We were delighted to welcome everyone back to school after the half term break this week. We hope that you all had a restful break and are feeling excited for the next half term ahead. We are looking forward to another exciting few weeks in Year 4 and have lots of brilliant learning to look forward to.
This week we started our new topic: Around the World in Eighty Days. Over the next few weeks, we will be learning about the geography of the different continents and about some different countries around the world. The children have been very engaged with the learning on the learning street. The learning at each station is based on a different continent. These are the stations that are currently open:
- Europe: a Spanish café where the children have been role playing and practising Spanish phrases.
- Asia: a maths station where they have been learning about different number systems from a range of countries.
- North and South pole: learning about magnetism
- South America: learning about the geography of this continent
There will be more stations opening up throughout the term. Part of our topic work will also be making food from different countries around the world. At the end of this half term, we are looking forward to an international festival where we will be celebrating and sharing our learning. More information about this will follow in the next few weeks.
This term, the classes are doing Art with Mrs Smith. We had our first session this week and the children learnt about cross-hatching. Inspired by David Hockney, they drew a picture of a pot of tulips and used cross-hatching in the background to create impact. In our art sessions, we will be learning about different art and techniques from around the world and at the end of the term each child will make a piece of art to sell at our International Festival.
In PE this term we are doing dance. This is also connected to our Around the World in Eighty Days topic and each class will be creating a dance to perform at the International Festival. This week we have been learning about how we can travel in different ways, using words about water as our inspiration. We have also learnt about high, medium and low travelling and have explored different ways of doing this.
At home, the children can use the RealPE at Home log ins and practise One Leg Balance to support this learning.
In our outdoor PE session, we are doing hockey and learning about the skills we need for this game. We will be practising dribbling with control and using this skill in games.
In English this week, we have been learning and practising a poem to perform. We identified the features of good performances of poems and worked in pairs to improve our own performances, focusing on projection, diction and acting. Each class chose a poem that they wanted to perform and practised it throughout the week. Here are some of the children learning and practising their poem:
On Friday, in a special assembly, each class performed their poem. The performances were fantastic and all the staff were very proud of the children.
In English next week, we will be exploring stories where the character travels through a portal.
We were very fortunate this week to have a virtual visit from the author Mo O’Hara. She ran a workshop with the classes where she talked about her books, the inspiration for them and her writing process. During the session, the children invented an animal hero and a villain for them and began to create a story for their characters.
In Maths, we have been continuing our learning about division with a focus on using known facts to help us solve division problems, including those with remainders. We started the week by using partitioning and our times tables to help us solve division problems. We then learnt about remainders and used the book ‘Remainder of One’ to help us with our understanding of this. We spent some time exploring the facts we knew about different numbers to use to help us identify which division equations would have remainders or not. Next week we will be learning about short division.
We are still working hard to learn and practise our times tables. This half term, we will be focusing on learning and knowing the 7 times tables. Please support your child to practise this (and the other times tables) at home and to use Times Tables Rock Stars to help them.
The maths sheets for this week are here: Maths Spr2 Wk1 sheets
Our new Science topic for the term is Forces. We started this topic with an investigation where we tested the amount of pull needed to move cars on different surfaces. Throughout this Science topic, the children will be learning about magnets and magnetic forces.
Other news:
An important letter went home with your child on Friday about the contact details that we have for you on file. It is essential that we have up to date information for your child ahead of our residential trip in April. Please read this letter carefully, add any changes in as required, sign it and then return it to the office as soon as possible. Many thanks in advance for your help with this.
Next week:
In Guided Reading, we will are still reading A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket. Next week we will be reading Chapter Nine: ASOUE Chapter 9
We will be thinking about and discussing the following questions and focusing on using extracts from the text to justify our answers:
- Why is Sunny described as a stick behind a stubborn mule?
- Why did Violet make the choice to accept Count Olaf’s marriage proposal?
Each class will have two PE sessions a week. Here is the new timetable for PE:
Monday – Thames
Tuesday – Nile, Amazon
Thursday – Nile, Amazon
Friday – Thames
Please make sure your children have their PE kit in school. If your child has long hair, please ensure they have a hairband to tie it up.
Have a great weekend!