One of the ways the children in year 4 are becoming closer to God through praying is by leading a short reflection and prayer on each station of the cross every day. For example, today we reflected on Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carrying the cross and this led to the reflection that there are things in life we don’t always choose or want to do. However, it’s important to accept that they need doing and remember that we can always turn to God for help in completing them.
The children have also explored stations number 10, 11 and 12 by sharing the relevant scripture, painting a watercolour illustrating one of them and them writing a description/explanation of it. The children put a lot of planning and effort into creating some beautiful paintings. They then wrote, at length, about their emotional responses to the scenes. The more we considered the story, the more the children made links and brought in other pieces of scripture which meant something to them, such as the centurion who said, “Surely this man was the son of God”. I am very proud of their creativity and thoughtfulness.
Year 4 has thought carefully about which communities they belong to and how they can improve their talents to make these communities even better. Their ideas are now on display.
The children have made a great start with writing their biographies of the character from “The Matchbox Diary” who they have decided is called Leo Francis.
In both “Odd and The Frost Giants” and the Science learning the children have learnt about water existing in different states. Can they find it in the various different states at home this weekend?
Year 4 looked wonderful in their costumes on Thursday as many different characters from different stories visited the school. I’m sorry that Mrs Finnie isn’t in the photo. You can see her as a fantastic “Cat in the Hat” in the bulletin photo.
Thank you for supporting your children in sending in the objects and pictures in their matchboxes. There were many beautiful and precious items and it was wonderful to hear their stories. The children really enjoyed using them in their writing and it is these sort of stimuli which bring out their creativity and desire to use writing to communicate ideas and feelings. Here they are talking about their objects with each other. They wrote about two objects. We analysed the first piece of writing for successful parts and to identify what could be changed and the second pieces of writing were all improved on the first ones. If anyone would has a use for the matches from 100 matchboxes, please let me know!
I hope you’re all enjoying the wonderful sunshine!
Thank you for returning the matchboxes containing objects for memories. Please could you return the rest on Monday, when we will use them for writing. The children’s imagination has really been sparked by “The Matchbox Diary” and they have completed some thoughtful writing inspired by it.
It is was great to discuss your children’s successes and achievements with you on Thursday and I look forward to doing the same with the rest of you on Tuesday.
We’ve come to the end of learning about perimeter and area and the children enjoyed working with shapes. Next week we’ll move onto Fractions. Please complete the MyMaths home learning for this as this will help get everyone off to a good start. Thank you.
Loving to read, reading for pleasure, choosing reading as an occupation, etc is important and a great habit to get into. I’ve discussed this with a number of parents during these consultations and there is evidence that, worryingly, this love of reading for pleasure is fading in children. As one of our guided reading carousel sessions, children read one of the books from the class library, for pleasure. (By contract, choice from the school library is completely free, so a child may choose a picture book, or a fact book in small print, or anything else, as they choose.) Hopefully these sessions will help to encourage this and also introduce the children to authors they will want to read more of. Here is the whole class enjoying reading today.
I hope that you all have a relaxing weekend in sunshine!
The children have concluded this half-term with some fantastic writing, particularly their diary entries based on “Cinnamon”. This book really sparked their imaginations and the children still managed to find new things in the book which I hadn’t noticed. ~They have all really enjoyed the netball sessions with some fantastic, fast passing. The Roman topic has been great fun I’ve reminded the children there is still more Roman learning to do in St Albans – for example, visiting the theatre, which I just found out today is the only one now in Britain!
Below are the children with the learning resources we have bought with the very generous cake sale money. Fortunately, the children have positioned all the components of the digestive system correctly! It’s very good to revisit learning from previous topics, to check that the knowledge and understanding have been embedded.
The children also have this model of the ear to help with their understanding of hearing.
The child-friendly map of the Roman Empire has helped the children understand its size and the countries it ruled over.
I have also ordered some more Thesauruses so there is one between two for whenever the children choose to refer to them.
Altogether, these selection of learning resources will help the children learn independently and are things they enjoy using.
There were some quiet sessions in year 4 this week, with the choir members at Young Voices. We had lots of fun outside on a bright Wednesday afternoon, with just about half the class playing netball. The passing was fast and accurate!
The children played a dice game to practise their times tables, as the choir children arrived on Thursday morning.
children are really enjoying our current book “Cinnamon”. During the hot-seating on Thursday, they thought of excellent questions such as “How did you feel when the tiger ate your aunty?” and “Before you felt the emotions with the tiger, had you experienced them before?” and “Why did you go into the jungle?”. The question “Why didn’t you talk?” was answered with, “Because I didn’t have anything to talk about”, which was a thoughtful answer considering the context of the book.
As part of understanding the Eucharist, the children “interviewed” Mrs Gallaher about how going to mass helps her. The children were keen to understand what part of mass she enjoyed most and Mrs Gallaher talked about how she liked to try and apply something from the homily into her daily routine the next week.
The children are enjoying the trim trail. They had their trial on Monday but I’m sorry that no photos were taken.
We have come to the end of “Escape from Pompeii” and I have really enjoyed reading the children’s writing. They are using adventurous and appropriate adjectives and verbs to make their writing detailed and interesting. Keep it up, year 4!
We already have some fantastic entries to the “animal drawing” competition, with the deadline on Wednesday.
In RHE, the children have been learning that we are all different and unique, made that that way by God. One bright, breezy day – without the help of Storm Eowyn – we used the space outside to play a variation of “fruit salad” where we celebrated our similarities and differences – no two children are the same and each is unique, and loved by God.
The RHE learning involves role-play and the children enjoy playing the parts of Sophie and Aidan as we unpick the religious, health and social learning in the topics.
The children love technology and here they are using “data loggers”. In these photos they are recording different levels of sound around the school, as part of the Science topic Sound.
Like the Romans, year 4 went on a good march on Wednesday – to Verulamium Museum and back, via the hypocaust. Every child was a credit to their parents and St Adrian’s. I felt blessed to have a day out with such enthusiastic learners, who showed the best respect for the artefacts and the people in the museum and on the way there and back. We saw nearly as many dogs as people! Luckily, on the way back the playpark was completely empty so year 4 made the most of the opportunity to play there.
A massive thank you to Ms Carey and Mrs Donnellan, who came as parent helpers. These trips aren’t possible without voluntary help and it’s very much appreciated. Also thank you to Mrs Finnie and Miss Jilly, from school who came along too. Miss Jilly still found time to order some learning resources bought with cake sale money of which I will post photos when they are unwrapped and used.
Other learning has also gone on this week but I’ll post that later. I hope you all have a relaxing weekend and look forward to seeing everyone next week.
(The slideshow of Wednesday is in chronological order if you “swipe” to the left first.)
Happy New Year! It was great to see everyone back in school, raring to go. We’ve dived straight into the next Maths unit, continuing with multiplication and division. There is still a big emphasis on learning ALL times-tables facts instantly. There will be a statutory, straightforward online times tables assessment in May, call the Multiplication Tables Check (MTC). I will send home the government’s information about it. By using TTRS, the children will be well prepared for it and when they do it, it will hold no surprises in terms of content or format. Over the next week or so we will do a practice MTC on TTRS and I will let you know how the children get on.
In Maths the children are learning how to manipulate times-tables facts. The calculations don’t involve large numbers, but the children need to apply number sense and fluency in knowing TT facts to understand it properly. Here they are using counters to prove how to use factor pairs in two-digit numbers.
We have kicked off several new topics. Here are the children enjoying getting to grips with data-loggers.
We started our new book in English – “Escape From Pompeii” -which links with our History topic of the Romans perfectly. The children role-played and then “freeze-framed” the initial scene in the book to understand daily live in Pompeii.
The children were excellent Archaeologists when they were given (clean, modern replicas!) of Roman artefacts and made very sensible suggestions about what they were. “I saw there are Roman numerals so I think this is from the Roman times.” was one comment. Someone else recognised the clay lamp being similar to the artefacts we saw in the Fitzwilliam Musuem so concluded these were also Greek. Other children saw the word “Caesar” on an item so decided it was Roman. Another idea was the jewellery, some of which looked like a torque and others were decorated with snakes, were Celtic.
Spelling of the year 3/4 statutory spellings is improving. I have sent home copies of the check of all of them which we did just before the holidays. The number of correct words has increased, as has the presentation of the words which is also very good to see.
We’re all looking forward to the trip to Verulamium Museum next Wednesday, where we will see real Roman artefacts. Unfortunately, the weather forecast just now is not great, but as long as everyone wears warm, waterproof coats and clothes (tights, trousers, etc) and sensible shoes we should be fine. Nearer the time, if it looks like it will be very wet then the office will send a message asking for children to wear wellies and bring their shoes to get changed into.
I hope you all have a lovely first weekend back. It’s always tiring coming back after Christmas but the good news is that it will start getting lighter, bit by bit, in the mornings and evenings which makes things a bit cheeries.
