Year 4 Team: Miss S McVey (Class Teacher), : Blog items
Date: 14th Jun 2022 @ 11:26am
A week full of memory making and learning highlights in Year 4!
‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ is one of the most famous fables and we loved revisiting the story this week to think deeper about our understanding of our Collective Worship value, Truthfulness. In RE, we pulled the Lord’s Prayer apart to analyse the different words and phrases used throughout. We recognised that the Lord’s Prayer is a Christian prayer which Jesus taught his disciples to say and each line has its own meaning. A particular word we analysed was ‘Amen’ which we deduced means ‘So be it’. We concluded that this word is a form of blessing at the end of most prayers.
In English, we continue with our story, ‘Blue John’. Before we started reading the new chapter, we explored our new STAR vocabulary, using our dictionaries to define the words and creating a glossary for future reference. We connected our learning with Geography, discovering new terms such as stalagmites and stalactites. Using Hot Seating, we explored the thoughts and feelings on the Queen of Darkness and used fronted adverbials to create sentences about her actions towards Blue John. Our learning then progressed to spotting features in explanation texts and justifying when a new paragraph should be used.
We carried out lots of practical activities in Maths to focus on our recall of the 2 to 12 times tables. From a scavenger hunt around our school grounds, to bingo and chanting, we truly have worked hard this week to increase our recall speed. We have also begun our focus on statistics by reading and interpreting pictograms as well as creating our own, using a suitable key and symbol. Next week, we will look at line graphs and answer questions based on the data we can interpret from bar charts.
With our Mayan masks dry and eye holes cut, it was time to add paint. Using a range of vibrant colours and eye-catching patterns, we chose whether to make a mosaic effect or to symbolise an animal as our design. Our clarinet skills are also going from strength to strength! With the focus and determination we are displaying to perfect our notes, the range of songs we have perfected is ever increasing each week. Mrs McCardle couldn’t be more proud!
The most fun we had this week was certainly when we carried out our bubble investigation. After creating bubble bands out of pipe cleaners, we dipped them in bubble mixture and filled the sky with bubbles! Excitement filled the playground as we used our observation skills to observe if the bubbles were always round, if they always went up in the air and investigated if we could create different coloured bubbles.
As a school, we are extremely pleased to have achieved GOLD for our School Games Mark this year. This reward is testaement to the dedication and work our Year 4 Sports Ambassadors have put in to support sport and exercise across the school, alongside the other ambassadors. A huge well done to them!
Reminders:
-Mufti Day and the Summer Fair on Friday 24th June.
-Children will need to bring trainers to school on Tuesday 21st to complete a lap of hope around the school.
-Please ensure children have a water bottle in school.
Date: 7th Jun 2022 @ 4:04pm
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Year 4 have been busy bees in their first week back!
To explore our new collective worship value ‘Truthfulness’, we created a web of lies. One lie led to another and before long, it became apparent that telling lies over times created a tangled web of dishonesty. We then looked at how we can use our five fingers on ours hands to represent different people we think of when we pray. We recognised that when we pray we think about those who we love, those who teach and guide us and for those who may be sick or unwell.
In English we have moved onto a new story about the life of Blue John. From the cover, we were able to make inferences about why John is blue and what this could mean, we also discussed the ring around Blue John and what that might represent. After exploring the first two chapters, we then used our prior knowledge of paragraphing to write our own three paragraph summaries about how rain is created. This also connected our learning to last term’s Science topic – States of Matter. We ended the week with a fun interactive activity where we took to the Hot Seat to roleplay and improvise an interview with the Queen of Darkness.
We have continued to develop our understanding of time in Maths this week. We have learnt how many days are in each month of the year, remembering this through a helpful rhyme. We also started to look at digital time in more depth, recognising the difference between 12 and 24-hour time. This was achieved by using number cards to see how many times of the day we could create with just four numbers!
Our new topic in History looks at the Mayan Civilisation which is very exciting! We delved into some enquiry-based learning where we created six questions which we would like to answer about the mysterious ruins the Mayans discovered. We linked our Historical findings to our Art lesson, where we started to create our own Mayan Mask out of papier-mâché. It was interesting to find out that these masks could have been worn for a variety of different reasons and can symbolise the three stages of life.
On Thursday, we began to retell the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in Spanish. We used our craft skills to make a minibook from A3 paper where we practiced our Spanish writing, using accents to indicate stresses on the word. It was then time to get more artistic with our beautiful illustrations.
This week we were also able to develop our map reading skills in PE by learning about Orienteering. Collaboratively, we solved riddles to gain letters which would be included in the anagram which we had to figure out This was a lovely way for our trainee teachers to say ‘thank you’ for the experience they have had in our Year 4 classroom community. We also began to learn about the footwork rule in Netball, where we had to practice keeping one foot ‘glued’ to the floor and using the other foot to pivot on.
Have a wonderful weekend, Year 4.
Reminders:
-The children would really benefit from practising their times tables at home next week, in any spare time they may have.
-As the weather is getting warmer, please ensure children bring a water bottle to school.
-Clarinets must be returned to school for our lesson on Monday afternoons.
Date: 24th May 2022 @ 10:18am
What an excellent and busy week within Year 4 to end the term!
Ahead of the Jubilee, we took the time to join the awesome Horrible Histories’ artist Martin Brown for a right royal show about great and gruesome monarchs. We loved his live drawing, silly stories and foul facts!
After listening to our peers' speeches in class stating why they should be selected to represent Year 4 in the TSP pupil voice groups, we began the week casting our votes at the TSP Polling Station using our very own Polling cards. A huge congratulations to the nominated representatives, who we know, will deliver the pupil voice of Year 4 in their group meetings and ensure our opinions and beliefs are shared.
This week has been full of cheers and celebrations, particularly on Friday, when we took part in the TSP talent show. Following a morning of singing, dancing, magic and comedy acts, our two winning performances from Year 4 advanced into the school talent show to compete against winners from across the school. We were honoured to meet members of the Royal family and some familiar faced judges as we performed following a rendition of the National Anthem to mark the Queen’s Jubilee. Well done to all participants, you truly were shining stars!
On Tuesday, we had a lovely morning spent writing in our Author Books. We have thoroughly enjoyed delving into the story ‘Where the forest meets the sea’ by the fantastic Jeannie Baker, taking lots of inspiration for our own non-chronological report writing. It is amazing to see how many artist skills were used in our Author Book and how truly fantastic our information booklets look, alongside our rainforest design.
For our Computing Day this term, we used the brilliant Book Creator App to undertake a series of creative challenges based around the Harry Potter books. After designing our own wizarding front covers for our newly created digital books, we added audio, animation and effects to bring our stories to life.
A special ‘well done’ as well to our boys’ football team who faced Woodlands this week in their first match. They made us incredibly proud with their positive attitude and teamwork.
Love Reading have issued their Mid-May Newsletter; please see many more top-read recommendations you may wish to explore with your child/ren. Happy reading!
Reminders:
-School commences on Monday 6th June.
-Clarinet lessons remain on Mondays after half term.
-PE lessons will continue to take place every Tuesday and Friday after half term.
Date: 19th May 2022 @ 11:23am
This week has truly been one to remember!
Taking a look at a range of notice boards on display in churches across our locality, we were able to deduce the way Christians want to live and the community they create. We found that church notice boards commonly tell us that we need to help others and when events take place that support and bring the community together. Year 4 reflected on how they use the notice boards in our school church to find out when services take place and when events are on that they can attend.
Taking into account all we have learnt this term about non-chronological reports, we began researching information we could use in our own information booklet to prompt the dangers our rainforests face. After choosing a suitable heading, we discuss relevant subheadings we could include to help categorise our facts into their own paragraphs. Year 4 worked hard to even plan pictures they could use to accompany their facts and bing their information booklet to life. We can’t wait to add more factual information next week, following our visit to Chester Zoo.
It was time to tackle time in Maths this week and to help us along the way, we designed our own clock faces with annotations of the key aspects of time we needed to remember. Ater recapping where we can find o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to, we moved onto identify the time to 5 minutes. It was helpful for us to use our school day to understand things that happen in the AM and those that happen in the PM, before writing times using the 24-hour clock. Next week we will look at ordering time and digital clocks.
With our school values of Hope and Nurture in Mind, we created posters in Geography to encourage others to act now and help save our rainforests. We used our black thinking hats to recall facts about the rainforest and the dangers they face. In Science, we made our own water cycle diagrams using sandwich bags and labelled them with white board pens. It was fascinating to see how the water we placed at the bottom of the bag evaporated when placed in front of the sunlight.
What a fantastic surprise we had in Music, as we were given the opportunity to have a Music lesson with the brilliant Mr Fogg. By creating rhythms, we ordered a variety of drinks from McDonalds, based on the different beats we made on the drums.
It is no surprise that the highlight of our week was our trip to Chester Zoo. What a fantastic day out we had full of laughter, animal spotting and of course fun! After exploring the Zoo grounds and taking time to discover our favourite animals, we focused our attention on the rainforest, clearly built to house a variety of plants and animals inside the zoo. We thought about the equipment needed for such an adventure before exploring why the rainforest is so important to both people and wildlife.
At Chester Zoo, we also discussed the classification of animals in the rainforest, their adaptations, life cycles and food chains. Of course it’s not all good news, so we also discovered the threats to the rainforest and how actions such as recycling and buying sustainable products can help save this wonderful and important habitat!
Reminders:
-RSE lessons will be taking place in class next week.
-Following half term, pupils return back to school on Monday 6th June.
Date: 11th May 2022 @ 11:02pm
Lots of highlights and achievements in Year 4 this week.
After recognising the five colours commonly seen in our local churches, we explored what the different colours stand for. We found many connections in our own lives to the five colours, particularly red, which in the church is used to symbolise sacrifice. Lots of our minds drifted towards the colour red representing the Poppy Appeal…. Whilst others of course couldn’t think of anything other than LFC.
We can all confidently say we have thoroughly displayed our Collective Worship value of perseverance this week, as we have kept trying even when the going got tough. As we continue to work hard to practise our times tables in preparation for our Multiplication Check, Year 4 are full of self-belief and have a Growth Mindset in order to keep on going and give it their all. Taking time to pause and reflect on this value, we reminded ourselves of God's persevering love and how perseverance is a desirable trait to have.
What fun we had practising our times tables using a Kagan learning technique in Maths. By using Quiz, Quiz, Trade, we were able to ask our peers multiplication calculations and trade our playing cards if we correctly answered the question. Using a bar model, we calculated the change that would be given if an item was paid for using a £10, £20 or £50 note. We used our black thinking hats to recall our number bond facts to help us find the difference. Next week, we begin learning about time and recognising the time on both an analogue and digital clock.
We didn’t stop smiling throughout our Gymnastics lesson, as we carried out a range of partner balance. We worked hard to use our core and upper body strength, to keep our partner in the air. There were certainly lots of aching bodies the following day! In Geography, we compared the modern society we live in to the way of life of tribes who call the rainforest their home. In Science, we helped Willy Wonka to fill his river full of liquid chocolate. Using our investigation skills, we had to explore different ways we could turn chocolate in its solid state, into a liquid.
In recognition of Mental Health Awareness week, we discussed how when you feel lonely, you might feel sensations in your body. Using chalk and our human outlines, we identified where in the body we feel a sense of loneliness and the things we can do to not feel alone.
Have a wonderful weekend, Year 4.
Reminders:
-Children should be reading every night at home. Please ensure you comment on your child’s Google Classroom to let us know what book your child is reading and how they are getting on with their reading at home.
-Clarinet lessons every Monday. Clarinets must be brought back to school ready for the lesson.
-Year 4 trip to Chester Zoo on Friday 20th May.
Date: 5th May 2022 @ 5:25pm
Yet another fantastic week, here in Year 4!
Connecting our school value ‘Hope’ and our Collective Worship value ‘Perseverance’, we watched inspirational videos displaying how our sporting heroes never give up, despite many setbacks. This led to a discussion that God can help us when we are feeling like we can’t carry on and by always reminding ourselves of our school values, we can use hope to always try our best.
Using Venn diagrams, we rounded amounts of money to the nearest pound. There was no tricking us that an amount could not belong in the middle circle because every amount either rounded up or down. We then hit the shops, buying items with varying amounts of coins and notes but always ensuring our total amount was reached in the least amount of coins possible. Later in the week, we used our black thinking hats to recall our knowledge of money to help us in finding out how much more money we would need to meet a desired total.
David Attenborough is certainly a treasured idol in our classroom, so we were thrilled to use him as a role model for our writing this week. After watching an episode of his Planet Earth documentary, we then watched a section but this time, with no sound. It was our job to create the narration for the clip to explain just what the hairy pig and tiny shrew were up to. Within our writing, we included factual information, lots of description and kept to the same tense using a third person writing style.
In Science, we took to the playground to sort images into solids, liquids and gases. One image had us debating…is an ice lolly a solid or a liquid? What do you think? We then investigated the process of changing water from a solid, to a liquid, to a gas. We soon discovered that the process was reversible and learnt new STAR vocabulary - condensation and evaporation.
Continuing our focus on rainforests, we took to creating a line graph and a bar graph in Geography to show the temperature and rainfall throughout the year. It was a big surprise to us that December was not their coldest month and in fact, the temperature does not really change.
Reminders:
-Love Reading have chosen their 'top book picks' for April and May. More, highly-rated children's reads, from a variety of authors for different age ranges, are shared with us all to enjoy.
-PE lessons remain on a Tuesday and Friday each week.
-Clarinets must be in school every Monday for our Music lesson.
Date: 26th Apr 2022 @ 11:21am
The sun has continued to shine and our spirits have been high in Year 4 this week.
After exploring the variety of Churches that can be found around the world, this week, we focused on churches we can find in our local area. After labelling different characteristics of these churches, alongside spotting similarities between them, we set to the task of drawing our own church. Year 4 took particular inspiration from St. Peter’s church and its traditional design. Our designs also incorporated stain glass windows made from a variety of coloured tissue paper and a steeple with a cross placed on top.
In Maths, we took part in a Mathematical investigation to see how many different decimal numbers we could find on a given magic square. After spotting two numbers that could be placed together, we then had to divide the number by 10 in order to form a decimal between 1 and 6. Year 4 also used number cards to create as many different decimals numbers as they could that could fit between two given numbers. It took lots of rearranging of the number cards to find all possibilities, but we were determined to find them all! We also recreated a visit to a toy shop and with our allocated funds, made a shopping list of what we would like to buy. Year 4 were thrilled to also be able to create a wish list of items they couldn’t quite afford yet but informed Miss Mcvey of the required amount they would need to purchase their wish list items. Next week, we will be continuing to make amounts of money and identifying change.
What a week of English lessons we have had! We began by creating a glossary of vocabulary associated with a tropical rainforest, ensuring we used a bold colour to make the word stand out and recorded the key words in alphabetical order. Our focus then turned to recalling when we use an apostrophe in our writing and how we write singular and plural words with a possessive apostrophe. It was a real treat to then watch a clip from Planet Earth, narrated by David Attenborough. We recognised that the transcript of his narration had features of a non-chronological report, which we identified and colour coded.
In recognition of our hard work on World Earth Day, the National Trust Formby presented us with a plaque to honour the incredible mural we created made completely out of recycled materials. Well done, Year 4! You truly showcased our school value of nurture and showed such passion and determination to spread such an important message.
A huge thank you to Ultimate Kids for a thrilling and incredibly enjoyable activity session. We were so grateful to try a range of different activities, whilst keeping fit and active. We can’t hide our love for sport in Year 4 and it has been a delight to see the children taking so much enjoyment from our Tri-Golf PE lessons this week.
In Art, we turned a monochrome rainforest print into a colourful, bold and vibrant rainforest scene. Through the use of colour, we ensured the parrots jumped off the page and the vegetation disappeared into the background of the picture. We discovered a rainforest is made up of 4 layers in Geography and what the particles look like in different states of matter in Science.
Have a wonderful bank holiday weekend, Year 4.
Reminders:
-Children to continue to practise their times tables at home in preparation for the Year 4 Multiplication Check.
-PE lessons take place every Tuesday and Friday.
-Chester Zoo trip payments to be made on School Money.
Date: 21st Apr 2022 @ 8:32pm
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What a wonderful first week back!
In RE, we started our new topic exploring whether all churches are the same. After discussing what we think defines a church, we then located churches around the world and those associated with different religions. Selecting our favourite six church designs, we used Google Draw to create a poster showcasing the varying buildings.
Using place value grids, we continued on from our learning before half term to identify the place value of numbers in a given decimal. Not only did we write a decimal number in numerals, we also unpicked each part of the number based on its place value and recorded the number in words using tenths and hundreds. We then moved onto rounding decimals to the nearest whole number, remembering if the number to the right of the ones column is 5 or more, then round it up. If it is less than 5, then round down.
We haven’t fully revealed the contents of our new story ‘When the forest meets the sea’, yet, it is already an exciting mystery that is eager to be discovered in Year 4. Written by Jeannie Baker, we know so far that the book is a prize winning tale located in a deserted rainforest. We took time to explore some of the STAR Vocabulary that we will discover in the book, creating our own STAR Vocabulary dictionaries to refer back to throughout our English writing this term. Using plenty of adjectives and appropriate nouns, we then created a descriptive paragraph to describe a landscape we admired the most. It was great fun to read our descriptions to our partners and see if they could guess where our landscape might be.
To connect our topic of rainforests in Geography to our prior learning, we completed a circle map. Our circle maps highlighted facts we already knew about rainforests and indicated questions we wanted to explore further. Using a world map, we then located rainforests across the world and developed our understanding of where they can commonly be found. This included learning about where the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are found.
Connecting our learning with our Geography topic, we used oil pastels and chalks to bring our rainforest sketches to life. We recognised the importance of using different shades, textures and pressure when colours were situated together, to enable the vegetation to stand out and look 3D.
On Friday, we marked and celebrated World Earth Day by teaming up with Year 3 and National Trust Formby, to create a huge mural made completely out of recycled materials. After sorting through our waste materials, we planned our design and made Spring inspired objects to add to our mural. To further explore the importance of reusing and recycling, we loved helping Gus clean up the park using the National Geographics recycling roundup game.
Love Reading have chosen their 'top book picks' for April and May. More, highly-rated children's reads, from a variety of authors for different age ranges, are shared with us all to enjoy.
It was a delight to have you back in class, Year 4! I hope the sun keeps shining this weekend.
Reminders:
-PE lessons take place every Tuesday and Friday. Children will also need to wear their PE kit on Thursday 28th April for their Ultimate Kids activity session.
-Clarinet lessons continue every Monday. Please ensure your child’s clarinet is brought to school for their lesson.
Date: 28th Mar 2022 @ 8:23pm
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Just like that, it is time to wish you all a Happy Easter! It’s hard to believe how quick this term has vanished but they do say time flies when you're having fun.
On Monday, we had a lovely morning spent writing in our Author Books. We have thoroughly enjoyed delving into the story ‘When the Giant Stirred’ by the fantastic Celie Godkin, taking lots of inspiration for our own story writing. It is amazing to see how many artist skills were used in our Author Book and how truly fantastic our stories look, alongside our tropical island designs.
For our Design and Technology this term, we investigated, designed and created our own mini greenhouses. We began the day by exploring existing greenhouses and investigated their stable structure and features that support plant growth. From this, we discussed suitable materials to create our greenhouses and sketched our own designs, thinking about the features we would need to include. After creating our greenhouses, we planted and watered our own seeds, before evaluating our finished product. Year 4 are keen to keep watering their plants over the Easter break and will use their handy window slits to let the light in.
This week we also completed our Computing Day and what fun we had! We started off Computing Day with a recap of what coding is, what skills we need to code and how we can be creative when animating a variety of images. We then moved onto our Hour of Code activities, designed to broaden our problem-solving skills, logic and creativity. Our favourite activity was most definitely Dance party, as we were able to create dance animations, using code, to our favourite songs. Of course, this was closely followed by our Minecraft activity, using blocks of code to take Steve or Alex on an adventure through this Minecraft world.
With Easter on our minds, it was time to put our detective skills to the test and figure out the locations hidden around our outdoor area, to complete our own special Easter hunt. For successful completion of the hunt, we won a surprise Easter token to exchange for a special Easter treat. We also completed a variety of Easter crafts and connected our learning with our Art topic of patterns, to design our own patterned Easter eggs. What an EGGcellent day we had!
A huge thank you to Year 3, who led such a beautiful Easter Service this week. It truly concluded our term in such a beautiful way and reminded us of the significance of the Easter period.
We wish you all an amazing Easter break and we look forward to seeing your smiles back in class on Tuesday 19th April.
Reminders:
-Clarinet continue next term, every Monday.
-PE lessons take place every Tuesday and Friday.
-Year 4’s weekly spellings and Virtual Classroom can be found on Google Classroom.
Date: 22nd Mar 2022 @ 11:11am
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The sun has been shining this week and so have we!
To begin our week, we reflected on our monthly value of Sacrifice in Collective Worship. We discussed whether a sacrifice always has to be in the form of a physical object and the hardest sacrifice we believe would be tricky to make. Following this, we connected our knowledge of The Easter Story to ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’ recognising the sacrifice of Aslan the lion.
In RE, we took the time to self assess our knowledge of the topic ‘Exploring Betrayal in the Easter Story’. In order to reflect upon this topic, we discussed the importance of power and the effect of betrayal, trust and forgiveness, the concept of salvation and recalled the significant incidents of betrayal and trust in the Easter Story.
Our attention turned to decimals in Maths this week, as we discovered what happens to a one and two digit number, when it is divided by 10 or 100. Using a handy tenths and hundreds chart, we soon identified that our numbers jump back a column when dividing by 10 and two when dividing by 100… not to forget the importance of ensuring our decimals point stays in the same place when we make the jumps. Later in the week, we moved onto ordering decimals and placing them on a numberline. We loved using our whiteboard pens to draw on our tables to create number lines and place our given monsters on our line, from the smallest decimal to the largest.
On Monday, we celebrated World Poetry Day by using a Double Bubble Map to identify the similarities and differences between Narrative and Free-Verse poems. We then read and recognised different forms of poetry and select your favourite poems. We brought our story of ‘When the Giant Stirred’ to a close by planning and creating a first person retelling of the story. Whilst planning our own stories, we ensured we reflected on the use of direct speech in the text, the use of appropriate pronouns and fronted adverbials to begin our sentences. We are so excited to bring our pieces of writing to life next week in our Author Books. To ensure we are ready for our big write, we designed a tropical island scene to illustrate our stories.
It was time to put all our developed skills into practise this week, as we carried out our own rounders round robin. Each time had 10 minutes batting time, to see how many rounders they could gain. In History, we looked at how the Romans have influenced our lives today. We discussed how there was a period of great unrest in Britain - native tribes and foreign invaders fought for power and control over the country. However, even though the Romans were no longer ruling the country, they had made a lasting and significant mark on everyday life in Britain.
As the week draws to an end, we look forward to spending our last week together before the EGGcitement of half term. Have a great weekend, Year 4!
Reminders:
-Please ensure your child’s clarinet is brought to school ready for their Clarinet Lesson on Monday.
-Parent-Teacher Meetings on Wednesday 30th March.
-Please continue to bring in recyclable materials for our mural as part of Earth Day.
Date: 16th Mar 2022 @ 5:55pm
What a fantastic week we have had here in Year 4.
To start our week, we took a look at the story of Peter and discovered that following the arrest of Jesus, Peter denied knowing him three times, but after the third denial, he heard the rooster crow and recalled the prediction as Jesus turned to look at him. Peter then began to cry bitterly. With the story in mind, we broke down the key events and outlined the amount of times Peter denied Jesus. We then discussed how Peter denied knowing Jesus to save his own life and how Christians are not afraid to declare their faith in Jesus even when it has meant they would lose their lives.
Our Collective Worship brought sadness and honour to our hearts, as we listened to the Buddhist story of The Monkey King. We identified how this story connects to our value of Sacrifice because the monkey sacrificed himself for the good of others.
In English, we created guides to show the features of formal letter writing. We had to make sure we put each feature in the right place and used formal language to address the recipient. It was also a week of upleveling, as we researched a variety of synonyms for nouns and frequent words we use in our writing. Year 4 truly are eager to make their choice of vocabulary more exciting, week after week. By the end of the week, we had planned a letter to write to a distant relative and included a description of the volcanic eruption happening in the village. Next week, we are going to begin planning our own version of the story ‘When the Giant Stirred’.
Connecting our understanding of fractions and with decimals this week, the children spent time converting tenths into decimals such as 0.1 and 0.4, before moving on to think about how we can also divide a number by 100 to make hundredths. We use place value charts to allow us to visualise how a number moves past the decimal point and into the tenths and hundredths column, remembering that we also need to add in a zero or two.
It was time to put our clarinets together in our Music lesson and learn our first song, ‘There is a ghost in the house!’. Even though some of our notes are a little squeaky, Miss McArdle is . very impressed with our knowledge of notes and how well we hold a tune! We also had a fantastic dance workshop, led by the brilliant Miss Ashleigh. We used dance to symbolise different forms of bullying and freeze framed stages of emotions during difficult times.
Arriving at school on Friday morning, we were welcomed by an abundance of red.. Yes you guessed it, we started our morning celebrating Red Nose Day. Our morning was filled with a variety of carnival inspired activities, incorporating red noses, to help us to recognise the importance of the day. To add to the celebrations, Year 4 took on Year 3 in an egg and spoon race using a red nose! What a great time we had!
In recognition of National Science Week, our afternoon on Friday was full of Scientific experiments all centred around the theme of Growth. By adding Alka Seltzer to a bottle of coloured water and oil, we made bubbles of carbon dioxide. The bubbles then attached themselves to the blobs of colored water and brought them to the top of the glass. We noticed that when the bubbles popped, the blobs of coloured water fell back to the bottom of the glass. This is definitely an experiment Year 4 will replicate at home.
Year 4, we wish you a restful and enjoyable weekend!
Reminders:
-Please ensure your child’s clarinet is brought to school ready for their Clarinet Lesson on Monday.
-Parent-Teacher Meetings on Wednesday 23rd and 30th March.
Date: 8th Mar 2022 @ 8:43pm
Yet another wonderful week here in Year 4, filled with so many exciting learning opportunities!
Continuing with our focus surrounding trust and betrayal in the Easter Story, this week, we were introduced to the characters, setting and plot of the Easter Story. We split the Easter story into sections, selecting those parts of the story that highlight trust and those that show betrayal. We then connected our learning back to our understanding of characteristics shown by trustworthy people, in order to categorise the events.
We have truly worked hard this week to master direct speech and the use of inverted commas. By using the story ‘When the Giant Stirred’, we explored thoughts and feelings of the islanders during a time of uncertainty, as the volcano began to erupt. We had to ensure that when a new islander was speaking, we used a new line to represent the change in speaker. In Guided Reading, we unpicked the verses of the poem ‘It couldn’t be done’, to find words that explained the characters feelings, thoughts and motives. Repeated words were also a feature of this poem, so we used this as an opportunity to discuss the effect repetition has on the reader.
Practice assessments have also taken up most of our Maths, Writing and Reading sessions this week. The children have tried their hardest and shown plenty of resilience when approaching tricky questions. They should feel very proud of themselves!
In History, we began to explore the rise of the Romans and described some of the technology advances the Romans brought to Britain. We then explored the events surrounding Boudicca’s revolt and how she led a major uprising against occupying Roman forces. In Music, our clarinet lessons are going from strength to strength. This week, not only did we learn how to blow into our clarinet to produce a sound, we also mastered how to put all the different parts of our clarinets together, to make a complete instrument.
A huge thank you to Scientist Matt, for joining us this morning to share how he became a Scientist and the mirco-organism discoveries he has made. We were inspired to hear all about how his passion for Science started at TSP. We also had the pleasure of being joined by two police officers, who also attended TSP! They spent time informing us of their daily roles and responsibilities, before answering questions regarding their careers.
To mark International Women’s Day, we selected inspirational women to honour in our own picture frames. In the outside of our frames, we added words to highlight how inspirational and powerful these women truly are. It was also insightful to discuss with one of our police officer visitors, how they feel about being a woman in the force.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Reminders:
-Children need to come into school dressed in their PE kit on Wednesday 16th March for their Dance workshop.
-Weekly spellings are set every Friday and tested in school the following Thursday.
-Please ensure your child is reading daily at home. Should your child be struggling to find a book at home they wish to read, they can borrow a book from the school library.
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.