Year 4 News 1.10.21

In our English lessons this week, we have completed our innovation write which the children used our class model to write. Then, we went on to plan our story. The children were given a plan which represented how we had boxed up our original model. This followed a sequence of five paragraphs. Once the plans were checked, we then wrote our stories. We aimed to used the skills we had learned over the last couple of weeks and focused on our the targets which we had been set. On Friday, we spent time editing our innovation write from earlier in the week. We recapped the skills we needed to use to do this effectively. We then also had some time to write our story up neatly. We completed this task following a handwriting lesson. In our spelling lessons this week, we have been learning how to use the 'sure' sound at the end of our words.

Maths has been all about place value this week. We started our week by learning to compare numbers. We were able to compare numbers using greater than, less than and equal to. The children used place value grids to represent the numbers before comparing them. This way, we were able to compare each value of the digits a number had. Next, words ascending order and descending order were our new vocabulary in Maths. We used place value charts, and our number knowledge to order four-digit numbers. During one of our reflects this week we had to think carefully about place value. We persevered individually to order 12 four-digit numbers. We have also been learning about adding 1000s using place value grids and rounding to the nearest 1000 using our knowledge of numberlines and decider numbers. We showed great rounding skills this week after learning about this a couple of weeks ago. We have continued to complete arithmetic starters each day and took part in a times table test on Friday with some time allocated on TT rockstars for the class to practise their timestables in a timed activity. TTrockstars is a great way for the children to build up their speed and knowledge.

Our Forest School afternoon enabled us to learn how to unravel a piece of string to create a mesh of fibres. We used this to help light our own fire and the damp weather did not put us off. We demonstrated great team work and resilience, and before long we were enjoying our toasted marshmallows. Archery and micro habitats were also a focus for our outdoor activities this week. We enjoyed practising our archery skills and totalling our scores. Creating a habitat for minibeasts was great fun. We invitedminibeasts to visit the habitat and released them back into the wild with great care.

In our History lesson this week, we have learnt about why the Vikings were so successful. We learnt, in detail, about what made Viking ships so important. We then moved on to learn about the weapons the Vikings used. We learnt that they preferred to fight with axes and their shields. From these activities, the children began to answer the question 'Why were the Vikings so successful?'

In our computing lesson this week, we have continued to learn how to debug programmes. The children have learnt about persistent and how to take a problem apart in order to solve it. We looked at how we could find the bug within a programme by completing each step at a time using the 'step' button.

We have continued to learn more about George Seurat in our art work this week. The children continued to write about him in their sketch books and then looked at examples of his work. We talked and wrote about what we like about his art and why.

In our wellbeing lessons, we focused on being ourselves. The children were asked to think about themselves and write and draw about who they are. They were given a couple of questions to follow to allow them to explore themselves as individuals. It was lovely learning more about each member of the class.

In our RE lesson this week, we have explored how the story of the 5000 encourages Christians to live as good news. The children explored how the story and a poem, written by a y5/6 class, encourages Christians to support others. We talked about the messages from the story. The children thought about miracles and what the miracle in the story was. We even thought of miracles we know about today.

Words have power! This was the focus of our HeartSmart lesson this week. We discussed how words have consequences and how kind and unkind words can affect us, and others. Being HeartSmart means using the power of our words to be kind and encouraging to ourselves and those around us. Bible Reference: 'Encourage one another and build each other up.' 1 Thessalonians 5:11

For music this week, we began to learn our Viking Rock song. We sang verse 1, the chorus and verse 2. Verse 2 was the hardest to sing. We will keep trying hard to sing in time. We are loving this song!

We had a fantastic end to our week. On Friday, we took part in our colour run! We ran the daily mile track whilst being covered in coloured powder. Thank you to everyone who took part and for all of the money we have raised.

Miss Welch