Hello everyone,

We hope that you have all been having a good week so far.

This week, we have begun to learn about Anthony Browne’s “The Tunnel”. The children have really enjoyed working with their learning partners to create their own role play between the two key characters in the story. As the week progressed, the children learnt how to use inverted commas to accurately punctuate the speech for their characters. Year Four had a lot of fun using actions and gestures to learn a ‘speech rhyme’ that has supported their learning. Well done everyone! Next week, we look forward to using time and place adverbials to add detail to each of our transformation stories. Do you know of any books or films where a character travels to a magical place?

In Maths, we have been working very hard on our learning of decimals and fractional amounts of a whole. We have made links to the context of money to help the children to understand tenths and hundredths, e.g. £1.79 is made of 1 whole, 7 tenths and 9 hundredths. Both classes have used number lines, bar models and partitioning in order to represent the tricky problems they have been given, particularly when adding and subtracting decimals. Towards the end of the week, Year Four learnt about conversion and how we can use fractions to record our answers e.g. 0.6 + o.2 = 0.8, or 6/10 + 2/10 = 8/10.

On Friday, we are very excited to take part in a STEM day on building structures. We shall be taking a look at and researching famous bridges to find out how to make a strong structure of our own. Have you visited any famous bridges? Can you remember what they are called? What shapes did you see?

A few quick reminders for next week:

• Reading Passport deadline is on Wednesday 9th December 2020. Well done to all of the children who have already handed in their completed passport challenges.
• Christmas jumper day will be on Friday 11th December 2020. Please bring a tin can of food, as a donation for this charity day.
• Weather permitting, PE will be on the afternoon of Monday 7th December so please ensure your child attends school wearing their PE kit on this date.

We hope that you all have a safe and pleasant weekend,

Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns.

Hello everyone,

We hope you are keeping well and safe.

We would like to thank all the parents who joined us on Monday and Wednesday for attending St Peter’s first  Virtual Parent’s evening. It was lovely to meet and chat with all of you about  the fantastic work the year 4 children have been doing. We are extremely proud of how far the children have come and we look forward to continuing their learning journeys into Spring term.

In English this week, the children have been working hard drafting and editing their final writes on ‘How to take care of your snowman’. Here the children have used a great range of skills such as causal conjunctions, time adverbials and snowman nouns. We will now continue to publish our snowman leaflets, so keep your eyes peeled as we will be putting some on the blog next week!

In Maths, we have been using our multiplication and division skills to answer multistep word problems. In order to reach a correct answer, the children needed to read the question very carefully, highlight any key information, decide what operation they needed to use and then use a suitable strategy such as grid method or short division. Next week, we will be starting our fraction unit and exploring equivalent fractions and their decimals, adding and subtracting fractions with the same denominator, and looking at the different fraction representations.

Some quick reminders:

• The final Virtual Parent’s evening is on Monday. Please check your times. If you have any issues please contact the school office.
• Please send your child in their PE kits on Thursday for CM sports.
• Please remind your children to bring in their home spellings, reading passports and vocabulary homework.
• We have noticed a remarkable difference in the children’s timetables since using TTrockstars, so please encourage children to log on at home and complete the sound check. This is very similar to the times table test they will be sitting in May-June 2021.

We hope you all have a great weekend and looking forward to another brilliant week ahead!

Miss Jackson-Nash, Miss Honeywell and Mrs Cairns

Hello everyone,

We hope that you have all been having a good week so far and keeping safe.

On Tuesday 17th November 2020, Year 4 took part in a charity fundraiser day for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. The children wore a creative selection of colourful, bright head wear in order to raise awareness for those who suffer from visual impairment. The children had a wonderful day of workshops, group work and videos and are now able to describe how a guide dog is trained at puppy school. Thank you for all of your generous donations, we have now raised over £40 which shall be donated to sponsor a guide dog! Please see the pictures below from our charity fundraiser day…

In English, the children have been learning how to create explanatory sentences using causal and subordinating conjunctions. We have been very impressed by the children’s use of scientific key words from our States of Matter learning, in order to help them explain how to care for a snowman as part of their Health and Safety leaflet. Well done Year Four! Next week, we look forward to planning, creating and drafting our leaflets and putting them on display in the school office.

In Maths, we have been working hard on our learning for multiplication and division. The children have been taught a variety of strategies for solving a complex multi step problem, e.g. number lines, part whole models, bar models, arrays and grid methods.Next week, we look forward to continuing our learning on division strategies before we move towards learning about fractions, numerators and denominators. Please do log on to your My Maths and Sumdog accounts, for plenty of practise learning on this.

Just a few reminders for next week:

• Parents Evening on Monday 23rd November and Wednesday 25th November (both from 4 – 6.20pm). Your child will bring home their Parents evening target sheets on Friday 20th November 2020. These forms shall form part of our discussions during the 10 minute appointments.
• Children to wear their PE kits to school on Monday please
• Spelling home learning and Reading journals due for collection on Thursday 26th November
• Please remind your child to complete their Reading Passports as soon as possible

We hope you all have a great weekend,

Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns.

Hello everyone!

We hope that you’ve all had a good week so far and are keeping well.

This week in English the children finished publishing their fact files on their created spiders. We were blown away with the quality of their writing. Within their fact files the children wrote about their spider’s anatomy, attack and defence, weaving their webs and even made their own top trump fact box! This week was the start of a new unit looking at Raymond Brigg’s Snowman. We started off the week with making our own snowmen!

We will be continuing to explore The Snowman text and focus on using inference skill. We will also be developing our rich vocabulary to use in our final outcome that is a leaflet in how to care for your snowman.

In Maths this week we started a new unit on multiplications. Here the children explored and deconstructed a multistep problem and identified strategies that would help them solve the question. Next week, we will continue to explore multiplication strategies to help us unpick problems and multiply larger digits (35 x 6).

Just a few quick reminders:

• Please send your children in their PE kits on Thursday for CM sports.
• On Tuesday 17th November 2020 Year 4 will be taking part in Heads Up for Guide Dogs charity fundraiser. Please send your children in wearing something bright on their head or shoulders.  £1 donations  are recommended and you can donate on Scopay. Please ensure your child comes to school in their school uniform with something colour. This is not a non-school uniform day.
• Thank you for those who have completed their My maths and Sumdog homework. Just less than half the year did access the homework. Please continue using these platforms as we carefully select tasks that link with their maths learning at school. If you have any issues accessing these sites, do not hesitate to ask us and we will be happy to help you.
• Virtual Parent’s evening will be taking place from Monday  23rd November, if you have not booked into a slot then please contact the office.
• Thank you for bringing and donating materials for our DT project. We are still collecting bits in so if you have any loo rolls or materials to make torches, we would most appreciate them.

Keep up the brilliant work Koalas and Kangaroos. We hope you all have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you all next week.

Miss Jackson-Nash, Miss Honeywell and Mrs Cairns

Hello everyone,

We hope that you are all well and that you are having a good week so far.

In English, Year Four have created an excellent set of Spider Non Chronological Reports. We look forward to collating them and creating a spooky book as a gift for each of the Year Four classes. In Maths, we have been learning about perimeter and how to calculate the total distance around the outside of shapes. We have also been converting measurements between mm, cm and m, using a place value grid. Can  you have a go at taking some measurements at home? Which equipment could you use to help you? What would the measurement be in… mm, cm, m, km?

Please see the list below for a few quick reminders for next week:

• Please ensure your child is wearing their PE kit to school on Monday. They shall be taking part in a PE session with their class teacher on the school field.
• Thank you to everyone who has brought in their resources for making our D&T torches. Please continue to bring in any toilet rolls, decorations, tin foil, etc.
• Spelling / Vocabulary home learning books to be handed in on Thursday 12th November 2020. We will not be collecting in Reading Home Learning Journals as these shall be marked on a two weekly basis.
• Quick reminder: Individual School Photos shall take place on Thursday 12th November 2020. Please ensure your child remembers to bring their jumpers and cardigans.
• Just a brief note to say that we were disappointed to see only a very small number of children logging in to use their Sumdog accounts last week. The tasks set on here and on our other online learning platforms (My Maths, Times Table Rockstars) have been carefully selected to support the children across their curriculum learning. Please do not hesitate to contact us if your child has misplaced any of their logins, we are very happy to help.

We hope that you all have a lovely weekend,

Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns

Hello everyone,

We hope you are well and safe. What a first half term it has been. We are incredibly proud of how the children have settled so well into their learning and we would like to thank you for all of your help and patience along the way.

In English, the children have continued to research lots of facts and statistics about hairy eight-legged beasts and have made a bank ready to write their own fact file on a spider they have designed. This week we have also been exploring different sentence structures when using subordinating conjuctions and looking at how we can move our main and subordinate clauses. On returning back to school the children will be well equipped to plan, draft and edit their own non-chronological report inspired by the class text ‘Spider Diaries’.

In Maths this week we started to look at money problems. The children explored the different values of money and their equivalnce (100p = £1). With this knowledge, they were able to answer multistep problems that included addition (how much altogether), subtractoin (change) or even both. To help them answer these problems children were using a range of strategies and representations such as bar models and numberlines in order to help them. Our next Maths topic, we will be focusing on length studying conversion, perimeter and area.

In Science this half term, we have been exploring simple electrical circuits. Children now understand what a closed and open circuit is,  what components a circuit needs and how to modify one. Children are now prepared to make their own circuits for our next DT project ‘Making torches’ whereby the children will be making safety torches for children to use on Bonfire Night. We have asked the children to keep hold of materials like toliet tissue rolls, so if you have any lying about we would really appericiate the donation.

Some quick reminders,

• Please continue 10 minute daily reading with your child over the half term.
• Spelling and vocabulary homework has been sent out and will be due back the first Thursday of Autumn 2.
• Reading journals will be due back on the first Thursday.
• MyMaths and Timestable rockstars have been set. A really good timestable resource on Times Table rockstars is the soundcheck tool!
• Please send your child in their PE kits on first Thursday.

We really hope you have a fantastic half term and look forward to seeing you in November!

Stay safe and keep on smiling,

Miss Jackson-Nash, Miss Honeywell and Mrs Cairns.

Hello,

We hope that you are all well and keeping safe.

This week, we have started our new unit of learning on The Spider Diaries. The children have really enjoyed taking a look at documentaries including Planet Earth and the Deadly 60 (CBBC) in order to find out more about these creepy crawlies! At the start of the week, Year Four designed their very own arachnid and used vocabulary banks in order to use scientific terminology when labelling the parts of the body e.g. muscular, strong pedipalps. As the week progressed, the children then considered a selection of nouns and pronouns that they could use to replace ‘spider’ and ‘web’ for the non chronological report they shall make as their written outcome. We have been amazed by the quality of the language that has been used by the children and are delighted to see lots of pupils accessing challenge tasks e.g. Can you include a verb, adverb, or preposition to add further detail to your expanded noun phrase?

In Maths, we have been focusing on subtraction and how to use expanded column to solve problems. We discussed how to exchange values and use a ‘magic exchanging pen’. Later on, the children then had a go at bar model challenges, discussing where they felt particular numbers should go based upon their place value when interpreting a problem. By Friday, Year Four had successfully interpreted a range of multi step word problems that involved both addition and subtraction. Please make sure that your child logs on to My Maths, as there have been lots of activities set based on Money and Conversions. We look forward to exploring pounds and pence next week! What do you know about money already? How do you calculate change? Be ready to share your ideas with the class on Monday…

A few quick reminders:

• Please ensure your child wears their PE kit to school on Monday for a PE lesson with their class teacher in the afternoon.
• Red home learning books (spelling/vocabulary) and Yellow home reading journals to be handed in on Thursday please.

We hope you all have a great weekend,

Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns

Hello everyone,

We hope that you have all been having a good week so far.

In English, we have been learning about the Tin Forest and the children have been using subordinating conjunctions to add their ideas together across sentences. We have been very impressed by the children’s use of emotion words, technical vocabulary and expanded noun phrases. Next week, we look forward to selecting WAGOLL examples (What A Good One Looks Like) and sending copies to Waterlooville library for their display board.

In Maths, we have been looking at the addition of four digit numbers. The children have used place value counters to explore what happens when they have too many ones, tens or hundreds in their place value columns (i.e. carrying). They have now begun to solve Tin Forest problems on subtraction – both classes have used dienes drawings to explore what happens when they need to do when exchanging a ten or hundred for more ones or tens  (i.e. exchanging). Please ensure that your child logs on to Sumdog for additional Times Table practice this week.

Reminders for next week:

• Children to wear PE kits to school on Thursday morning, for a PE session with CM sports.
• Spelling and vocabulary homework is due on Thursday.
• We will not be collecting yellow reading journals until two weeks time (a fortnightly homework).
• Sumdog has been updated with Times Table learning only for this week.

We hope that you all have a wonderful weekend,

See you on Monday,

Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns

Hello everyone,

We hope that you are all having a lovely week so far.

Today, we took part in the Big Anti Bullying Assembly 2020. The children watched an online assembly which discussed bullying, the various forms it could take, and who to speak to when there is a problem. Both classes learnt a lot about the types of bullying and how to help someone who is feeling unhappy at school.

In English, we have been learning about our new text, The Tin Forest. The children have enjoyed playing ‘spot the difference’ and matching activities, to learn new vocabulary including the names and actions of different tools that can be used to make mechanical animals. We also created an emotion graph to explore how the main character’s feelings change across the course of the story – the children were very successful when they used evidence from the text to support their point of view.

In Maths, we have been continuing our work on number and place value. In particular, we have started to learn about addition and subtraction. Today, the children were given a Tin Forest problem to explore as a group – they enjoyed using Maths tools such as place value counters, to add, subtract and exchange different amounts. We also discussed a new class problem, using ‘think aloud’ to annotate what we noticed… the children were curious to find that they had been given the answer but had to use the inverse and work backwards to solve the challenge.

Please remind your children to bring in their spelling and home reading journals tomorrow. They will also need to arrive in their school PE kit for a session with CM sports. Please do not forget that we have an Inset day on Friday 2nd October 2020.

We hope you all have a peaceful weekend,

Miss Honeywell, Miss Jackson-Nash and Mrs Cairns

Hello everyone,

We hope you are all keeping well.

Here is a quick reminder of the homework your child will need to complete:

• Sumdog is live with activities on number and place value.
• Reading passports have gone home and need to be started.
• Our fortnightly reading reviews in our yellow book journals are due on Thursday.
• Spelling and vocabulary homework are due on Thursday.
• Please remind your child to wear their PE kits to school on Thursday.

This week the children have worked really hard on their curriculum learning. In English we have been creating setting descriptions for a winter wonderland. Please check out some excellent examples from each class below:

In Maths we have been looking at rounding to the nearest 10’s and 100’s. Next week we will start to explore addition with 4 digits  using formal written methods. We have also used the following link to practise our times tables, why not have a go at home? https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/477/Multiplication-Tables-Check

We are really looking forward to our Black history month afternoon session on Thursday next week. In this session will shall be discussing family traditions, celebrations and beliefs.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend and stay safe,

Miss Jackson-Nash, Miss Honeywell and Mrs Cairns