Year 4 Weekly News: Last Week

This week, we've been report writers, science investigators and we even had time to squeeze in answering over 279,044 correct times tables (and counting)!

In the mornings, we've been super busy doing lots of different maths starter questions. We've covered everything, from column methods to two step problems! It was great seeing you all use your methods, bar models and drawings to help you!
In Power Maths this week, our focus has switched to multiplication and division. We focused on timesing by 0 and 1. We were also able to divide values by themselves and by 1. Next week, we will focus on the x6, x7 and x9 tables.
We've also been very busy on the TTRS Maths England competition this week! We've answered 10,000s of questions and we eagerly await the final results. Year 4, you smashed it! Well done!

In Book Club this week, we spent time reading aloud and answering comprehension questions. We also managed to change our books too.Keep up the fantastic reading everybody!

In English, we started a new T4W writing piece. We are now learning all about report writing! We read our examples and learnt the actions along the way. We focused on our 3 targets including conjunctions, the correct layout and the use of correct technical language. We also took time throughout the week to do lots of short burst writing and activities around our 3 targets. On Friday, it was time to box up our sections and also create a brilliant report writing toolkit to help us in our innovation stage next week, how exciting!

In Geography, we started our new topic on the extreme earth. In Tuesday's lesson, we learnt all about the makeup of the earth. We found out about the mantle, crust and so much more. We were able to visualise this through using playdough to mould our own fantastic cross sections earths! Well done, everyone!

In Science this week, Miss McMillan taught us about melting, cooling, evaporation and even condensation! In our first lesson, we thought about the three states of matter and applied this to our investigation on CHOCOLATE! We measured how long each type of chocolate would take to melt. We wrote up our investigation and discussed our findings! On Wednesday, it was time to use ice cubes to investigate how states of matter can change states! We learnt about the reversible changes of water to ice and ice to water, whilst also using a kettle to think about condensation and how water can become a gas: steam! We will continue our states of matter investigations and experiments next week!

In P.E this week, we continued with our unit on 'Health Related Fitness'. We started the session by talking and checking our pulses. We got straight outside and learnt about a new game, builders and blockers! We had to flip cones against another team, this definitely got our pulses racing! We then played a very fun game called the ''Rock Paper Scissors Championship. You had to move up and down the line if you won or lost, sprinting to meet your opponent in the middle to play a game of RPS!

During Mindfulness, we listened to calming music and completed some mindfulness drawing, how relaxing.

PSHE was all about Heart to Heart! In this lesson, we focused on what it means to show love to somebody else. We thought about the different ways you can do this, such as giving gifts and giving kind words and actions.

In Music, we continued using the glockenspiels to create wonderful music, this week's focus was on the C note. We also research famous composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, thinking about his life and influence on music.

In Heartsmart, we looked at our Brilliant Me Ball lesson. Sometimes we forget how great we are, 'Don't forget to let love in' means remembering that you are amazing and choosing to focus on and celebrate all the things that make you, you! We used the ball to say wonderful things about ourselves!

In Music, we took part in Glockenspiel, Stage 2 – Step 3. We learnt about the language of music as in: semibreve, semibreve rest, minims, minim rests, crotchets, crotchet rests and what each one is worth count wise. We played the rhythm game matching the rhythms to the correct countries. We played a new piece called Strictly D and focused on our timing.

In R.E, we finished answering our big question of "What does Jesus teach us about God". Before we could answer this, we learnt about one more parable. We discussed the parable of "The Good Samaritan" and thought about the morals of the story. We linked this to the fact that God wants us to treat others as we'd like to be treated. From this, we created amazing posters for Mrs Taylor that answered our big question. The children used pictures, wrote about different parables and thought about how Jesus had taught people about God's messages and teachings. Well done, Year 4!

What a busy, old week!

Mr Dale