Y4 Weekly News 26.09.2025

Happy weekend, Y4.

This week, we started planning our writing inspired by The Whale. You mapped out the key events of your story and you made decisions about your characters, setting and how the tension in your story would build. We also looked at our next spelling unit which was all about words with the prefix auto-, which means "self" or "own." We chatted about autographs, autopilot, and automatic and saw how they link to independence and control. 

Our reading this week took a creative twist as we learnt about Viking stories, music and writing. We explored new vocabulary like sagas and runes and were amazed to find out that Viking storytelling was dramatic and exciting – filled with gods, monsters, and heroic adventures. We practised summarising main ideas and created our own short summaries using key words. In the latter half of the week, we continued our Viking journey by looking at how they lived. We explored fascinating facts about Viking homes, farming, and fishing. Using the text and images, we practised scanning and text marking to answer a range of questions! Great job referencing the text and backing up your opinions.

This our maths lessons week, we learned how to count in 25s, 50s, and 1,000s, identifying number patterns as we went. We discovered how these sequences link to times tables and used them to solve a range of challenges. You did a brilliant job spotting patterns and using what you know to predict the next numbers in a sequence! 

In RE this week, we explored some of the amazing miracles that Jesus performed. We revisited the story of Jesus calming the storm, and then discovered the powerful stories of Jesus raising Jairus' daughter and his friend Lazarus from the dead. We asked ourselves the big question: How is this possible? Through our discussions, we understood that Christians believe Jesus could do these things because he is the Son of God, with power over nature, sickness, and even death. We played a fun matching game where we linked miracle stories to different types of power, and together, we built a brilliant list of examples to show what Jesus could do. It was lovely to see so many of you remembering other stories, like feeding the 5000 and even Easter! We proudly added our ideas to our class RE scrapbook and Questful map.

This week, in our DT lesson, it was construction time! We used our designs to begin building the frame of our pavilions using materials like straws, matchsticks and glue. We applied what we'd learnt about reinforcing corners and keeping structures free-standing.

In this week's Heartsmart lesson, we learnt that the values and behaviours we show to others help shape our classroom community. We explored this through planting seeds. We learnt that just like if you want apples, you plant apple seeds, if we want kindness, we need to plant kindness! The Bible teaches: "A person harvests only what he plants." from Galatians 6:7. This helped us understand that what we give out is often what we receive in return.

In our computing lesson, we explored the kinds of information we can (and can't!) share on the World Wide Web. You sorted images into things that can be shared online -- like videos and pictures -- and those that can't -- like sandwiches and pets! We looked closely at web addresses to figure out where websites come from and found out that they're stored in data centres all around the world. Then, you created brilliant mind maps showing the different devices we can use to access the web, from phones to games consoles, and even smart TVs. We also learnt about web browsers and how they help us explore the internet safely and easily.

In PE, we enjoyed our next Hockey session with Coach Beth where we worked hard to keep control of the ball and we practised our dribbling skills. In our football session, which was at the beginning of the week, we focused on the importance of striking the ball. We considered passing, moving into spaces and the power we needed to use. It was great to see you working in teams and trying your best.

I hope you're having a lovely weekend. See you tomorrow, 

Miss Pennance