It was lovely to see so many of you at “meet the teacher” on Thursday. The slides I used on Google Classroom as a material, along with the year 4 parents’ information booket. If you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me, as usual.
This week the children really enjoyed exploring circuits and how to make a working one. Their partner working and sharing of resources were both excellent.
We’ve started reading “The Iron Man” and the children are rightly intrigued by this fantastical character. They all wrote amazing similes and expanded noun phrases to describe The Iron Man. Today Alex was Hogarth and he went down “conscience alley”, when the other children suggested courses of action for the farmers to take against this new intruder. Next week the children will write the options, using modal verbs. Will they recommend blowing the Iron Man up, or shrinking him, or re-educating him, to name just a few examples?
We collaborated to write a prayer of thanks for Queen Elizabeth. The children, as a body, chose to say what an excellent role-model she was for King Charles; and how they will remember her for her kindness to everyone. The class also considered what it means to be a Mercy school and were creative and careful in their artistic expressions of Truth, Mercy or Justice or a quote by Catherine Mc Cauley. Neve and Gabriel read the prayer beautifully in front of the whole school this afternoon.
The class library bookshelves are much emptier now as children have borrowed books from there. These books are chosen by the children “for pleasure” . They do not need to be able to read them all themselves – maybe someone could read it with them, or to them. Please keep reading the school “scheme” books as these will ensure your child encounters vocabulary needed for his/her age range and to ensure that he/she makes progress.
Learning about Maths is much more interesting when it’s done with a partner, or as a “game” and can be when using equipment. Learning about place value, this week we used place value counters, place value cards and – my favourite – using dice to generate 4-digit numbers.
Spelling and Maths home learning tasks are posted, together with the new home learning grid. I’m looking forward to seeing the tasks you submit.
Let’s hope this beautiful autumn weather continues. I hope you have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing everyone next Tuesday.