Year 4 News 27.05.22

In Maths, we solved a variety of problems with decimal measurements. To do so, we needed to convert grams to kilograms and m to kilometres. We also completed two quizzes related to decimals and this gave us the opportunity to celebrate our achievements. At the end of the week, we continued to develop our timestable skills in preparation for our timestable test after half term. We practised using TT rockstars, played some board games and sang along to some songs which helped us to remember the trickier timestables.

An unusual house text continued to be our focus in English. We started off by looking at the model text and identifying more forms of subordinate clauses: fronted adverbials, parenthesis, relative clauses and explored the use of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. We then enjoyed looking at a range of images, and whilst doing so, we built a word bank of descriptive ideas. Building a plan was our next challenge. In groups, we ordered the main content of each paragraph and linked example phrases and sentences. Our planning time gave us the opportunity to use fronted adverbials and commas for parenthesis. Towards the end of the week, we then wrote our own descriptions of the house. We considered how to use all of the different types of subordinate clauses we had learnt about and a wide range of adjectives.

In Science, we concluded our Electricity unit, with an investigation to build a circuit without any wires. We used our knowledge of conductors to select a variety of materials which could act as a wire. We connected the parts together and by the end of the investigation we decided that wires have a very important job. We also learnt about how to draw a circuit diagram using symbols to represent the equipment. When we completed a Science assessment piece, we enjoyed reflecting on our new steps in learning this term. We realised how much we had learnt about electrical circuits this term. Well done Year 4!

This week in our HeartSmart lesson, we were learning to recognise healthy boundaries and deal with online abuse. We know that boundaries protect what is valuable. We wouldn't let a stranger have access to our personal information in real-life, so we wouldn't share personal information with strangers online.

We started our Computing project this week. Over this term, we are learning about animations. In our first lesson, the children were asked to considered what they already knew about animations from last year. We then watched an example of one of the first animations made – this was of a race horse. The children were asked to think about how the animation was created. The children were then shown a Zoetrope. We created our own zoetrope strips to create our own animations. The children loved exploring how to make their images move and change.

We were also introduced to our Art topic. The children were shown some images of art work and asked to consider how they were created. The children were encouraged to think about the art medium which was used. We were looking at Batik which is an Asian form of fabric making. It involves using wax and dyes to create a wax resist. We will explore this more in our next lesson.

On Friday, we celebrated the Jubilee. Our day's activities were centred around this. We started with our Maths starter followed by a jubilee theme word search. We then went on to complete our unusual house writing. After this, we competed an art task based on the Queen. The children were given a silhouette and asked to think of everything that reminded them of the Queen and Britain. They children filled their silhouettes with pictures and words. Later on, we made this in to a studywork page alongside images of our 1970 mood board which we had been working on for the last couple of weeks. In the afternoon, we had our whole school picnic outside and held our celebration worship. In worship, we shared our songs which we had been learning from our decade. It was amazing to share these with the school and sing along to each other's songs.

We cannot believe how quickly this half term has flown by. We hope that you have a wonderful half term and look forward to welcoming you back for our final half term in Year 4!

Miss Welch and Mrs Pointon