Hello,

We hope Year 4 enjoyed their extra long weekend and are well rested, ready to start week 5.

We’ve been deep into our learning for nearly a month now and the children has produced some amazing work! In English the children were given the chance to design their own ‘Monstrous Creations’ and annotated it with some exciting and descriptive expanded noun phrases. We also learnt about the importance of subordinating clauses and that the conjunction  can be moved to make our writing more exciting! Koalas and Kangaroos have started to plan out their final story about their monster which is going to include all the writing skills we have explored in year 4.

In Maths, we have finished the first part of the place value unit. The year four team are extremely proud of the hard work the children displayed and how their curiosity has helped them learn so much. Children should now be able to recognise the place value in a four digit number confidently, round numbers to the nearest 10,100,1000 and order 4 digit numbers. We will be revisiting place value in the next term so it is important children continue to practise place value on Sum dog or practise at home.

In the afternoons, children have experienced lots of different learning opportunities and lessons. In Science we explored battery powered devices and found out how the batteries worked and what would happen if the battery was on used on a continuous circuit. In history we explored artefacts. The children also wrote beautiful letters to Winchester Castle, retelling their favourite parts of the day and all that they learnt.

Due to the inset day, children will be given homework on Monday. The homework will be expected back in a week later. Thank you to everyone for completing the new vocabulary homework. It has had a great impact on the children’s writing as the vocabulary has been noticed in lots of children’s work within the right context.

Just a reminder on Friday 4th October, St Peters is celebrating the great work of CAFOD. Children are allowed to wear brightly coloured clothes to school to celebrate ‘Wear it bright for Harvest’  and we kindly ask for a £1 donation to put towards the charity. We look forward to seeing the children in their colour blinding outfits!

We hope you have a lovely week and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Kind regards

Miss Jackson-Nash, Miss Honeywell and Mrs Cairns

Hello,

We hope that you have all had a pleasant week so far.

This week, we took the children on a school trip to Winchester Cathedral and Museum as part of our topic learning on the Anglo Saxons! The children had a wonderful time and took part in the following workshops…

• Anglo Saxon Pot Handling (City Museum)
• Guided Tour on artefacts and infrastructure (Cathedral)
• King Alfred’s challenge: making engraved silver badges, Anglo Saxon Ruins and Illumination paintings (Learning Centre)

The children were exceptionally behaved and were fantastic representatives of our school, asking thoughtful questions along the way to deepen their historical knowledge on the Anglo Saxons. Well done Year Four! Please see the photos of our school trip, below.

In English, the children have completed their Apprentice Writing. We were delighted to see the following skills being applied across the children’s character descriptions for Stitch Head: expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials, relative clauses and adverbial phrases. As the week progressed, the children then took part in an ‘animal hybrid’ game, using IT to generate their own creatures which shall then become the key focus for our written outcome. We were very impressed by the vocabulary and adjectives used by the children.

In Maths, Year Four have been learning how to order four-digit numbers on a number line, before using the <,  > and = signs to compare the numbers and derive their own facts. Both classes have focused upon using the following place value vocabulary as part of their reasoning: greater than, less than, equal to, thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. We would like to congratulate the children for their commitment, especially when completing tricky place value challenges and ordering problems involving a variety of scales on different types of number lines. Next week, we look forward to learning about how to round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000. Be sure to log on to the Sumdog website to practise the skills we have been learning in class!

Just to let you know…

• The children have received their ‘creative task’ homework for the Anglo Saxons (please see the back page of the red home learning books for a copy of this).
• Reading passports for the Autumn term have now been sent home. The prize for the winner shall be a trip to see The Wizard of Oz performance at Chichester Festival Theatre, whilst all other participants shall be rewarded with 15 minutes extra playtime.
• INSET day is on Friday 27th September 2019.

We hope that you all have a wonderful weekend.

Kind regards,

Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns

Hello,

First week of the academic year has already finished and the children have already learned so much!

In English, children have been studying the book Stitch Head by Guy Bass, exploring the different language and effects it has on the reader. We started our week by using our inference skills to understand how Stitch Head was feeling and what clues helped us. We spotted that the nouns and adjectives gave us big clues, one example the children dissected was ‘ the lonesome put-together,  who hugged his bony knees tightly,  watched his professor walk away’. As they dissected the text, they also spotted a range of skills (like adverbs, expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials) in which they used within their own apprentice writes. Next week, the year four team are excited to see the children finish their ‘monstrous stories’.

In maths, we have continued to explore place value and four digit numbers. Children were given a problem regarding place value of a four digit number  in which they had to exchange. Here the children discussed and explored using the tools and found out that ’35 hundreds’ were equivalent to 3500. They then moved onto ordering and comparing four digit numbers, looking closely at each place holder and finding its value.

The children were very excited this week when they discovered a ‘burial site’,where lots of artefacts were excavated. The children looked at the artefacts and made predictions of what they were and where they came from. Koalas and Kangaroos also made exciting predictions as what they would look like now and if we still used them. Next week the children will look more closely at he artefacts and discover more clues. Hopefully we will find out who these artefacts belonged to!

We would like to thank everyone for getting back into routine so well and we’re excited for the rest of the year ahead! As part of year 4, the children will be set homework every Friday,to be returned the following week. This includes spellings, reading and maths on Sum dog. The first week back most children have completed their work,which we were very happy about.We understand that some children’s activity on Sum dog hasn’t be logged. We want children to be assured not to worry and we will try and get it fixed as soon as possible.

A quick reminder of the following key dates:

• Tuesday 17th September (3.30pm): Y4 Parent Welcome Meeting
• Wednesday 18th September 2019: Y4 trip to Winchester Museum and Cathedral

We would also like to say a big thank you for all the parent volunteers who are helping on the school trip. We now have enough adult support to go and look forward to sharing the day with you.

We hope you have a great weekend and look forward to seeing you all next week!

Kind regards,

Miss Jackson-Nash, Miss Honeywell and Mrs Cairns

Hello,

We hope that you have all had a relaxing and enjoyable summer holidays and that you are all feeling refreshed and ready for the new school term.

Year Four have been very excited to begin their new topic, ‘Monstrous inventions!’ As part of our cross-curricular learning, the children have been exploring their new English text, Stitch Head, by Guy Bass. On our first day back to school, we watched a short video clip about the story and then annotated the text more closely as we searched for examples of powerful expanded noun phrases. The children then had a go at using vocabulary mats and thesauruses to create their very own descriptive sentences about the appearance of the main character. We were amazed by the level of the children’s vocabulary and their use of alliteration and simile to entertain the reader. Here is a couple of great examples from pupil’s books – ‘his piercing, pearlescent eyes shimmered like jewels in the moonlight’; ‘the child’s skeletal, gaunt hands wriggled like twisting tree branches along the banister’. Well done Year 4!

In Maths, we have been learning about place value and have been exploring thousands – within the context of four digit numbers – for the very first time. As part of an investigation, both classes were given a set of hundreds, tens and ones diennes and asked to show what they thought 1000 would look like. We had some very interesting discussions about what 1000 is ‘made up of’. Already, the children were able to use place value vocabulary such as thousands, hundreds, bigger and smaller. Each group was excited to use the Maths tools on their tables to discover how 1000 is equivalent to ten lots of 100s. The children then had a go at a dice game to generate their own 4 digit numbers, before filling a place value grid to show multiple representations of the number (place value counters, arrow cards, words) – as a challenge, some children also attempted exchange problems e.g. ‘What if… I rolled an 11 for the hundreds digit, on my 12-sided dice? What would happen to your 4 digit number?’ (solution: it would become 1100).

Just to let you know that the children have all received a times table Sumdog challenge, along with spelling home learning and a coloured band reading book, all of which are to be completed by Friday 13th September 2019. Please ensure your child records the work that they have completed in their new home learning diaries.

A quick reminder of the following key dates:

• Friday 13th September 2019: deadline for school trip reply slips
• Tuesday 17th September (3.30pm): Y4 Parent Welcome Meeting
• Wednesday 18th September 2019: Y4 trip to Winchester Museum and Cathedral

We hope that you have all had a good weekend and look forward to seeing you all next week. If you would like to volunteer to help on our school trip, please contact the school office as soon as possible – your assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns.