Year 4 News 24.3.23

This week, part of our classroom has been transformed into an under the sea theme as inspiration for our new focus in English – an invention tale. We used all the clues to predict what the text may be about. We read the song lyrics 'Calypso' and thought about how these showcased life in the Sea. We explored the style of poetry (song lyrics) and how the author used expression. We then moved on to watch a clip from Blue Planet. The children recorded their thoughts to the video. Using all of these ideas, the children then created setting poetry. We focused on using similes, metaphors, personification and alliteration. Our work was amazing!

In Maths we have begun learning about decimals, which has helped us to delve into our knowledge of tenths. Our prior learning based on tenths as fractions has really helped as we have applied this to looking at a tenths as 0.1 in a variety of contexts. In our Maths lessons towards the end of the week, we continued to learn about tenths but also saw how these could be used alongside whole numbers. We used place value grids and numberlines to represent these decimal numbers. This week, we have also completed our end of term arithmetic and reasoning paper.

In our spelling lessons this week, we have learnt about the 'a' sound spelt ey, eigh, ay and a-e.

In Reading, our focus has been looking at poetry and we explored the language within the poem in order to help us describe what the poem is about. We have explored how language is used to support our understanding of the setting. We have also had the opportunity to complete our end of term quizzes. We applied our knowledge and skills to all of our tasks, well done Year 4.

During our my happy mind lesson, we explored some new vocabulary connected to our module Relate. It was lovely to reflect on our character strengths and talk about how we use them. We enjoyed adding this into our journal.

Our Geography time this week has given us the opportunity to write a fact file about the River Thames. We learnt more about what people use the river for including tourism. We enjoyed watching a video of the Thames barrier in action too.

In Art, it has been wonderful to see your skills develop week by week. This week our focus has been to explore various shading techniques and apply this to our drawing of Henry VIII. The changes we made have been really effective and we can't wait to see them displayed in your study work books.

We have also had two Sportscape PE sessions this week so all in all it's been a busy week!

In our Trumpets lesson this week, we have practised all of the songs we have learnt during our time learning to play our instruments. Next week, as part of our final session, we will be recording a concert which will be shared with you. We are then hoping that you will enjoy watching this at home and seeing the fantastic skills we have developed.

In our RE lesson this week, we started by listening to the Svetaketu story. The children watched as I placed salt into a glass of water and we considered what this symbolised. We thought how this was linked to the phrase 'God is invisible, but is there in everything'. The children have also read the Bhagavad-Gita. This extract provides descriptions of God.

Description of God

I am the taste in the water

I am the radiance in the sun & moon

I am the sound in space

I am the strength in humanity

I am the sweet fragrance in the earth

I am the brilliance in the fire

I am the life in all beings.

Bhagavad Gita 7:8,9

The children then created their own similes and metaphors to describe God. At the end of our lesson, we created our own artwork to represent God.

We completed our second 'zones of regulation' lesson this week focusing our developing and understanding of emotions. For our lesson, we took part in a game of bingo. Each child had a bingo board and we asked them to find different emotions. The children only saw the different facial expressions. We talked about how important it is to understand facial expressions and how by knowing these expressions, we are able to understand how we should approach people and their feelings.

Within our Science lesson this week, we have planned our experiment for next week. We will be testing the impact that liquid has on our teeth. We designed our experiments using questions, deciding on our resources and predicting what would happen.

This week we have set Maths homework.

Have a lovely, restful weekend,

Mrs Pointon and Miss Welch