Year 4 Weekly News

Our first week back after half term has certainly been a busy one! We've been game developers, instrument players and even had a visit from PC Nick...

In English, our focus was all about writing the imagination stages to our diary entries. It was fantastic to be taken to the top of Mt Everest, read about desert survivals and even some real life diary experiences too! Everybody included the features of a diary, as well as incorporating lots of fronted adverbials, Y3/4 spellings and using paragraphs to ensure chronological order! On Friday, we spent time writing our 'Have a Go' writes. The children were asked to write a report, as next week we'll be writing information reports about Mt. Everest in our new T4W learning, how exciting!

In Maths this week, we rounded up our unit on addition and subtraction. Word problems filled our week, as we used the bar model to deconstruct them and ensure we knew which methods to use. There were lots of two step problems throughout the week in which we had to do both column addition and subtraction. We used our knowledge of the "part, part, whole" to help us with this! We finished the week by practising our x8 tables. Next week, our new unit will be on multiplication and division.

We started a brand new reading programme this week! We are now using the 'Steps to Read' activities to improve our comprehension skills. This week, we focused on a book called 'Forces and Magnets'. We practised skills including skimming, scanning, copying and summarising this week. We also took the time to discuss key vocabulary and apply this within our answers too. Everybody worked so hard, well done!

In Mindfulness this week, we played the Guess Who game. We thought about a person in our class and had to write clues about them. It was lovely to hear all the children writing beautiful things about each other. We guessed each other's at the end and felt good listening to all the wonderful things being said about us.

In P.E, we started our new unit on 'Health Related Fitness'. We completed lots of fitness drills and games. By the end of the session, we were able to come up with our own fitness drills and share them with the rest of the class!

PSHE this week was all about 'Don't Forget to Let Love in'. We thought about what love meant and the different types of love we can show. We also thought about the various ways we can show love to one another, well done!

In Music, we started our new unit on 'Glockenspiels'. We used the instrument to try and keep the beat to different songs. I can't wait to hear the finished product!

In Science, we started our new unit on 'States of Matter'. We thought about the different solids, liquids and gases around us. We were very quick to be able to tell the difference. We spent time thinking about identifying trickier materials, such as sand! Did you know that even though you can pour sand, it's still classed as a solid? We then zoomed on in and looked at how the particles act in the different states. We watched videos and drew pictures to demonstrate this. On Wednesday, we used the app 'Pic Collage' to research the different states of matter, check them out! On Friday, we completed an investigation into whether gas has mass! We used fizzy lemonade to test our theories, measuring the liquid when it was full of gas bubbles (Co2) and afterwards once we had made it flat! Our results showed that gas does have mass, but only a very small amount!

In Computing, we put our coding skills to the test. We were faced with the task of building our very own Flappy Bird Game and we didn't disappoint. Children built algorithms involving loops, IF statements and had to use their debugging skills throughout! I can't wait to try out more experiments/investigations next week!

We continued with our Daily Mile running this week. It's awesome to see the children challenging themselves to see how many times they can get around the track!

We had lots of special worships this week, including one from PC Nick. He came in to tell us all how to keep safe in lots of different situations, thanks, PC Nick! He covered everything from water safety to stranger danger!

Please remember that P.E will be on Monday as usual next week. My Maths Club will not be running this week due to parents evening.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Dale