Last week of term

Hello,

We hope that you are having a good week so far and that the children are enjoying the first day of their February half term break.

This week, Year 4 have been learning about how to use a variety of conjunctions and key facts to inform a reader. In particular, we have been learning how to use co-ordinating, subordinating and causal conjunctions – these skills have been practised through the use of debates and ‘conscience alley’, whereby the children used their climate change sentences to persuade a friend to purchase an electric car instead of a diesel super car. As the week progressed, we then considered how relative clauses could also be used to add further information e.g. statistics, percentages and other facts. We were delighted with the range of informative sentences that were created by Year 4, regarding Global Warming, Deforestation, Fossil Fuels and Plastics in the Sea. Well done everyone!

In Maths, we have been working on using a range of different strategies in order to calculate fractions of an amount. This has enabled the children to complete a variety of comparison questions (e.g. ‘Which is more and which is less, 2/3 of 36 sweets or 3/5 of 25 sweets?’) and place value tasks (e.g. ‘If I know 2/4 of 12, I can calculate 2/4 of 120 by multiplying my answer by 10, as 120 is ten times bigger than 12 and the fraction of the amount is the same’). We were very impressed by the children’s use of reasoning skills when selecting their strategies for solving, which included: bar models, trial/error, arrays, partitioning (part-part whole), number lines and even ’10 times bigger or smaller’. Both classes had demonstrated true resilience across these challenge tasks, taking care to ensure their presentation was neat and their selection of strategy was appropriate.

Last week, we had a fantastic time during our STEM day. Year Four worked in groups to create their very own terrarium-style animal habitat. Each team thought very carefully about how they could show a cross section of their habitat, which was carefully designed to ensure their chosen creature could survive. Please take a look at the photos of our work, below: