Category: Year 4 – St Alban

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.

This week we saw the amazing talents of our budding pop stars, with the fantastic “Rock Steady” concert on Monday.

We have been very busy practising words for the parts and songs in the carol concert. Well done to everyone who is making a huge effort to deliver their lines slowly, clearly and loudly and to those children who suddenly became understudies, due to the original actors being stricken by one of the nasty bugs going around just now.

Thank you for the RE home learning. The children have thought carefully about the qualities needed to be a prophet today – people who follow God’s path and emulate Jesus, such as Marcus Rashford, David Attenborough or parents.

I hope you all have a bug-free, relaxing and healthy weekend!

This week, the children worked hard at making their torches, using their understanding of circuits from their science learning. Some of the work was fiddly and tricky and there was lots of excellent and co-operation and perseverance.

This week the children learnt about the 9, 11 and 12 times tables and different ways of working out the products to equations. The children are improving at representing the calculations in different ways.

At assembly today, the children shared what they had learnt about The Qu’ran with the rest of the school. They have also completed writing fantastic explanation texts about the lifecycle of a flowering plant. This used their knowledge about pollination, fertilization and the growth of plants from year 3 to write detailed explanation texts with features like causal conjunctions, subheadings and lots of correctly-spelt technical language.

Everyone is making good progress in swimming. It was decidedly nippy when we set off this morning! As the weather gets colder, you might want to send your child with a woolly hat for when we leave Westminster Lodge.

Well done to the children who remembered their library books today. We will go to the library every Thursday.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend!