Spring Term 2021

W.C. 29.3.2021

We have come to the end of a challenging yet productive term. All the children have wowed us with their determination, drive and engagement with their learning!

For our final week of Spring term, we continued to recap multiplication and division. We are much more confident in which strategies to use and when now which is great to see. Keep on practicing your times tables and especially focus on your division strategies - this will make everything much easier!

In English, we completed our big writes set in World War Two. There have been some great examples of personification, reported speech and direct speech too. It's fantastic to see all of your hard work come together. We have also worked hard to edit our work, remembering all the skills and ideas that the authors have given us during their virtual visits!

In Topic, we completed our RE mini-quiz to show off all of the key knowledge that we have learnt this term! We've also enjoyed some Ancient Greek activities to round off this term. Our next topic will be the Rotten Romans!!!

A link to our knowledge organiser is attached at the side of this page - a paper copy has been given to children also.

Well done for coping with all the challenges this term has set you, Hayley and I are very proud - keep it up!

On the first week back (W.C. 19.4.2021), PE will be on Monday and Tuesday - please wear your PE kits on these days.

W.C. 22.3.2021

Our last full week before a well deserved break!

In English this week we have been working our way towards our big write. We have looked more at how we can create settings for our stories and make them exciting to read. We practiced using prepositions to describe location and personification to describe Lenny's journey to escape and get back to his mother. We have also planned and begun to write our own World War Two inspired story featuring an evacuee!

In Maths, we have spent this week going back over a few of the areas that we covered during home learning. We have worked hard on understanding how to use short multiplication to complete calculations with up to 3-digits multiplied by 1 digit! This was a real test of our times tables knowledge- keep working on those trickier ones like the 7s and 6s! We have also started to recap short division and remembering how to deal with exchanges.

In Science, we have explored what shadows really are and how they are formed. We know that the closer an object is to the light source, the larger the shadow it casts! We have learnt about the words 'transparent' and 'opaque' and can now use these to describe objects.

In PSHE, we worked on understanding our emotions and our reactions to certain situations that might make us feel angry or upset. We each got to choose an animal which reacts similarly to ourselves and think about good ways we can deal with uncomfortable emotions.

In Geography, we considered why Greece was the chosen place for the Ancient Greeks to settle. We learnt about the defensive and religious importance of the mountains, the food and water that the seas provided and the farming space of the low lands. We also discovered that the islands were useful to set up homes and would often face lots of battles!

Keep going Year 4 - you have shown SO much resilience this term!

W.C. 15.3.2021

This week, we have got fully back into the routines of the classroom. 

In English, we have worked hard on practicing our expanded noun phrases. Some of us are now starting to manipulate the structure that we place these in. We have also worked on using reported speech. There were lots of rules to remember here including change the order of the reporting clause and the speech, to use third person and to use the relative pronoun 'that'. These were fab pieces of work. Another success this week has been to use Standard English. Lots of us commonly use 'could of' instead of 'could have' so this was interesting to put into practice! 

In Maths, we have stuck with our topic of fractions. This week we have explored: adding 2 fractions within a whole, fractions greater than one whole, counting in fractions AND adding more than 2 fractions. It was great to see the children put into practice their understanding of bar modelling to help them to visual the problems. Next week, we will spend a lot of time recapping our multiplication and division work.

In Science, we have explored light. We have understood how light comes from a light source. This can be natural, like the sun, or man-made such as a light bulb. Did you know that some animals create their own light?! We also explored how light travels from the source to our eyes. It can often come straight from the source itself, but in order for us to see an object, it hits that first and then reflects into our pupil! We found it very interesting that our eyes see the image upside down and then our brains turn it the right way up for us to see.

In Topic, we have explored the features of the globe including the equator, tropics and the prime meridian. I was very impressed with the children's retention of previous learning including their knowledge of the continents. Next week, we will use this knowledge to work out why Ancient Greece was such a good place to live!

W.C. 8.3.2021

It has been the BEST week! We have been soooo happy to see you all back and wow! You have really pushed yourselves to get back into the school routine!

Because of our long school closure, we have spent a good chunk of this week doing assessments. I have been so impressive with how you have all taken this and how ready you have been to show off what you know!

We have continued in Maths to spend some time looking at fractions. We have been exploring tenths a bit more with a little push into exploring tenths as division and even decimals!

In English, we have worked on our previous knowledge of using apostrophes for possession and have even designed our very own menus based on the food which was rationed in World War Two!

On Friday, after we had worked so hard on our assessments this week, we spend the day doing some Science experiments! Our first challenge was to try and push pencils through a bag filled with water WITHOUT any water coming out! Some of us succeeded whilst others succeeding in soaking Miss Brand!!! The afternoon was spent exploring fire (with the help of Mrs Smith!) where we saw charcoal snakes being created.

We have also spent a few lessons this week doing some PSHE so that we can re-establish rules, discuss how we have been feeling and who we can talk to if we have any worries!

Reminder:

• Homework is given out every Monday on Google Classroom (there are paper copies available if needed)
• Reading needs to be completed 3x a week
• Spellings and Times Tables are given out at the start of the week and tests happen on a Friday!

W.C. 1.3.2021

This week was our last week of live lessons but that doesn't mean that we stopped working hard because we certainly didn't! We also got to enjoy some more virtual visits, this time from a Lincs FM DJ, the author Laura James and, of course, Mr Motivator!

In English, we have been continuing to look at our new text of 'The Lion and the Unicorn', we have learnt why the symbols of the Lion and the Unicorn were important and we know now that Lenny (our main character) holds onto this badge from his dad through his evacuation to the countryside. We explored emotive language and how to express how we are feeling by thinking about our abstract nouns too. We took these thoughts and emotions and created a conversation between Lenny and his mother when she broke the news to him that he would have to be evacuated.

In Maths, we have spent the whole week exploring equivalent fractions. These are fractions which are the same by may have different denominators and numerators. We have been able to find lots of equivalent fractions for both unit and non-unit fractions by following our one important rule: you do the same operation to the numerator as you do to the denominator! Some of us needed to use the practical resources to see this visually but as we progressed through the week we started to focus on more reasoning based questions.

In our Topic lessons,we have looked at what Humanism is in RE and learnt that there are atheists, theists and agnostics and that each of these groups believe different things about gods in religions. In Geography, we discussed the resources that the UK has and compared this to the different ones that we learnt about Chile having. In French, we have learnt how to read and write numbers up to 12 and we can now say our age if someone asks us. In Music, we worked on percussion using cups and had lots of fun making different rhythms and beats. 

On Friday, we celebrated World Book Day by sharing our costumes (both virtually and in person) and we creating our very own books. I was incredibly impressed by the effort that was put into both aspects - you made some amazing fiction and non-fictions texts.

We cannot express how excited we are to see you all back on Monday!

Important - PE days for Year 4 are now on Wednesday and Thursday. Please wear your PE kit on these days.

W.C. 22.2.2021

Can you believe that we are already in Spring Term 2?! I have been really impressed with how the children have continued to show their resilience and are still as positive towards online learning - you guys are amazing!

In English this week, we have worked on planning and writing our own Cinnamon inspired story. We thought about the difficulty our character would have been going through, how their family would have reacted and how they would overcome it with the help of a very special animal! We have made sure to include all the features we have focused on including direct speech, emotive language and creative similes. On Friday, we began to explore our new story called 'The Lion and the Unicorn' by using the clues on the first page and inferring what we thought it was about.

In Maths, we have moved onto our next topic of fractions. This week, we have focused on exploring what a fraction is, the parts of it (including numerator and denominator) and explored different types. We know that a unit-fraction must have a numerator of 1 and that a non-unit fraction has a numerator greater than 1. We have also explored tenths - the denominator must be 10 for it to be a tenth!

In our Topic lessons, we have started to explore light. We know that light is a type of energy and that darkness is the absence of light. We have also discovered that light travels only in straight lines and is reflected off objects before entering the eye. In RE, we have finished our topic of Islam by exploring all of their core values. In Geography, we have learnt about the resources that Chile has and next week we will be comparing this to the UK! In French, we have learnt how to introduce ourselves and thought about how we can recognise different gendered nouns and adjectives.

We have also continued with our virtual visits - this week we were fortunate enough to be joined by Lou Treleaven, Catherine Bruton, Joanne Clifton from Strictly Come Dancing AND Mr Motivator. Wow - what a full on week.

We are also soooooo happy to know that we will have all of you back in the classroom on the 8th March - we are counting down the days!

Don't forget that World Book Day is on 5th March for us all to enjoy if we're at school or at home!

W.C. 1.2.2021

In English we have been continuing to explore the novel ‘Cinnamon’. We have spent a lot of time getting inside the minds of the main characters that we have met in the story. Firstly, we imagined how Cinnamon’s parents would feel about their daughter not being able to speak. We created a persuasive advert calling on people from all over the country to come and help. We next interpreted Cinnamon’s feelings and wrote a diary entry from her perspective. We had to think carefully about the senses she would use and how upset she would feel with all the people coming to the palace trying to get her to speak. We also tried to envisage the tension that would have been present after these people were unable to get Cinnamon to communicate and how they would politely explain to the Rajah and Rani that they were unsuccessful. Lastly, we met the tiger! We created our own poems, listing all the brilliant features of the tiger using similes.

In Maths, we have been smashing division! We are starting to properly get to grips with short division and are even getting more and more confident with using exchanges. We even accepted the challenge of numbers which weren’t multiples of our divisor so left a remainder! To end the week, we have been testing all of this with slightly more complex numbers up to 3-digits by 1 digit. I am really impressed with how much resilience I have seen. Keep working on learning your times tables.

In our Topic lessons, we have had so much fun learning different music signatures. This week we have explored 5 and 6 beats in a bar and really enjoyed testing out find the pulse to different songs. We have also explored where the world’s natural resources are in Geography and where they can be exported and imported from. We learnt that a lot of the natural resources are not renewable so we have to be careful with how much we use. In RE, we have learnt about the different parts of a mosque and why each of these are important symbols in the Islamic faith. Did you know that the Qiblah Wall in a mosque faces Mecca? In History, we finished our unit on the achievements of the Ancient Greeks by revisiting what we have learnt. We thought carefully about why the Greeks are still remembered today and how we can still see their legacy. Did you know the Greek Hippocrates is the reason that doctors take the Hippocratic Oath?

On Friday, we had a great day without screens. For those of us in school, we had a tower building competition, baked rock buns (which even included some maths!), designed and moulded Amphora pots and did some reading. It was nice to give our eyes a break from the screens for a day!

Next week, we have got LOTS of exciting virtual visits from authors and other famous figures – make sure you keep an eye on the timetable and daily assignments to keep up to date with these and how to log on to them!

Reminder: You must be submitting assignments daily onto Google Classroom for English and taking the quizzes for the Topic lessons. We will continue to mark our Maths within our lessons and Guided Reading in the following English lesson.

We will also be having a 30 minute class catch up on Friday which will give us an opportunity to share how we are all doing! 

W.C. 25.1.2021

Well done for continuing to work hard to access all the live lessons!

This week has seen us finish our big write sequel to Winter’s Child, Spring’s Child. We focused our last paragraph all around conjunctions and thinking about the different types. We recalled that conjunctions join two clauses together with coordinating conjunctions joining two main, independent clauses together whilst subordinating conjunctions join a main and a dependent clause. We have also worked on identifying themes and making links to other stories, novels, poems and films that we know. We highlighted friendship, family, love and loss as key themes in our story. Our next novel is called Cinnamon. To start this off, we have discovered the setting of a jungle and made predictions using the front cover and the first page!

In Maths, we have been continuing to work on methods for multiplication and division. There have been lots of great examples of hard work in getting to grips with expanded multiplication and then short multiplication up to 3 digits by 1 digit! To end the week, we have started to explore division using partitioning strategies first and then moving onto short division with some exchanges. We will continue to practice this next week.

In our afternoon sessions, we have enjoyed exploring 3 beats in a bar and using this in different songs. We have also been able to design our own game using Scratch! In RE, we have understood why the Qu’ran is important to Muslims and how it is used in prayer as well as what it contains. We have also learnt about some of Europe’s important human characteristics. Human geography, we have learnt, is geography to do with the lives of humans. We discovered that the tallest building in Europe is the Lakhta in Russia! In History, we have continued to develop our understanding of Ancient Greece. We have worked on understanding the wars between the Athenians and the Spartans and compared and contrasted the lives of the people that lived there.  Did you know that weak babies were left on the hillside to die in Sparta?! We have also learnt about Alexander the Great and why he was important to the Greeks. He was a great warrior who fought many battles. Alexandria in Egypt is named after him! In Science, we have learnt that there are different kingdoms which help us to categorise living things. This week, we have worked on understanding that there are 5 main kingdoms which animals are split into: mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians. We did some fab work on identifying their main characteristics!

W.C. 18.1.2021

Another week where you have all impressed me with your hard work and dedication! Thank you to you and your parents/guardians for engaging with the live lessons.

In English this week, we have been continuing to explore our novel ‘Winter’s Child’. We have been working on identifying and using noun phrases in our own writing and expressing Tom’s feelings now that Winter has gone and Spring has arrived. We described the changes that happen as the seasons change and how this makes him feel conflicted! We have practiced our summarising skills and retold the main events of the story, thinking about which ones we believe are the most significant and providing justifications for this. As part of our final pieces of work for this unit, we planned and began to write our sequel story, ‘Spring’s Child’. We have focused our first paragraph on using fronted adverbials correctly including with commas to follow. Our second paragraph has aimed to use pronouns to avoid repeating nouns!

In Maths, we have continued to practice our knowledge of the times tables. This week, we have worked on the 11 and 12 times tables, thinking about different strategies we could use to make this simpler for us. We have also explored associative law when multiplying 3 numbers such as 3 X 5 X 2. We know that we can group 2 of these numbers and multiply them together so that we only have 2 numbers to multiply! Next, we worked on factor pairs. This is where our knowledge of our times tables has really come into its own. We have found that the factors of a number are what can be timesed together to get the number as its product. For example, 1, 2, 5, and 10 are all factors of 10! We have also practiced using efficient multiplication strategies to help us solve trickier calculations quicker and started to explore some written methods too.

In our afternoon sessions, we have continued to learn about the geography of Europe. This week, we have learnt about the physical features of Europe, including key mountains and rivers. The Volga River is the longest river that goes through Europe! We have also explored Athenian democracy and how this has impacted our lives today. However, lots of us found it was unfair that only men who had military training were allowed to vote! We also enjoyed learning about some of the Ancient Greek beliefs such as the myths of Athena’s birth and Zeus and his brothers! In Science, we have learnt about why fossils are important in order for us to understand how animals have evolved over time. We discovered that there is a ‘fossil record’ and that fossils that are deeper into the ground are from longer ago than those nearer the surface. In RE, we have learnt about the 5 pillars that define the religion. We learnt that in some counties, Zakat (the giving of money to charity), is compulsory. In Music, we have compared the differences between music that has 4 beats in a bar to other songs which have 2 beats in a bar. We also got to learn a new song called ‘Lil ‘Liza Jane. In ICT, we thought about different ways we could use our coding to improve a game and in PSHE, we have learnt about human rights, even creating our own posters to explain what these are!

W.C. 11.1.2021

Well done to everyone for settling in so well to our live lessons and Google Classroom learning so quickly!

As part of our learning this week we have been exploring a new text called 'Winter's Child'. We began by predicting the story. Next, we explored noun phrases including using modifying adjectives and prepositions. We recapped our knowledge of prepositions, using them to explain an objects place in space or time. We have also worked on improving our speech. We have been trying to use "show don't tell" in our work to point the reader in the direction of our character's emotions. In addition, we've recapped using the correct layout and punctuation when using direct speech. To end the week, we have practiced improving our word class understanding by identifying and using detailed nouns and adjectives.

In Maths, we have worked hard to improving our confidence with our times tables. We began by completing our work on 6s, moved onto the 9s and finished the week on the 7s. We have looked at the different tricks we can use to remember these times tables! Next week, we will learnt our 11s and 12s. After, we will begin to explore written methods.

In our topic lessons, we have learnt about the countries of Europe. Did you know that Europe is split into four different sections which makes it easier to identify the countries? We discovered that we know so much about Ancient Greece because of the artefacts which have been found by archaelogists and learnt that the country was split into states rather than a united country. In RE, we learnt that the Prophet Muhammed received messages from the Angel Gabriel which were sent from Allah. It took 23 years for him to get all the messages! In Music, we learnt the difference between pulse and rhythm and played a fun game of 'don't clap this one back'. In Science, we have started to learnt about how animals and plants adapt to their environment. We learnt that the person who discovered this was Charles Darwin!

See you at 9am Monday for our next live lesson!