Year 4 News 10.02.23

Our Journey unit in English has concluded this week with some amazing independent writing. We have applied what we have learnt about personification, repetition and speech sentences to include these new features in our writing. We have spent time editing too. This is a skill that we have worked hard to develop in Year 4.

In Reading, we have explored a non fiction text about habitats, retrieved information and made judgements about how the information is displayed.

In Maths, our division lessons have given us the opportunity to become more fluent in dividing two and three digit numbers by a one digit number. We have worked hard to explain the different strategies that we can use, and with this, we are becoming more efficient. We then applied this learning to problem solving. This again involved carefully understanding what the question is asking us to do. At the end of the week, we then completed our end of unit assessment. Next week, we will be starting our fractions unit. We had a sneak peak at this on Friday!

We have been practising particular joins in our handwriting lessons this week.

We have begun our Geography unit by drawing an example of a river. We enjoyed watching a video of rainfall to the describe what happens to rain when it falls on land. We explained what happens when it falls on different surfaces and this introduced us to the idea that rainfall forms rivers and streams. We then compared rivers to canals and used Geographical vocabulary to know which one is a physical feature and which one is a human feature.

Our Computing time over the last few weeks has really helped to boost our knowledge of a famous artist Hans Holbein. We used this research to create a fact file. We also worked as a class to think about the skills we need to complete a portrait. We are looking forward to creating our own portraits.

We loved seeing the class come dressed in clothes which make them feel great to celebrate Mental Health Week on Thursday. We started our morning by considering what makes us all special and unique. We created outlines of our hand and added words and pictures to represent ourselves.

In our music lesson this week, we learnt about using long and short notes. We learnt to create a short note using middle c. We were given the top tip of keeping our cheeks in whilst producing our sound. We continued to practise notes C, D, E and F.

In our RE lesson this week, we have learnt more about the last supper. The children thought about why we have celebratory meals – Christmas, Easter, birthdays and weddings etc. The children thought about the significance of the Last Supper. Watching a video of Reverend Michael, we thought about what the meal signified. Then, we moved on to think about the resurrection. We looked at four different extracts from the bible about different people's experiences of the events. We then highlighted the similarities and differences presented within the text.

In our Computing lessons this week, we started our new animation unit. The children were introduced to the first animation created. This was images of a horse. When made into a film of stills, the horse moved. We then looked at zoetropes. The children were given an opportunity to examine how these work. The children then created their own zoetrope strips showing a progression of a image. The children placed their strips inside the zoetrope to test that these worked. We had a fantastic lesson.

During our Science lesson this week, we also started our new unit. This term we are focusing on developing our knowledge of living things – the human body. We started by recording what we already knew. We then moved on to learn about the parts of the digestive system. The children were given all of the pieces and were asked to put their human body back together.

In My Happy Mind lesson, we talked about how we can develop an attitude of gratitude. We used our previous learning to share gratitude with others.

We have also reviewed our Science learning this week to reflect on the steps in learning we have made linked to Electricity.

This week, we have set a SPAG home activity based on speech sentences.

Have a wonderful weekend,
Mrs Pointon and Miss Welch