Year 4 Weekly News 13.12.24

This week has been a time for things to be brought to an end. We are so impressed with our learning from this term!

As writers, we have been working on writing factual sentences about polar bears. We have then focused on using factual and formal language within our work to write an example paragraph from our text. We have been identifying and learning to use plural possessive apostrophes in our sentences. We have also analysed the text and found examples of writers knowledge and structural features to use in our own work. Towards the end of the week, we have planned our first two paragraphs of writing.

In our Maths lessons this week, we have demonstrated how well we are applying prior knowledge to divide and multiply numbers. We learnt about multiplying and dividing by 1 and 0 as well as multiplying three one digit numbers. We ended our multiplication and division part 1 unit this week and completed our end of unit check.

This week saw the end of quite a few of our units for this term. We completed our final reflection in history and answered the question 'Were the Vikings successful invaders?' In science, we reflected on everything that we had learnt so far and took time to revisit our new knowledge. We also had some time to complete our pattern art work.

We had a DT filled Friday. We spent some time to think about existing biscuit packaging. We considered what is already on the market, who the target audience is and how different styles appeal to people. We then thought about the types of materials used. We thought about how we can use nets to produce a 3d shape. Using a given net, we designed and made our own biscuit packaging. We carefully considered the information it needed to include. We then went on to our final baking task. In our earlier lesson, we had chosen ingredients to add to our recipe to improve the flavour of our biscuits and appeal to a target audience. We used the same recipe as last time to make another batch of dough. We then took our left over dough from the first lesson and used lots of cutters to make Christmas biscuits.

Our reading time has focused on developing our comprehension skills to justify our answers using examples from the text.

In PE, our task was to work on our defending skills with one on one tasks and as part of team games. We celebrated how we are showing other team members that we are ready to receive the ball, and how our communication skills are improving each week. We were also introduced to the skills of underlapping and overlapping.

Biomes in the Americas was our first focus in Geography this week. We using fact files to find which countries have examples of different biomes, like dessert, grassland and coniferous forest. We then moved onto look at the vocabulary associated with human features. We enjoyed working as a team to understand the meaning of settlement, population, major city, landmark and locality.

Our focus for Heartsmart was on how amazing we each individually are. We rolled a dice to start some conversations about ourselves. We had the following sentence openers – I can teach someone..., I am great at..., the best thing about me is..., I am learning to..., one word to describe me is..., a kind thing I have done today is... Sometimes we forget how great we are, 'Don't forget to let love in' reminds us that we are amazing and choosing to focus on and celebrate all the things that make us, us!

We completed our RE lesson this week. We have answered the question 'Why is light an important symbol in world faiths?' We learnt about Islam and Hanukkah. We heard about the story of the temple being destroyed and reflected on how this would feel. We then learnt about the menorah having enough oil to stay lit for 8 months. We considered the symbol of light in this story. We also spent time to consider our learning from this unit and complete our questful map.

In music this week, we sang and danced to three of our Young Voices songs. We need to focus on keeping our feet as grounded as possible as we won't have a lot of foot room when we are in the arena. We need to remember we are mirroring the dancer – not changing our movements to the opposite side. To make sure we are completely happy with a few of our Christmas service songs, we practised these with year 3.

We have continued to work on our service for Christmas and enjoyed being able to walk to Church for a practise.

Maths.co.uk homework has been set for this week.

We hope you are all looking forward to the soon approaching Christmas holidays and have a great last week at school!

Mrs Morris and Mrs Pointon