Year 4 Class News 16.02.23

What a wonderful final week of our first spring half term! So many memories made and new lessons covered.

Our new Maths unit is challenging us to make links between tenths and hundredths. We used models of tenths and hundredths to compare their value and then we identified them on a number line. We are becoming confident to use these fractions in a variety of questions. We then moved on to developing an understanding of equivalent fractions. Firstly, we started to use a fraction wall and fractions strips to find equivalent fractions and then moved on to use the concept of do the same to both the numerator and denominator to find equivalent fractions.

In English, we have begun our new genre of writing – an Information report based on Rivers. We wrote our own report and then worked on creating our own Y4 model of the journey of a river. This needed everyone to be hands on to create mountains, meanders, tributaries and a river, and what a great job we did! This practical session helped us to become familiar with the journey of the river from the upper course, middle course and the lower course. We then looked at the features of non fiction writing and started to gain an understanding of subject specific vocabulary linked to Rivers. We firstly found examples of vocabulary within the text and then we showed how we could use these within our own sentences.

We had the pleasure of inviting Matthew and Michelle into our classroom on Tuesday. We listened beautifully to their messages linked to their Christian and Jewish faiths. We posed lots of insightful questions including; what made you become a Christian? and why do Christians believe in Jesus as he was a Jew? We also made wonderful reflections, and one response that we would like to share is, 'I now know to NOT think of myself before others.'

In our additional RE lesson this week, we continued to learn about how Jesus is seen as a saviour by Christians, particularly in the Easter story. This week, we watched a video of Jesus appearing to his disciples. The children thought about why this video represented Jesus as a saviour. We then looked at a calendar of February, March and April this year. We identified Easter – looking for shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and the 40 days of lent. We then thought about the story of Jesus in the wilderness. We considered why this story was important is understanding why Jesus is seen as a saviour.

In my happy mind time, we practised our happy breathing and thought about what we appreciate about ourselves, others and experiences.

In our Science lesson this week, we used our computing time to research the functions of the different parts of the digestive system. Using interactive websites, the children found out about how each part of the digestive system works.

Our Geography learning enabled us to recap our key learning from last lesson and then use an atlas to identify three famous rivers from around the world. The Nile, the Colorado River and the Amazon were identified and we were able to trace the journey of each river.

It has been wonderful seeing the children completing lots of book reviews over the last couple of weeks. A few children have asked for a reminder of the website so I have added it here https://y4reading.weebly.com/recommended-reads.html

We hope that you have a fantastic week making lots of wonderful memories.
Miss Welch and Mrs Pointon