This week in year 4 we have been up to lots of interesting and exciting things!

In maths we have been looking at expanded subtraction, a way of partitioning numbers to take away. As the week has gone on, we’ve progressed to looking at tricky Disney themed word problems which require us to subtract, and some have even looked at subtraction to do with measurement.

In English we have had great fun playing at being commentators. We looked at the way that football commentators describe everything that is going on on the pitch and then applied that to the final battle between Captain Hook and Peter Pan in the Disney film. The work we produced was very impressive!

In RE this week have been looking at light as a symbol for Jesus, and all the ways that light inspires us and has a positive effect on our lives. We wrote some beautiful poems.

Team 4 have loved seeing all the creative topic-based home learning that has been coming in – keep up the good work and remember, have a restful and enjoyable weekend!

🙂

Welcome back to all the children.  This week was our first full week of learning and we have been impressed with how the children have settled back into the routine and learning. In the first week back, we were lucky enough to have a visit from Mrs Hobby, who spoke to us about the functions of the teeth as well as the importance of looking after our teeth.

Maths: This week, we have been looking at multiplication strategies.  We began the week looking at mental methods for multiplying and dividing using our times tables.  We also looked at how we can use a known fact such as 3 x 4 = 12 to find new facts such as 30 x 4 = 120.  We have since moved onto using efficient written methods for multiplication.

Literacy: In Literacy, we have started to look at our text driver for this unit, Peter Pan.  We been writing an explanation text to help someone to learn to fly. Could you write an explanation text this week for home learning?

Spelling: Our spelling focus has been the ‘gu’ sound.  Could you find some of your own words beginning with ‘gu’ to learn this week?

Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you next week!

Team Year 4

This week year 4, continuing with our topic ‘Animals Including Humans’, have been looking at food chains and working hard to understand the tricky vocabulary associated with it such as, ‘consumer’, ‘producer’ and ‘predator’.

Using the Iron Man as our inspiration, this week in English we have been planning and writing non-chronological reports. We published our work on special paper and will be compiling a book which we will send to the library for all the children of the school to read and find out about the Iron Man, his appearance and habitat.

In Maths we have been looking at multiplying and dividing one and two-digit numbers by 10 and 100. We are getting very good at being able to answer and explain what the inverse of a number sentence is!

As we are now in Advent, we are looking forwards to the birth of Jesus and have spent this week looking at the Jesse Tree of his descendants. We even visited the Chapel at Oaklands and decorated the Christmas tree there with our own symbols of our favourite Bible stories.

We wish you all a fantastic weekend 🙂 Team 4.

‘Yesterday we had a DT day.  First we finished our Science investigation and in the afternoon made healthy wraps. Last Thursday, we put boiled  eggs in sugary drinks and left them for a week and yesterday we cracked the eggs open and saw what colour the inside of the egg was including the yoke. We used gloves for safety and opened the eggs outside so it didn’t smell so bad. After lunch, we made healthy wraps using chicken, cheese, ham, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber.  We took the wraps home to enjoy.  Finally, we were given a toothbrush and a special tablet that shows you where the plague on your teeth is.  We are going to try and do this at home.  We wrote instructions for how to use the tablet and toothbrush.  We really enjoyed this DT day and can now make healthy snack for ourselves and our families to enjoy!’

By Hannah and Patrick (4S-Koalas)

In Maths this week, we have been looking at the properties of 2D shapes with particular focus on recognising acute, obtuse and right angles.  Next week, we will continue to learn about the 2D shapes as well as learning to plot co-ordinates and recognise lines of symmetry in a shape.

Our Literacy learning has centred around unpicking the features of a non-chronological report which will lead nicely into our writing for the next couple of weeks on The Iron Man.  For Spellings, we have been learning 5 of the Year 3 and 4 statutory spelling words.

We began to think carefully about the beginning of Advent in Year 4 and particularly focused on the Jesse Tree.  We will be visiting the Chapel on 1st December 2016 to learn further about the Jesse Tree.

Have a restful weekend and we will see you on Monday!

Team Year 4 x

This week in maths we have been learning to tell the time. The children have been doing well to read and write the time from and onto analogue clocks as well as digital. Some have even explored the 24 hour clock. To round the week off, we have been solving time problems related to real life.

Telling the time can be quite tricky for lots of children and the journey to becoming ‘time-confident’ can be a long one. So thank you if you have already been supporting the work we are doing in school by helping your children with time-related home learning. Below are some quick and easy activities and key teaching points that you could try in addition to the activities set on MyMaths and Abacus.

• Ask your child at different points throughout the day to read the time and unpick their understanding by asking if it is AM or PM, how may minutes it is until a given point or if they can express this a different way, e.g. 25 minutes past the hour is also 35 minutes to the next hour.
• Chanting on in one minute, ten minute, quarter/half an hour or one hour intervals can help to reinforce your child’s understanding of key knowledge such as there being 60 seconds in 1 minute and 60 minutes in 1 hour. Watch out for common mistakes such as saying after 3:59 comes 3:60.

We hope you find these ideas useful and not too arduous. Have a restful weekend. We look forward to seeing you on Monday.

Team 4 🙂

This week we have had a History week in Year 4 relating to the World Wars. In Literacy, we looked at diary writing from the point of view of children in the War.  We created Art work relating to the World War and wrote prayers, poems and songs for the soldiers who have died.  Today we observed the 2 minute silence for remembrance.  the children behaved perfectly and respectfully.

In Maths, we have been looking at measure. In particular, we have focused on capacity: reading scales; estimating amounts and solving problems.  Today we looked at supermarket ‘deals’ and decided which ‘deals’ were actually good deals and why! Next week we will begin our learning on Time – being able to read the time to the nearest 5minutes and progressing on to reading the time to the nearest minute on both digital and analogue clocks!

For spelling, we have looked at the prefixes ‘ir’, ‘il’, in’, ‘im. Some children have continued learning the high frequency words also.

Have a restful weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Monday!

Team Four 🙂

43 days until Christmas!

On Thursday, Year 4 dedicated the whole day to creating cute sock animals. To mark the end of our topic on ‘Animals and their Habitats’, the class designed and made owls, penguins and mice. Throughout the day, children practiced different sewing techniques and learnt to attach buttons. All the children showed great resilience and commitment to learning as they overcame difficulties such as threading needles, knotting thread and cutting neatly. After a challenging day, the finished products were incredibly sweet – definitely creatures to be proud of!

This final week of the half-term has been packed with exciting activities. On Thursday we had a parent visit to give an awe-inspiring, and incredibly informative, presentation about the animals and habitats of the Maasai-Mara National Reserve, Kenya. The children listened intently and were fascinated to learn so many interesting facts about animals such as flamingos. cheetahs and hippos. On Friday it was 6C day, where the children were put into groups with others from their house teams across years 2-6. They took part in activities centered around creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, commitment, courtesy and curiosity. Everybody, including the staff, thoroughly enjoyed the day, with a range of tasks on offer and the out-of-the-ordinary opportunity to work with different children.

The fun is set to continue into the second half of the Autumn term as on Thursday 3rd November we have a Design Technology day. Wrapping up our topic of ‘Animals and their Habitats’, we will be designing and making animal sock puppets. If you are able to, please send in a clean sock (an old one will do) for your child to use for this task – the brighter, the better!

We are also requesting any packaging that you would normally send to the recycling bin to assist the children in creating ‘junk sculpture’ in Art as part of our new ‘Iron Man’ topic. We would be grateful for any clean and dry cardboard boxes/tubes, yoghurt pots, bottles and caps you can send in, thank you.

Finally, everybody has worked so very hard this half-term, so please congratulate your children on a great start to year 4. Well done! We look forward to hearing about what you’ve been up to over the school holiday and continuing  the next half-term so positively.

We wish you a restful and enjoyable break.

Mrs Atkins, Mrs Stewart and Miss Hill

Friday was a very successful fundraising day in school.  We had an assembly in the morning to kick start our day where the volunteers from CAFOD spoke about the cause and why it is so important to raise money for CAFOD.  Some of us spend some pennies buying lovely cakes from Year 5 or guessing the number of sweets in a jar.  We will be announcing the child who was the closest with their guess later this week.

We have started looking at how to stay safe online.  I have attached a link to the CEOP cyber café website to explore alongside your child.

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/8_10/cybercafe/cyber-cafe-base/

Year 4 Team

On Thursday 6th October 2016, not only is it American day, but it is also a day to raise funds for CAFOD.  Both year 4 classes suggested many exciting fundraising ideas and we have decided that we will be running a competition to guess the number of sweets in a jar.  In order for everyone to be involved, we are asking that children bring in any small sweets to add to the pot by Wednesday 5th October.

On Thursday 6th October, the children will have the opportunity to enter our competition to guess the number of sweets in the jar. They will need to donate a nominal amount to enter. There is also a ‘wear it bright’ theme for the day which means that children are allowed to wear their own clothes, the brighter the better! Please ensure that your child has money to contribute to these events.

On Friday the money raised will be presented to the CAFOD volunteers at the morning assembly.

Thank you in advance for supporting this great cause.

Year 4 Team