Year 4 News 18.11.22

In English this week we have been wonderful poets. We have really enjoyed learning about Haiku poetry. Firstly, we wrote instructions How to write a Haiku Poem and then we chose a piece of treasure from nature to describe, and then create a poem. There is a pattern of syllables for each line, so our approach to finding the right words to fit the pattern needed lots of attempts and the end results are great!

In the second half of our week, we have started a new unit of writing. The children started by editing their hot writes from the previous Friday. Thinking carefully about our self editing skills. We then started a new cold wrote. The focus for this piece was on non fiction text. The children were asked to write about a familiar topic – we chose our school. In our following lessons, we received a very exciting delivery. Inside a box, we found a book called 'Arthur and the golden rope', a battered scroll of paper and a letter. The letter told us that we were needed to help Mr Skargarad rewrite the pages of his monster books which have been damaged. The children wrote responses to his letter today.

One of our strategies in Maths this week was to use a bar model to add and subtract. We learnt that there are two types of bar models, and we also used them to find the difference in a range of different problems. We have continued to develop our problem solving skills. Using inverse operations, bar models and column addition and subtraction. At the end of the week, we completed our end of unit assessment.

During our Reading lessons this week, we have enjoyed reading our big cat books and our reading for pleasure books.

In My Happy Mind we have explored our top three character strengths. We are learning that our character strengths can help us to problem solve. As a class, we decided which character strengths we could draw upon to problem solve two scenarios. We also linked this back to our learning about the three parts of our brain to learn that character strengths help these to work too.

Our Computing time gave us the opportunity to complete algorithms for a collect the treasure puzzle. We then went onto create shapes using code. We worked carefully to use key facts about the angle of each turn to create a variety of shapes.

This week, we have celebrated anti bullying week. We learnt that it is ok to make our own choices. We played some games involving choosing things we like from two options. We then completed a task which made the children think about the affect their words have on others. Using the example of crumpled paper, children tried to flatten and make their paper back to how it was at the beginning. We realised this was not able to happen because our actions and our words have impact.

During our RE lessons this week, we learnt more about the Christmas story. We looked more in depth in the Christmas story to find examples of more good news. We then learnt about the story of Elizabeth and Zachariah. The children were asked to find examples of good news within this text too. Using our good news bibles, the children were able to find and read this passage. The children recorded their evidence of good news in their books.

In music this week, we practiced our courageous advocacy song – with actions. We then looked at our next Young Voices song – Sing from your heart. We even had time to follow the onscreen accompanying dance moves.

We started our new DT unit this week. The children were introduced to our new unit using the old Kitkat advert. This term, we are making our own catapults. Using elastic bands, we thought about how a catapult works. We realised that catapults work using a pull force. We looked at the catapult we are going to make, made a detailed design with labels and measurements and then started to create our prototype. We used art straws and carefully cut these to length and joined them together to represent what our catapult will look like. 

Throughout our week, we have also been practising for our courageous advocacy class worship. Year 4, you have amazed me! You delivered our message amazingly and shared a beautiful song! Thank you to everyone who came to watch. Thank you also to the children for taking part. We hope that you enjoyed watching our worship as much as we enjoyed sharing it with you.

This week, Maths.co.uk homework has been set.

We hope that you have a wonderful weekend.

Miss Welch and Mrs Pointon