Year 4 News 11.02.22

In our English lessons this week, we have been focusing on Poetry. On Monday, we started our week by exploring performance poetry. This involved learning a school rap. In table teams, the children were asked to performed this in their worst way. We talked about what made this a poor performance. Then, we reflected on what the children needed to do to improve their performance. We made a performance toolkit. The children were then given time to practise in groups and perform this back to the class. Next, we went on to explore rhyming couplets. The children were given a fantastic image of a cat and asked to write as many rhyming couplets as they could. We came up with so many! Then, they used this to write a verse of their own rhyming poem. In our next lesson, we explored the tools and structure of our rhyming poem. The children made notes on this in their books. In our final lesson this week, the children planned their own rhyming poem based on our model 'The Castle the King Built'. 

In our Maths lessons this week, we have learnt how to divide two and three digit numbers by a one digit number. We have focused, this week, on using part whole models to divide. For this method, we have used multiples of the number we are dividing by to partition numbers. We have then divided each partitioned number. This method has made more complicated division problems so much easier. This week, we also recapped what a reminder was and talked about how we would know if a question would leave us with a remainder. We used our knowledge of multiples for this. 

This week, Year 4 celebrated their Theme Day. We started our day off with medieval riddles. We were given a set of clues and needed to decode the people who lived inside a castle. We then took part in an art work task. The children were shown illuminated letters which were created by monks who wrote up manuscripts. Each child was given a letter to focus on and we all created our own design for an illuminated letter. The rest of our morning was spent researching, designing and creating model castles. Using all of the resources the children had brought in, we were able to make castles in small groups. We thought about the three different styles of Norman castles – Motte and Bailey, Stone Keep and concentric castle. We then created models of these in class. Whilst eating our lunch, we watched the Disney's version of Robin Hood. The children really enjoyed watching the beginning of this classic! In our afternoon, we took ourselves off to Sherwood Forest (Forest School). Whilst in Sherwood, we built our own dens, like Robin Hood and his outlaws would have done. We also played a game of hide from the Sheriff of Nottingham. We also took part in an orienteering task as though we were Robin Hood hunting in the forest. Finally, we ended our time outside with a game of capture the flag. We talked about battle strategies and how we would protect our castles. When we returned to class, we spend some more time finishing off our castle models. We had such a busy day and I hope everyone enjoyed it. You all looked fantastic too dressed as your medieval characters. 

The three states of water was our focus in Science this week. We began thinking about how to describe water when it is a solid, liquid and gas. From then, we explored three practical tasks to look at the processes of evaporating, melting and condensation. We saw water change from a solid to a liquid, a liquid to a gas and a gas to a liquid and talked about how they linked to one of the processes. 

During our Safer Internet day worship we talked about how to be respectful online. Using examples of chat and things written online, we had the opportunity to discuss whether they were respectful. You gave lots of great advice, and you could identify when somebody was not being kind online, well done Year 4. We were also given the reminder to tell a trusted adult if someone is unkind online and they can a advise whether to take a screen shot, block or report. 

In French this week, we started to learn the alphabet. We firstly listened to the alphabet in French and wrote down which letters sounded similar to the sounds we use in English. We were surprised how many were the same or similar. Next, we began to learn how to pronounce each letter. 

In our RE lesson, we recapped the story 'Jesus Welcomes the Children'. This had been one of our focuses in worship last week. We talked about what the message of this parable was. The children then created freeze frames to represent the story. In groups, we showed these to the class. Then, we came up with thought and speech bubbles that we could add to these. At the end of the lesson, again, we considered how this parable linked to the Kingdom of God. We concluded that everyone is welcome in the Kingdom of God including children, who at the time, were seen as less important. 

In our Art lesson this week, we have continued to develop our portrait skills. This week, the children learnt how to use line guides to position the features on the face. They were also given some tips on how to form each feature. 

Music was really exciting this week as Mr Norbury was back! We got straight to work by playing 4 short notes as a group, then as a class. Our volume needed working on as we were far too loud. We also needed to make sure we blended our sound properly. Playing the rhythm of 'We Are The Best' was our next task. It proved quite tricky, but we were not afraid! We played note C and learnt notes D and E. Note C is the lower note and we had to play our learnt notes alternately to hear the difference between each note. Note C for 4 counts, D for 4 counts, C short note (staccato) was our next rhythm. Moving between the notes and adjusting our fingers on the valves was a bit hard, but we stuck with it. What will next week bring?

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and look forward to sharing with you our last week before half term! 

Miss Welch