Year 4 News 20.03.22

In our English lessons this week, we have planned our shared write for Elephants. We spent more time on Monday ensuring we had enough facts and completed our plans. Then from Tuesday onwards, we have written our non chronological reports. We focused on our unit targets – using subheadings, including generalisers and using possessive apostrophes. Each paragraph was discussed and modelled for us and then we were able to write our own.

In our Maths lessons, we have been learning about Fractions. We have continued to learn about equivalent fractions, remembering the rule 'we do the same to both the numerator and denominator'. We then moved on to learn to how simplify fractions. We found the number that both the numerator and denominator were multiplies of. In our later lessons, we learnt about fractions greater than one. The children understood that a whole number can be represented as a fraction with the same numerator and denominator. When we are using fractions which equal more than a whole number we can represent this as a mixed number. The children were converting between improper fractions and mixed number problems. At the end of the week, we completed our end of term arithmetic quiz.

In our reading activities this week, we looked at our Wild in the City book and read a couple of the poems. We explored the use of vocabulary in these poems to see how they explained the way animals in cities live. We have also spent time reading to adults and reading our class story. We are loving listening to our book – Robin Hood.

This week we have celebrated Science week. We started with the question 'What does a scientist look like?' Our aim was to disperse stereotypes of what the children may think a scientist looks like. We then learnt about our class scientist. Using the iPads, we researched who Stephen Hawkin was and what fantastic things he had done for scientists. The children loved learning about him and his work. In our next activity, we linked back to our science focus – living things. We recapped the characteristics of living things (MRS GREN). The children were then asked to design a living thing which could survive on mars. We discussed what mars is like and thought about how our living thing would need to adapt to live there. I was amazed by the ideas you all had and the creatures that you created. At the end of the session, you explained why your living thing was well suited to this planet.

In our wellbeing time this week, we have completed our posters which we will distribute around the village for our courageous advocacy activity. These posters outline to our school community ways in which you can improve your wellbeing. Please keep an eye out for these appearing in the next few weeks.

In Geography this week, we were able to build upon our knowledge of counties and look at the location of our county Cheshire. We used our map skills to identify the counties that border Cheshire and we also realised that our county has borders with Wales. We then explored the land use of Wybunbury using our background knowledge of what type of settlement it is. We used the OS map to add our final labels to describe the land use in Wybunbury.

In our Computing lesson this week, we planned our final PowerPoint. After exploring our skills and learning how to change elements of our Powerpoints, we are now on to showcasing our work. The PowerPoints we are making are linking to our writing – Elephant non chronological reports. Using the information the children had, the children planned the information for each slide and what they would look like. We started to create our PowerPoints and fill it with our information. We will add our skills next week.

During our RE lesson this week, we learnt about the Trimutri. The children were shown images of the threes Gods and asked to describe their attributes. From this, we talked about the role of each of these Gods in Hindu beliefs. The children were then shown other Gods from Hindu faith and we discussed their role. The children were asked to summarise how Hindu's beliefs in God are different and similar to those of Christians.

This week was our 9th brass instrument lesson. The time is going so quickly! We are enjoying ourselves so much, we don't want it to end! It was another busy lesson though. We recapped the notes from our previous learning but moved on to thinking about our volume. This helped us produce a better sound. Mr Norbury helped us to achieve this by conducting when: we played, for how long and who with. Playing in unison – we sounded great. Following on from last week, we continued to play – We Will Rock You, and We Are The Best. Next week, we will be using all of our skills to play Old MacDonald had a farm.

I hope you have all enjoyed a weekend in the sunshine. See you on Monday.

Miss Welch