In honour of Times Tables Day, year 4 decided what their favourite times table facts were, said why and represented it in as many different ways as they could. This representation of the same fact – as an array, as a picture, or a Maths story, or in a different operation – is an activity we regularly do as part of our daily Maths fluency session. It shows deep understanding of the fact and of “number sense”, as opposed to rote learning of facts which is useful but doesn’t help with the reasoning and problem-solving aspects of Maths, which are just as essential as straightforward computation.
Reasons for choosing TT facts included products which were footballers’ numbers ( 10 x 2 = 20), or containing birthday details, or having numbers in cool patterns (11 x 12 = 132). Maybe you know the rhyme for 8 x 8 = 64………. which one class member chose? 12 x 12 = 144 is very popular, for different reasons.
The children are finishing the chapter on place value, working with numbers in the thousands. The next topic is adding and subtracting to 10 000. The daily fluency sessions provide opportunities to re-activate Maths learning and also develop the essential skills of sharing understanding, using correct vocabulary, with learning partners.
The home learning about Joseph looks fantastic. As part of understanding Jesus’ ancestry, we have been learning about Ruth and her qualities of loyalty and love, as well as Isaac and his sons Jacob and Esau. Here are the children role-playing these characters. This also gave us an opportunity to join in with some of the “Joseph” musical.
In Art, we have been exploring the stylised work of Julian Opie and used acrylic paints to create people in the style of his work.
]The children are reading more complex books in guided reading and are rising to the challenge of reading books where not everything is explained from the outset and inference and deduction are essential to understand how the plot and characters are unfolding. More and more children are recording their own reading in their reading records and it’s fantastic to see this increased independence and responsibility.
We have practised the songs and hymns for next week’s Mercy mass and hope to see lots of you there on Wednesday the fifth. In the meantime, white rabbits for tomorrow and have a wonderful weekend.
Year 4 is enjoying this half-term’s Music topic “Mamma Mia”. They also love the opportunities for moving and dancing with “imoves”, a popular track being “Eye of the Tiger”. All tracks that the older generations in their families may recognise! Other singing this week includes the songs for the “Mercy mass” on 15th October, with the class improving the words and tune to “Circle of Mercy” very well.
Older generations – including the terms descendants and ancestors – also feature in the current RE topic “Where do I belong?” and the first two pieces of home learning relating to this have a lot of thought put into them.
Place value learning in Maths proved another opportunity to discuss the meanings of similar words meaning going up and down – ascending and descending. The children have become much more accurate and confident in identifying values in 4-digit numbers and using the terminology correctly.
The children seem to be enjoying the books in the year 4 class library. Over the weekend, please think about one of the books you have read recently. As a class, we’re going to create a display with the children’s versions of book covers and reasons why they have enjoyed the books. Please think about what is unique about the book, what you have learnt from it and what the most important part is because this will be what you show on the front cover. We will do the work in class but some prior thinking would be really useful.
It was lovely to see so many of you at “meet the teacher” on Thursday. The slides I used on Google Classroom as a material, along with the year 4 parents’ information booket. If you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me, as usual.
This week the children really enjoyed exploring circuits and how to make a working one. Their partner working and sharing of resources were both excellent.
We’ve started reading “The Iron Man” and the children are rightly intrigued by this fantastical character. They all wrote amazing similes and expanded noun phrases to describe The Iron Man. Today Alex was Hogarth and he went down “conscience alley”, when the other children suggested courses of action for the farmers to take against this new intruder. Next week the children will write the options, using modal verbs. Will they recommend blowing the Iron Man up, or shrinking him, or re-educating him, to name just a few examples?
We collaborated to write a prayer of thanks for Queen Elizabeth. The children, as a body, chose to say what an excellent role-model she was for King Charles; and how they will remember her for her kindness to everyone. The class also considered what it means to be a Mercy school and were creative and careful in their artistic expressions of Truth, Mercy or Justice or a quote by Catherine Mc Cauley. Neve and Gabriel read the prayer beautifully in front of the whole school this afternoon.
The class library bookshelves are much emptier now as children have borrowed books from there. These books are chosen by the children “for pleasure” . They do not need to be able to read them all themselves – maybe someone could read it with them, or to them. Please keep reading the school “scheme” books as these will ensure your child encounters vocabulary needed for his/her age range and to ensure that he/she makes progress.
Learning about Maths is much more interesting when it’s done with a partner, or as a “game” and can be when using equipment. Learning about place value, this week we used place value counters, place value cards and – my favourite – using dice to generate 4-digit numbers.
Spelling and Maths home learning tasks are posted, together with the new home learning grid. I’m looking forward to seeing the tasks you submit.
Let’s hope this beautiful autumn weather continues. I hope you have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing everyone next Tuesday.
Everyone made a great start to the new school year. It was fantastic to see everyone, eager and lined-up on time. Everyone seems to have had a good break and rest over the summer holidays and are raring to go again.
During the first week learning got off to a good start. The children have used place-value counters to explore numbers in the thousands, recap times-tables already learnt, use modal verbs in questions, used the bounce pass in basketball and learn why Ancient Greece had a “golden age”, amongst other learning. There are some fantastic books in the year 4 reading corner and we’re all enjoying our new class reader “Odd and The Frost Giants” by Neil Gaiman. “The 39-Storey Treehouse” is in the CD-player and it’s lovely to see the children enjoying listening to it so much. Swimming got underway again. It was just a check to see which groups the children should be in this week and next week the lessons will start in earnest. Well done everyone for coming to school with the right kit on the right days!
It’s really great to see the children again and hear their news. Their independence and self-help skills have improved and we’re looking for children to become more proactive round the classroom.
We’re looking forward to see you all at “Meet the teacher” on Wednesday 14th, just after 9.
The children have settled beautifully into their new class and have shown themselves to be very caring towards one another and also keen to learn.
It was lovely to meet with the Year 2 parents and carers this week. Thank you very much for attending.
Please note that the presentation from the meeting can be found on the Google Classroom.
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Thank you so much for the very thoughtful and generous gifts that I have been given to end the year. It has been a great privilege to teach all of your wonderful Year 2 children. They have shown themselves to be very hardworking and they are kind and caring friends to one another. The children are really ready for Year 3 and they will have a smashing time with Miss Osman. I wish you all a fun filled summer in which you will all be able to spend precious time together with family and friends.
Well, as you know, every week in Year 5 is a busy one but this week has been an activity fest.
In English, we have started a new book – Origami Yoda – and have been practising giving instructions .
Treasure Hunt – Orienteering- This time we had to solve fiendishly cryptic clues to find out which flags were genuine and avoid the bogus clues leading to false markers.
Later this week we had our sponsored bounce…
Wednesday evening was an opportunity to share some of the activities we got up to over the year at the Open Evening.
Thursday started with, a cheerleading display
Then we had to help the infants with their sports day
The week started off with much excitement as year 3, with year 2, relived The Great Fire of London. Master Jonathan, from History off the Page, came to school with crates of resources and activities. A well was recreated in the hall! The children were apprentices for the morning, experiencing some of the crafts they may have practised had they been alive on 2nd September 1666. The children had remembered the reasons for the fire and the circumstances well, from their year 2 learning and now – just a bit later than would otherwise have been the case – they got to learn it more deeply that only a well-resourced session, with meaningful activities and an expert like Master Jonathan can bring. The afternoon involved a “mini-dig” excavating finds from a property to establish who had lived there and explaining how the evidence showed this.
We’ve had three lots of visitors, from across the curriculum, the last few days and year 3 showed excellent listening skills and behaviour during all the sessions.
This week the children learnt about “seasonal food” which means different things to different countries. We found out which foods grow in which season in the UK, cooked with some and designed a “fruit plate” with seasonal berries. Thank you to Mrs Solakova for organising the equipment and helping us with the cooking. The children loved preparing the tarts and fruit and tidied and cleaned up well afterwards, too. There is no need to cook an evening meal this weekend – just ask your son or daughter to do it for the family!
The children have been practising races for Wednesday’s sports and look forward to seeing some of you then (weather permitting).
On Wednesday morning we walked to church for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. I hope the children passed on the message from me that they all behaved impeccably and sang beautifully during the service. It was a lovely service and the children were credits to their families.
Our theme in RHE is living with and loving others. Today we talked about being like God which means aspiring to qualities such as wisdom, kindness, mercy, compassion. (The children thought of their own words to describe God.) We thought of examples where we could very practically live these out in our daily life, such as in the dining hall or classroom. Maybe you could ask someone to sit at your table? These are the sort of actions which helps other people else feel good about themselves. We also watched a youtube version of a book called “Have you filled a bucket today” which covers similar themes. It also discusses “filling someone else’s bucket” can make you feel good. The story is available via this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EuemNAo6XE if you’d like to share it with your child.
Next week will be another busy week. At open evening on Wednesday you can come and see what the children have made recently – some things have been sent home already. Thank you for remembering reading books and diaries on Thursdays and also keeping them in book bags on other days. It’s great to see more regular reading of school books happening and – importantly – children taking ownership and recording what they have read themselves.
The children completed sewing their cushions today and they look fantastic! Just as importantly, the children showed amazing perseverance and teamwork in completing them. Today we talked about how well they did when things didn’t go well, when they had had problems and what they did to overcome them. Everyone did this with this sewing projects and the next time the children encounter setbacks or disappointments they should remember the tenacity and determination they used in their sewing and channel that energy into the new problem. The children could all name the skills they have learnt and improved. The cushions will come home after they’ve been displayed in the classroom.
The red, white and blue clothes looked stunning today. Here they all are, in red, white and blue in front of their red, white and blue display. Every child has a painting in the montage.
We’ve still been learning about light and dark in Science and this week explored how fabrics can be transparent, translucent and opaque – it’s only opaque materials which make shadows by blocking the light completely. The children worked out that the properly cut out all light and make good shadows they would need to use two fabrics together – just like lined curtains do. These photos show the children carrying out an investigation to see how light only travels in straight lines. They needed to line up the holes in the card exactly so see the light shining through. If card was in front of the light a shadow was created because the card is opaque.
We’ve continued to learn about North and South America in Geography and debugging in Computing. Next half-term there will be new topics in each subject – a new book in English and a new topic of fractions in Maths. It’s been a busy half-term and the children never cease to impress me with their marvellous co-operation, love of learning and enthusiasm for everything at the school. Wishing you all a safe, happy – and warm! – half-term holiday and I look forward to seeing everyone on ten days – on Tuesday 7th June.
