Year 4 News 16.06.23

Wow! What a fantastic week we have enjoyed surrounded by sunshine this week.

This week, our Geometry lesson started with a Maths action song. This helped us to remember our key facts related to angles. We continued to learn about obtuse, acute and right angles and learnt all about finding them as an interior angle in shapes. We worked very well to complete all the activities and move onto challenge questions too! We have started our new unit of Time this week. We started off by exploring different units of time. This involved comparing time between seconds, minutes and hours. We then became more familiar with how we can compare time using days, weeks, months and years. Towards the end of the week, we then learnt about converting between analogue to 12-hour digital clocks.

The children in Year 4 have also taken part in our MTC test this week. We would like to celebrate and congratulate the children on their fantastic efforts and determination!

This week, in reading lessons, we have enjoyed reading our books from home and Year 4 challenge books.

In English, we focussed on building our key word knowledge and the il prefix in our spelling work. We have learnt about using the prefixes il, in, im and un to change the meaning of words. Within our writing lessons, we have spent time carefully editing our PGL recounts to ensure they showcased our Year 4 writing skills. We have also spent some time to publish these pieces of writing. At the end of our week, we then started a new topic. The children entered the classroom to find a new immerse set up. This time, we saw woodland creatures, leaves and flowers and then a polar bear alone. The children speculated on what the new narrative may be based on and we wrote our own predictions.

We embarked on our DT lessons by learning about the traditional Chinese Food. As we learnt more about more different Chinese meals, we were then able to compare these to the meals we enjoy eating. We found out about a traditional Chinese place setting and began to think about new vocabulary linked to seasonal and savoury food.

In our computing time this week, linked to our History lesson, we learnt more about Oracle Bones. We were answering the question: Why did the Shang use oracle bones? We started by recapping what we already knew about oracle bones. We then learnt about Wang Yirong's discovery of the oracle bones. The class used our computing time to research more about this and write scripts to create our own news reports. These will be recorded next week.

We had an Art afternoon this week. Experiencing batik for the first time. Using the wax kettles, we melted our wax. We then used our canting tool to add the wax to our fabric. After this, we chose one colour of dye and painted this on. We are so impressed with our final results! We ended our lesson by reviewing what worked well and what we would change about our designs for next time.

In Science this week, we started our new topic of sound. We started our lesson with a game which encouraged us to think about how we know where sounds come from. We then started to learn about vibrations. The children used tuning forks and bowls of water to show how vibrations (which produce a movement) causes sound. We then thought about how instruments vibrate to make sounds. We got many instruments out to see this in action.

We started our first Geography lesson this week. We learnt about earthquakes. The children learnt about the layers of the Earth. We then compared the Earth to a cracked egg. The cracks represent the tectonic plates. Using paper, we recreated how the plates move. We then ended our lesson by showing on a world map where previous earthquakes have happened. We also brought up a website which shows earthquakes happening around the world.

We spent some time this week to showcase our PGL recounts and Coronation art work in our studywork books.

In my happy mind our goal setting activities allowed us to think about our big dream goals We also considered whether they link to our passions, and wrote about who or what can help us to achieve them.

We are very much looking forward to our Firework Maker's Daughter theme day on Monday. We are inviting all children to come dressed in Chinese clothing, as a character from the book or the colour red.

Maths.co.uk homework has been set this week linked to our topic of Time.

Miss Welch and Mrs Pointon