Year 4 have written poems, using “How to cut a pomegranate” as a model. Using descriptive, figurative and comparative language they have described a passionfruit. To appreciate the poetry, they have tasted both fruits this week. We ate the pomegranates outside!
On Wednesday, National Numeracy Day, year 4 played games to practise their multiplication and addition/subtraction skills.
Due to the forecast continued rain on Wednesday, PE was moved indoors. The children showed good control in making shapes such as pike, straddle and arch and there was much improvement in the control and precision involved in making them.
On Thursday, there was an excellent assembly and workshop exploring different aspects of the Jewish faith, with lots of opportunities for “hands on” learning and experiencing Jewish artefacts.
The children have all worked very hard, writing their versions of “Weslandia”. They had great ideas and wrote some fantastic sentences to express these.
We have come to the end of learning about decimals for year. 4. The next topic is money, which can be very tricky as not many people use cash very often any more! Any learning you can do at home – recognising the coins and notes, understand the equivalent amounts and add and subtract amounts of pounds and pennies – in advance would help.
On the Tuesday after half-term – the 3rd of June – we will all go to Kew Gardens for the day. The journey is long but well worth it, to see the world-famous World Heritage site. Hopefully the weather will be a bit warmer than the last few days. Thank you for offers of help: the coach is now full!
It has been a very short half-term. I hope you all have a lovely week off with your families, whatever you do. I look forward to seeing you all for the last, long half-term of year 4.
We started reading “The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe” today and the children were very excited to be able to say exactly what “…they were sent away from London during the war…” meant, and when. They looked very colourful in their red, white and blue; and enjoyed the celebration in the morning.
We are starting to plan our version of “Weslandia”, a book full of creativity which the children have really got immersed in. They are also continuing to enjoy “The Firework Maker’s Daughter” which is great for vocabulary development and is a great adventure to follow. “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” is our new class reader. We have a set of 15 books so the children can follow my reading out loud. If your child would like to bring a copy of their own, too , so more children have an individual copy to follow along with, then that would be fine. This is just an option, if your child would like to.
Mrs Newman is teaching the children some lovely cheerful summer songs on the ukelele; and this morning they were “shaking it off” in Taylor Swift style. The children have also been told to look out for the Electric Umbrella choir on “Britain’s Got Talent”. In June we will be joining Electric Umbrella at St Albans Cathedral for a special school concert (during the school day) and we have got lots of words to learn, which I will soon send home.
I hope you all have a relaxing weekend and that there is more sun than recently!
Year 4 has done this beautifully this week, with a wonderful, calm and instructive mass led by Fr Michael on Wednesday. Fr Michael was impressed by the children’s respectful behaviour and well they led the service. He took opportunities to help the children understand aspects of the service and the importance of Mary in her role as an intercessory, explaining why we crown her with flowers.
The children’s illustrations for “Mary ascended into heaven” were beautiful and were well-presented at today’s moving “Crowning of Mary” assembly.
We have been reading scripture from John and learning about the time after Jesus’s resurrection. We were very lucky today, that Saint Peter came to visit us and agreed to be “hot seated” to share his feelings about the events by the lake, when Jesus appeared to the disciples. The children immersed themselves in the topic very well and showed empathy in considering Peter’s feelings at the time. Yesterday, they acted out the scene when Peter discovered that the tomb was empty.
The children built shelters to explore ideas of what would make a good shelter, which formed the basis for their initial sentences based our new book “Weslandia”. A few of them are below. The children are also enjoying our class reader called “The Pebble in My Pocket”. The pebbles you see daily could be 450 million years old! They are also enjoying our guided reading text “The Firework Maker’s Daughter”.
The “lost hour” hasn’t held year 4 back this week at all and they have participated well in the end-of-term events. They showed respect during the Stations of the Cross assembly and have done the same, as well as reflecting well, during the class Lenten daily prayer accompanying each Station of the Cross. They sang beautifully at the assemblies this week and have enjoyed the sun at breaktimes, as we all have.
Many thanks for everyone’s support in helping your children create their own prayers in the class prayer book. I have been moved by the ideas and beliefs expressed in these original, heartfelt prayers which have been carefully written out and beautifully presented. The prayer book will continue to be passed down the register. There will be a new one in year 5.
We completed writing from “The Matchbox Diary” with the children making excellent progress in writing clear, meaningful and well-spelt sentences with a good range of vocabulary. I think there definitely several Geography graduates in the cohort, judging from their interest in the physical features of the earth – especially volcanoes! We will come back to finish some learning on Decimals after the holiday.
We finished the term with creating “stained glass” Easter cards which I hope you all like.
The purses/wallets the children sewed will be on display at “open evening” and will go home at the end of the year. All the children worked very hard on their sewing, whether they are used to sewing or it was their first time. They all showed resilience and good humour in enjoying the pleasures and tackling the challenges of sewing! The class was lovely and calm and there was lots of co-operation throughout the sessions.
Although we all enjoyed the sun this week and are looking forward to our Easter break, there was also some sadness today as we had to say good-bye to someone most of the children have known for a huge part of their lives. We are all extremely sad to lose Bella from our class community. However, just as importantly, we send her off on her adventure with love and best wishes for an exciting new chapter in her life!
For those of us staying closer to home, I wish you all a relaxing, happy two week holiday, hopefully with some sun and fresh air.
We hope you enjoyed our song at the Mother’s Day assembly. Everyone worked very hard, as an orchestral team, to sing and play together – no mean achievement! A huge thank you is owed to Mrs Newman, who came into school on Thursday afternoon, as an extra visit to help the class know the song better.
We are completing end-of-term checks such as spelling and completing units of learning like fractions. There is further progress being made in times tables recall please keep that practice going.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend and Mother’s Day, in spite of the “lost hour”.
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!
