Category: Year 4 – St Alban

It was a very relaxed last day to the school year today, deservedly so after all the hard work put in this term. Mrs Porter led an assembly where we remembered the important events all those years ago, listening to the same words from The Bible that so many people have heard over the years. The children sang “Silent Night” beautifully. It was also a time to say goodbye to Mrs Ruffell who had worked at St Adrians for twenty years! We also said goodbye to Mrs McSweeney, which was sad for Year 4, who are hoping that the next cook will prepare such good lunches.

The children enjoyed opening their KrisKringles and working out who gave them their gifts. We missed the children who weren’t here today and hope they get better soon.

Miss Cartwright, Miss Parkes, Miss Goodall and I thank you sincerely for the very generous gifts you gave us. They are all very much appreciated.

It only remains to wish you all a very happy, peaceful and safe Christmas with your family and friends, whether you are at home or away. There are no home learning activities on Google. Reading for enjoyment is always a good thing to do, along with getting lots of fresh air when possible and spending quality time with family and friends. I very much look forward to seeing you all on 8th January 2024!

Year 4 is making good progress with learning the 6 times tables and have been exploring the links between the 3 and the 6 times tables. They have used resources and counting the multiples, backwards and forwards, to help understand and learn the facts.

This week they verbally built sentences based on “The Snowman” and said what they liked about their partners’ writing. By responding positively to other people’s ideas they are giving others feedback on what works well as well as reading ideas which they may want to magpie.

Singing of the songs is coming on, but everyone really needs to commit the lyrics to heart so they can sing the songs confidently and beautifully on Monday, when we’re all looking forward to seeing you at St Bart’s, starting at 6.30pm.

Thank you for all the hard work in providing cakes and selling them this afternoon. They looked really amazing! We will have to consider what we, collectively as a class, would like to spend the money on.

The countdown has begun! Year 4 has made some cheerful decorations for the classroom and is starting to look festive. The Advent table is ready and we have been learning the importance for Christians to prepare themselves during Advent, for the coming of the Christ Saviour.

This is the year 4 “Carol on the door”. Which carol is represented?

We have started our new book, “The Snowman”, which the whole school is reading. The children are really enjoying it. There is much nuance and inference when there are no words! I loved the simile one child thought of, when they said the boy’s hat flying was “like a kite”

The Maths topic of multiplication and division has started. Please don’t hold back with learning those times tables off by heart!

I hope to see you at the Christmas fair. Have a lovely weekend and stay nice and warm.

Year 4 has completed many topics in learning this week. They completed their story about the varmints, learnt all about Area (in Maths) and have continued learning about Sound in Science amongst other learning. They looked fantastic in their spots and have made some amazing-looking cakes.

Mr Hayes has released powerpoints for the Christmas songs for the KS2 play. The link is below. Please spend some time at home learning the words so the songs sound amazing at the performance. Have a great weekend and look forward to seeing you all next week. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nDi_UuwLfmAC_ZB_-fWD8Y1uEfJjgcXx

Year 4 sat respectfully during today’s Remembrance Service and sang very well. Thank you to the children who created beautiful “stained glass windows” for this year.

The children always enjoy the library trip and yuekeles on Friday.

They have finished learning about addition and subtraction and will start Area next week. Their versions of “The Varmints” are progressing very well and they are including lots of expanded noun phrases which we have practised lots.

Next Friday there will be a bake-off competition for CHildren in Need, so year 4 will have their cake sale on Friday 24th.

Have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing everyone next week.

Year 4 was a credit to the school and their families at St Bart’s on Wednesday. They are also representing the school very well on the weekly swimming trips, when they are making very good progress with their skills.

We have moved onto Addition and Subtraction with 4-digit numbers in Maths and are writing our first story, with the children creating interesting sentences using expanded noun phrases, prepositions for detail and personification. The inspiration is a book called “Varmints”, which the children have really enjoyed exploring.

They are also enjoying the ukelele lessons and the strumming sounds very tuneful!

Luckily, the rain has not been falling at breaktimes so the children can still get outside at play. Long may this continue!

Monday is photograph day , so the children should come to school super-smart like they usually do.

Apologies for the lack of photos this week. I will endeavour to post some next week.

Wishing you all a relaxing weekend.

It was wonderful to see many adults at Harvest Festival and we hope you enjoyed the year 4 enthusiastic song about healthy eating.

We started our new book “Varmints” this week and the children have done some very thoughtful writing using adverbial phrases of place, personification and expanded noun phrases. Ater half-term they will write an alternative version of the story.

In our Reading sessions, we are reading an amazing book together, called “The Wild Robot” which covers themes such as being an outsider and what it means to be human. The children love choosing books in the beautiful library and relaxing when we go there on Fridays.

The children all love their trips to the library, both getting new books and enjoying the books and library with their friends. We have very efficient librarians who carry out their duties very well.

The children continued to learn about electricity by investigating which materials are conductors and which are insulators.

I hope you all have a very enjoyable week during the half-term break and look forward to seeing you the week after.

Today year 4 used the ukeleles for the first time. I’m looking forward to finding out how they enjoyed it on Monday. The class has a wonderfully sunny upbeat song to share with you next Friday and we’re looking forward to seeing lots of you at Harvest Festival. Thank you for all the Harvest contributions and please keep bringing them.

It was great to share how well the children are doing in year 4, at parent consultations; and I hope you all enjoyed looking at the books.

The children are making good progress with programming – currently using word algorithms to write letters, using different ways if possible – and work collaboratively very well, which is the best way to work with programming.

Those children who have been writing “500 words” stories are able to access it via the Google Suite and can work on them over the weekend, if they would like to.

I hope that you’re all enjoying the new way of doing Maths home learning. These activities match the learning at school exactly, so should really help embed understanding. Nearly everyone in the class was fascinated with Roman numerals and really enjoyed the Maths relating to this this week! There are some of these included in the home learning. I will also allocate some My Maths activities some weeks, to allow for variety.

I hope you all have a lovely relaxing weekend and look forward to seeing everyone on Monday, which will start the last week before half-term holiday.

The children have practising the skills needed to write a report, or chronological recount; and writing plans for their report on last Friday’s trip. We’ve talked about including lots of detail, using technical language, a variety of time adverbials and including their feelings and next questions about what they saw and learnt. We also revised the rules on spelling past tense verbs. Next week we’ll start writing the full report.

Today the children used acrylic paints for figures in the style of Julian Opie; and the result is some very colourful and striking pictures of people.

The class is enjoying using the library with the librarians carrying out their duties very well.

We’ve continued learning about electrical circuits, with the children building both complete and incomplete ones. In Maths, we’re coming to the end of our first unit about place value and will move onto addition and subtraction soon. In computing, the children are writing programs with increasing complexity to write capital letters.

I look forward to seeing you all at some point next week to talk about your child’s progress. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the sun this weekend.

Year 4 had a great day of looking, listening and learning in Cambridge today. The museum teacher was so impressed by the class’s behaviour and reflective comments, that she stayed with us past her allotted hour and took us to the magnificent gallery in the lobby. The Fitzwilliam is one of those places where the building is as stunning as the contents.She even let us walk out through the turnstile door, which is usually not permitted for large school groups. Like the other amazing university-owned buildings in Cambridge, it is free and not as large or as busy as the London museums so well worth a visit. There are lots of – reasonably-priced – places to eat and other things to see and your children could start thinking about whether they would like to study there when they are older.

In the afternoon, the children made Greek-influenced pinch pots and again the staff were very impressed with the children’s confidence and proficiency. The children were building on their skills from last year which is excellent progress. Here are some of the moments from the day.

Unfortunately, we were late returning. We’d factored in extra journey time for getting back, but it wasn’t enough for today’s Friday traffic so I hope that didn’t spoil any after-school plans. Your children may like to tell you more about the day using the images on the museum’s website. A massive thank you for the fantastic parent helpers who worked very hard today and helped make the trip possible. I hope you all have a lovely weekend.