Category: Year 4 – St Alban

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.

This week the children have written their own “Guide To Living on Earth”, including draw a front cover; and these will be displayed in the classroom. They used expanded noun phrases with abstract nouns to describe what it’s like living here and we’ve focused on using the apostrophe for contraction correctly, as practised in last week’s spellings.

The children are loving the practical aspect of learning about electricity and built circuits with very little instruction, but by using their initiative and being safe with their partner.

The children were put into groups for swimming today. They are so fast and efficient at getting changed that we’re going to leave school later!

Thank you for sending in painting shirts which will be put to very good use.

Have a lovely weekend.

This has gone very well, with the children following routines better all the time. They are really enjoying finding about the background and people featuring in “The Undefeated” and have thought of some creative language when writing their own “guide to living on planet earth”, in the style of Oliver Jeffers in “Here We Are”.

Miss Taylor, the ukelele teacher, came to class today to talk about what instrumental experience they have. She was impressed with the wide range of favourite songs they have!

It was lovely to see so many of you at meet the teacher on Thursday If you have any queries about the curriculum or school day, please do get in touch.

I hope to see some of you at the school fair. Have a lovely weekend.

Katharine Gibbons

To say it was “a hot one” this week in year 4 would be the understatement of the year. But we took it easy and completed lots of essential settling-in and assessment tasks. Thank you for sending in favourite books on Tuesday. The children have made the classroom much more “their own”, as you’ll see on Thursday, at “meet the teacher”. They are rising to the year 4 expectations very well, moving round the school responsibly and engaging in conversations about figurative language, for example, with interest.

Hopefully, Westminster Lodge will have sorted out the floor problem next week and swimming will resume on Thursday.

We are reading a powerful book, which is in the form of a poem, called “the Undefeated”. The children worked in groups to present the poem to the class, choosing their own techniques. Some photos of them should be below.

This week’s home learning has been posted. It focuses on key skills and providing opportunities for your child to get into good routines to master these.

Year 4 had glorious weather for their trip to Kew. The question was, on a day like Thursday, was the weather more tropical in Kew or the rainforest habitat in The Palm House? I was pleased to see the children remembered the geographical knowledge from the last two years, telling Katie – the Kew education leader – about the equator, why countries there were hotter, naming the Amazon Forest and the countries it covers. The children used specialist equipment to measure humidity, soil temperature, soil moisture and air temperature. We then explored The Palm House to find out how animals and plants co-exist in rainforest eco-systems. Can your child tell you some of the examples? The children also enjoyed sketching in the Temperate House – which was cooler than it was outside – and had lovely picnics sitting in the shade on the botannical garden’s beautiful lawns.

The lily pond house was stunning and the children enjoyed seeing, and some sketched, the enormous lilies. Wel also visited the hive which is an amazing structure – a type of pavilion – which “hums” the hotter it is.

A huge thank you to the very kind parents who gave up a day to help out on the trip. These events would not go nearly as well without your support. And apologies for the mix-up about collecting at the end of the day. I didn’t realise adults would wait at the front of the school and then thought we could dismiss children from the car park, but the children went through to the classroom first. Thank you for coming round to the playground where we could see everyone safely to their adults.

After the father’s day assembly, the children will be painting based on what they saw and experienced on Thursday.

We finished the very interesting book “Letters from the Lighthouse” this week and several mysteries were cleared up. Next week will we start reading “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”.
It was very exciting to see the works of art on display in the hall. If you purchased one, I’m sure it has pride of place in your home.
The season for athletics has arrived and the children had a great time running holding their arms in different positions – by their sides, for example – to understand the benefit of the pumping arm action when trying to run as fast as you can.
We are nearly at the end of our learning about the Anglo-Saxons and we are evaluating what remains of Anglo-Saxon culture and society today.
Our Maths topic is now money, which has become nearly redundant for lots of people! So any opportunity to use and count would really help your child’s Maths development.
I’m attaching the photos which I didn’t do before the half-term holiday.
I hope you have an enjoyable – and sunny! – weekend.
With best wishes
Katharine Gibbons