Year 4

Year 4 Latest News

13.12.24

We are incredibly proud of the children for the hard work and practice they have put into their Christmas assemblies this week. We had a lovely day making cards and putting together a shared guide of our class novel too (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). We also had a great Religious Education Day, learning about Buddhism and the ways in which Buddhists around the world live. The children took part in a challenge, learning how to meditate and clear their minds.

In our other lessons, we have finished writing our newspaper articles and have been working in groups to prepare posters, showing how people can help their local environment. In Maths, we have consolidated our knowledge of multiplication and division by looking at fact families. Finally, we have finished off our Orienteering unit in PE by using the markers installed around the school grounds and focussing on our team working and map reading skills.

 

06.12.24

This week, we have had an in-depth look at the causes of climate change and how we can help look after the environment. In geography, we have made a tectonic plate jigsaw puzzle to help us identify tectonic plates from around the world (and found out that some countries are on more than one). 

The children have been excited to write Newspaper recounts, in which they will be reporting on a portal that a someone has been through. The children have great imaginations! In maths, we are learning at our times tables and would love the support at home with these. There will be a letter home about this on Friday.

Don’t forget, we are learning songs about Christmas traditions around the world to perform to the parents on 12th December. You will have been sent the details for these assemblies so we look forward to seeing you there!

29.11.24

Year 4 have been working hard in Maths, learning to divide by 6, 7, 9, 11 and 12. In writing, we have been working on sentence structure and writing poems to explore a mystery setting in detail (using relative clauses). The children have been creating volcanic effects in Art, exploring oil pastels. In PE, we have been practicing our orienteering skills and in Science, we have been learning about Climate Change (which we discussed in light of the flooding this week). We also had a great workshop with the Mental Health support team this week on problem solving.

22.11.24

Year 4 have worked really hard this week! In our writing lessons, we have focussed on our sentence and paragraph structure. The children have enjoyed exploring Homophones (two words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings). In maths, we have started to divide by sharing objects into groups and in science, we looked at animal adaptations such as camouflage. We started drawing volcanoes in Art by concentrating on pencil techniques to blend colours.

Continuing our Extreme Earth topic, the highlight of the week was watching a live demonstration of an exploding volcano using household items. If you want to recreate this at home, go to the Natural History Museum website: www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-to-make-a-volcano.html

15.11.24

Year 4 have had a very exciting first two weeks of term. Last week, we started our new Geography topic, Extreme Earth, by making a Lego cross-section of the layers that make up the Earth. In Science, we have discussed the positive and negative factors of changing the local environment and will be looking at the impact we have on our Environment.

This week, we marked the school’s 150th birthday by learning about what school life would have been like in 1874, writing letters to children in the future to tell them all about it. We also made board games for wet play and celebrated by singing to our parents.

In writing, we have been acting out our new text, Magical Machine Captures Child and learning how to introduce a newspaper article. In Geography, we have used biscuits and icing to understand plate tectonics (the movement of the Earth’s crust) and look at how volcanoes are formed. In Maths, we have learnt to use arrays (grids) and number lines to support our understanding of the 6, 7 and 9 times tables. In reading, we have been predicting what will happen in our class reading text, The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman.

25.10.24

We have had an action-packed week in Year 4, celebrating Black History Month with a special lesson on Mary Seacole (1805-1881). We learnt about the ingredients used in some of the remedies she used on the battlefield to cure soldiers during the Crimean War. The children were excited to touch, smell and explore the herbal ingredients.

We were very lucky to be visited by the Life Education tent, for a workshop called It’s great to be me.

To finish our Science unit on sound, we made straw pan pipes to explore pitch and summed up everything we have learnt this term about sound waves.

Everyone has written a poem on magical rooms, using imagery, metaphors and personification. There have been some very imaginative ideas.

In Maths, we have been working through two step problems including addition and subtraction. The children have used bar models to support their working out.

Finally, we have had a focus on British Values in Reading, with some good discussions about democracy in a book called ‘The Election’.

When we return to school after half term, we will be learning to:

• Multiply and divide by 6, 7, 9, 11 and 12 in Maths.
• Write newspaper articles using imaginary events in English.
• Understand extreme weather, natural disasters and climate change in Geography, Science, Art and Spanish in our Extreme Earth topic.

We will be reading The Wolves in The Walls by Neil Gaiman and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.

We hope you have a fantastic half term break.

11.10.24

The children have done incredibly well at focusing on their assessments this week! This information will help us to plan the specific learning that the children need to cover for the rest of the year. All of the children have had the opportunity to express themselves in English, either in their writing as they prepare their own ‘warning’ tales or by acting out parts of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’.

We have learnt new ways of using Maths equipment to demonstrate column subtraction. In History, we have learned about Anglo Saxon language and words that still exist today. We have been testing what we know about sound in Science, by experimenting with the distance that sound can travel along a string telephone. We have also learnt a new song to help us remember the months of the year in Spanish.

Highlights of the week have been learning to work as a team when playing seated volleyball indoors for PE as it was raining heavily outside and starting a new music unit on Viking Dragonships!

04.10.24

This week in year four we learned that sound waves can travel through different materials. In English we have written our shared write (image shown), the children came up with some amazing ideas. Within history, we now know what Saxons and Vikings wore. Children cannot wait to build their Viking dragonships. Some amazing homework has come into the classroom this week, which was lovely to see, and the teachers are very impressed! We are now getting into 'How to Train your Dragon' within reading and have looked at the vocabulary that the author has used. Lastly, in maths we have been working really hard this week on addition and have now just started to get to grips with subtraction.

27.09.24

Year 4 have had an exciting week with lots of creative writing exploring setting descriptions and analysing our ‘Warning’ tale. In maths, we have moved on to explore addition and in science, we have built models of the human ear drum to explore what happens when we hear sound. We have also created our own ‘dot’ artwork to add to a whole school art project. We have started our new class novel, How to train your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, and have been analysing some interesting Viking characters. In history, we are continuing our research into Anglo Saxons, finding out how they lived and what they wore. In music, we have finished our work on the famous song Mamma Mia and we are now moving on to explore rainforest sounds. A great week with lots of active learning!

20.09.24

This week in Year 4, we have been working hard on correct use of speech, we even had a special punctuation sandwich to help us. In maths, we are looking at rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000. Within reading, we have looked at both Vicious Vikings and Savage Saxons as a comparison. Within science, we now know that sound travels in waves to our ear drum and can explain how this works. In history, we researched about how the Saxons lived and what it was like at that time. Homework is now up on Seesaw and the teachers cannot wait to see what the children come up with!

13.09.24

Year 4 have had a great start to the year, with some fantastic collaborative team building activities, led by the PE team, to get everyone working together well. We have started our termly topic on Anglo Saxons and Vikings and in History and Reading, we have found out about people who invaded Britain.

In Design Technology, we are exploring how these settlers arrived by designing our own Viking Longships. In English this term, we are learning to write a warning tale and we started this work by making predictions about a group of objects found by the canal. We will be posting our performance of the story shortly on Seesaw! In Maths, we have been exploring 4-digit numbers, including using a giant dice to make, order and compare numbers. Finally in Science, we have been busy observing how different objects make sound, and learning about how a sound wave reaches the ear.

Class Information