Year 4 finished learning about “The Lion and The Unicorn” by writing their own versions of the story and used creative noun phrases to describe the scary night scene when their main character tried to run away. “Jack felt crushed, he made a decision. Stealthily, he packed his bags and snuck out the back door. Through the garden he weaved through the branches from the dead tree. After that, he scampered through the arch …”
Understanding about fractions is going well and the children are using complex terminology such as “improper fraction”.
The children supported Mrs Porter in her sponsored walk, not letting a bit of rain put them off.
There was a wide range of characters in year 4 today – and they were all very keen to take a journey to the centre of the earth and write all about it in books they made themselves. The books are a work in progress as everyone put lots of time and care into their writing and illustrating a cross-section of the earth. As is always the case with geographical and scientific learning, the children are super-keen to acquire knowledge and use word like “magma”, “core” and think about what it must be like at the centre of the earth, where it is as hot as the sun. We were linking knowledge from previous years – basalt, granite, for instance – to understand this year’s learning better.
The children are concluding learning about states of matter and had good ideas as to why the ice with the salt on it melted faster than without salt.
With Mrs Gallaher, the children composed music for the “flying car” scene in “Harry Potter”.
The children thought carefully about what they could do in Lent to be closer to God , whether their promise was to do with giving, praying or giving something up. Their behaviour in the Ash Wednesday service was impeccable and they enjoyed learning about the symbolism involved. We are doing activities from The Mission Together Lenten Calendar – https://missiontogether.org.uk/calendar/lent/ which has some lovely things to do. I sent one home earlier this week. It wasn’t compulsory home learning – I just thought it was a really nice, engaging activity you might enjoy. We’ve reflected on the significance of 40 during Lent and why Jesus went into the desert.
The children are really enjoying our new book – “The Lion and The Unicorn”, which is providing inspiration for writing. In Reading sessions we are reading “The Firework-Maker’s Daughter”, which I’m mentioning at consultations. These books are online in various ways. It’s always useful to read the books at home to share what your children are learning, discuss vocabulary and themes in the book. Like the other books we read, they are beautiful and full of lovely language and ideas. They could give you an idea of what to wear for World Book Day next Friday!
It’s been lovely to speak to all the parents about your wonderful children, their achievements and progress.
Year 4 are delighted with the books and wet play activities the cake sale money has bought. They now have their own chess set, card game and play doh for when the weather isn’t good enough to go outside. Reading sessions are much better with brand-new copies of “The Firework Maker’s Daughter” to share, too. We’ve been looking at the similarities between this book and the one we are using for writing inspiration – “Cinnamon”.
We’ve been having a great time thinking about mental health, including safer internet use. The themes of these are “let’s connect” and Want to talk about it?”, so we’ve all been thinking about the benefits of communication in all its forms.
We stretched and breathed like superheroes during a “yoga bugs” session, which is an online site you might want to use yourself as a calming down activity during half-term holiday!
We made paper hats together and then made tweaked them to make them our own.
This week we eventually found out that gas does have a mass. It took a long time for the carbon dioxide to seep out of the bottle of Coke and it was with much excitement that we found that the bottle with carbon dioxide weighed 521g and the one without (identical all other measurements) weighed 514g, so the carbon dioxide weighed 7g.
We often do an “imoves” routine in-between learning, to stay lively. Here is the class doing one of this week’s routines.
We celebrated the NSPCC “Number Day” today with some active Maths activities, mainly based around times-tables. Outside the children: practised reciting multiples of given times tables to skipping or passing the football; created 4-digit numbers in hoops with beanbags for a partner to correctly identify; see who was quickest at answering the “line of equations”; and wrote missing number calculations using things from nature. So if the calculation was a pine-cone x 5 = 60, what would the pine-cone be? Indoors, we played times-table Bingo and the Multiples and Factors game which is also for home learning.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend and l look forward to seeing you for Wellbeing Week before the half-term holiday.
After the excitement of Monday, normal service resumed for the rest of the week. The children have completed their stories entitled “Spring’s Daughter”, a sequel to the beautiful book “Winter’s Child” on which they worked very hard and had wonderful ideas, inspired by the clear prose and imagery of the picture book.
The cake sale raised a fantastic £182! Thank you so much for your hard work and generosity in supporting this. We have fifteen brand-new copies of “The Firework Maker’s Daughter”, ready for use. The children have lots of ideas for wet play games which we’ll vote on. And then there will be the opportunity to buy some more books for reading sessions. These represent a brilliant improvement in classroom resources to make the learning more engaging and the time at school more fun. Well done, everyone.
Neve and Livia led a lovely child-led class worship today, reflecting on the fruits of the spirit.
I hope you all have a lovely three days together with your families.
Year 4 showed their passion and understanding of what makes a good community today in their class assembly. It was a reflection on what we have been learning the past weeks, including our trips to Young Voices and the cathedral. The children took on board all the advice and encouragement from our practises – to say what they needed to say with meaning, with the precise choice of words down to them. I was particularly proud of the confidence they showed, owning the floor and looking out for each other with the “props” and microphone. It was a fantastic start to the week and created a warm glow of pride in year 4 to counterbalance the below freezing temperatures in the morning.
We also enjoyed marking the Lunar New Year, with children sharing their excitement at receiving their red envelopes and explaining traditions to us
Year 4 showed their passion and understanding of what makes a good community today in their class assembly. It was a reflection on what we have been learning the past weeks, including our trips to Young Voices and the cathedral. The children took on board all the advice and encouragement from our practises – to say what they needed to say with meaning, with the precise choice of words down to them. I was particularly proud of the confidence they showed, owning the floor and looking out for each other with the “props” and microphone. It was a fantastic start to the week and created a warm glow of pride in year 4 to counterbalance the below freezing temperatures in the morning.
We also enjoyed marking the Lunar New Year, with children sharing their excitement at receiving their red envelopes and explaining traditions to us
Year 4 have had a great day out. As well as the learning, the walks to and from the cathedral were energising and beautiful, in the frost. We were pushed for time on the way home and everyone strode out, making it back to school more quickly than we’ve ever done before. Thanks, as always, to the fantastic parents who came and helped and without whom we couldn’t do these trips. The day included exploring the cathedral; finding out about St Alban, the first British Christian martyr; making and tasting typical Roman food; learning about Roman soldiers and their equipment; and finding out about the sorts of objects which are found in archeological digs. Oh – and a Roman soldier came to see us! He wasn’t very polite about us British, especially girls with long red hair for some reason. He seemed to me missing Rome, with it’s warm weather, elegant buildings and good food… fighting Celts painted blue isn’t as good as being at home, apparently…Here are some images from the day.
.. was postponed by a day this year, but was enjoyed just as much as usual – including the ever-popular Arctic roll. Here are a few “action shots”.
We have been finishing off topics this week and we can all look forward to new topics next half-term. We are loving our reading book – “The Wild Robot”, which has echoes of “Iron Man” . I hope you all have a lovely weekend.
