This Monday, 17th October, St Adrians played their first netball fixture against Killigrew, in the St Albans area league. It was a glorious autumn afternoon and both teams played very well, with good sportsmanship shown by all the players. Killigrew were the winners in this game and St Adrians is looking forward to playing other local teams after half-term.
Thank you to Miss Cartwright for coaching the team and umpiring; and also to the parents for their good-spirited support. If you are in years 5 and 6 and would like to come along to netball training – whether or not you would like to play competitively – please ask your parent to complete the Arbor consent form and come along on Wednesdays after school ( collection at 4.15).
This week in English, we have started our new book The First Drawing by Mordicai Gerstein. This book links to our history unit Prehistoric Britain. The children wrote wonderful diary entries. Today we worked on exclamatory and interrogative questions. Here are some examples of children’s work.
This week, we celebrated World Multiplication Table Day by using the Times table Rockstars chants to practise our tables.
We have had great fun exploring different ways to show the multiplication equations and our wonderful slide presentation shows just how whizzy we are getting at learning our times tables. Sample pages from our presentation can be found below, but the best version is on our Google Classroom, so please go there to see our great maths!
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.
