Hello,
We hope that you have all been having a festive week and a pleasant weekend, as preparations for Christmas begin!
This week, the children published their explanation texts and evaluated them to support the process of making further improvements to their own work. We were delighted to see such a creative selection of snowman nouns, technical vocabulary and conjunctions that had been used to explain ‘How to care for a snowman’. At the end of the week, Year 4 were very excited to post their information leaflets in the school office, ready for all visitors of our school to read and enjoy. Well done to both classes! On Friday, the children also participated in the Autumn Reading Passport Awards assembly. Congratulations to our Year 4 winners, who shall enjoy a theatre performance of The Wizard of Oz. We would like to also say well done to those who took part and completed their reading passports, ready for the class draws – we hope that you enjoy the reward of 15 minutes extra break time this week!
In Maths, we have completed our learning on Multiplication and Division. It was wonderful to see the children using a variety of efficient strategies such as part-whole models, place value counters, grid method, number lines and the bus stop method, when interpreting and solving a series of tricky multi-step word problems about multiplying and dividing. Next week, we look forward to learning about Fractions – using practical and pictorial representations to look at ‘equal parts of a whole’, equivalent fractions, as well as ‘tenths’ and ‘hundredths’ in the context of money (e.g. £1.67 as having 6 tenths of a pound and 7 hundredths of one hundred pennies). Please ensure that your children do still continue to regularly log on to Sum Dog, as well as Times Table Rock Stars, for their Maths home learning.
On Friday, the children enjoyed taking part in a STEM day (please see photos below). Both classes worked in teams to problem-solve as they created plans and designs to answer the following question: Can you save your snowman, by making the strongest bridge for him to travel along? Year Four began the day by looking at a range of photographs and videos of real life bridges and structures. The children noticed how the engineers had used particular shapes, angles and materials in order to create strong, waterproof bridges. As the day progressed, both classes worked in the following teams to design, create, test and evaluate different types of bridges: Magnetix, Lego, Newspaper, Cardboard, Marshmallows / Spaghetti and Wooden blocks.
We hope that you enjoy the rest of your weekend and look forward to seeing you all on Monday.
Kind regards,
Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns.
