year 4 and enjoying every moment of being back with our friends and learning lots of new and exciting things.
To celebrate Epiphany, the Christian feast day of celebration, we reflected on the journey the Three Wise Men took to visit the baby Jesus. We discovered the gifts they brought for the newborn King and imagined what gifts we would have brought should we have visited the baby Jesus. Focusing on our new topic in RE surrounding Jesus being the son of God, we explored a range of Bible stories to find evidence of Jesus’ authority. After interpreting authority as having power, being commanding and taking control, it was clear to see that Jesus’ authority brought peace, guidance and health to others.
By completing a jigsaw puzzle to create the front and back cover of our new book, we discovered that our English focus book this term is ‘Escape to Pompeii’ by Christina Balit. We sorted different parts of the puzzle into three categories: what we could see on the boat, things in the distance and what was happening in the water. We then discovered that we can show the different categories in our writing by using paragraphs. So we took to our books and did just that, using expanded noun phrases to describe and specify the things we could see. On Friday, we took our first look inside the book and began to unpick some tricky vocabulary to help us understand the text.
With a focus on Multiplication and Divison this term, we spent time this week recalling our times tables, spotting factors of different numbers and spotting patterns within the times tables. Year 4 will be working hard next week to continue to find tricks and strategies to help them recall their times tables and written methods to support them in multiply two numbers.
What a great first PE lesson we had, led by the brilliant Mr Brindley from Formby High School. We had such a great introduction to Dodgeball, learning the different techniques we could use to ensure we were ready to dodge the ball. Our dodging skills were certainly put to the test, dodging the villains and catching the saviour balls from the superheroes. We are eagerly awaiting Mr Brindley’s return next week!
We began our new topic on Sound this week with an outdoor challenge. Using only our sense of hearing, we took to the challenge of creating and A-Z of the sounds we could hear around school. We then identified that the sounds we hear are vibrations that travel through the air.
After discovering a volcanic eruption took place in our English focus book, we connected our learning with our new topic in Geography, exploring how the Earth shakes, rattles and rolls. To help us understand the structure of the Earth, we compared it to a hard boiled egg! By dismantling the egg into its three parts we used this to help us identify that the Earth is divided into three layers: the crust, the mantle and the core.
It has been a joy to have the children back in class and we look forward to the fantastic term we have to come. For more information on what we will be learning about this term, please click here.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Reminders
-Year 4 PE takes place every Tuesday and Thursday
-New spellings can be found on Google Classroom and will be tested next week.
Date: 2nd Sep 2021 @ 9:52pm
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, meeting our new teachers and pupils in our class and exploring the Disney film ‘Up!’.
We had a magical start to our week after we spotted a house flying through the sky, attached to multiple coloured balloons within our classroom. We soon identified that the house was from the fantastic Disney film ‘Up!’ and were excited to share our favourite parts from the film. After exploring different clips a little further, we unscrambled the clues given to us and revealed that the film will help us to explore our school values and discuss what makes TSP so great.
Using a weight and a balloon, we identified things that lift us up and those that weight us down. We discussed how choosing wisely can help to lift our spirits and those of others. After writing down all the things that weigh us down, we scrunched them up and encouraged each other to always choose kind. Using our green thinking hats, we established lots of ways we can lift each other’s spirits and created balloons full of random acts of kindness to ensure we are always nurturing ourselves and others.
Taking inspiration from his love of the outdoors, we then went on the create our own wilderness explorer calls just like Russell from the film. The outdoors brings us so much joy, so we all were very adamant to motivate each other to explore more outdoors. With our exploring hats on, we designed our own Wilderness Explorer badges to reward ourselves for being active and adventurous. With our minds set on the outdoors, it was time to create a guide on how to be a Wilderness explorer. With the kit we would need packed into our bags, we wrote down the key principles to being a great explorer.
Taking on board the emotions of the characters in the film, we compared and contrasted their feelings. We spotted how some characters had similar feelings at times when at first, they may have been complete opposites. Using string, we then focused on creating a graph to demonstrate how a particular character’s emotions changes throughout the film as different events unfolded.
The week wouldn’t have been complete without an afternoon of crafting! Paints at the ready, we recreated the Up house, complete with balloons. We found our fingers were the perfect shape to represent the balloons, so with that we took to finger painting. Our finish products were colourful delights and the addition of fluffy clouds truly showcased just how high the house had flown up into the sky.
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.
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
-PE lesson will take place on Tuesdays and our swimming lessons will take place on Wednesdays.
-Weekly spellings will also begin next Friday.