Year 4 Weekly News 15.11.24

Writing a setting description was one of our writing tasks this week. We looked at ways to describe the setting using fronted adverbials and extended noun phrases. We focused on our use of prepositions in this piece too. We have then unpicked the structure and features used with the text and completed our writer's knowledge tasks. We have also thought about our character of the polar bear and how he was feeling during key illustrations in our book. 

Problem solving in Maths has allowed us to master our strategies for addition and subtraction. We have looked carefully at what the questions are asking us to do, and then compared different ways of tackling these questions. We concluded our addition and subtraction unit with a lesson on multi step problems. We were challenged to think about the problem and decide on the steps we could take. As we compared our strategies, we also realised that for some of the steps we could do the inverse operation. We then completed our unit of learning with our end of unit quiz. We have then moved on to learn about area. We have learnt what area is and how area can be calculated using different forms of measurements. We used counters to measure the area of different shapes. We have then learnt about using squares within shapes to calculate the area. We have used our knowledge of arrays to calculate the area efficiently.

We have explored poetry in our Reading sessions. We have uncovered clues within a Viking kenning poem and worked out the nouns that are being described. We discussed how these Kennings could have actually had multiple answers. We then looked at a poem called 'The Boat' but the title of the poem wasn't revealed until the end. Throughout reading the poem, we had to predict based on the information we had, what the poem would be about. They author used personification to try to confuse us but we were so close with our guesses. We then read another poem called The Valkyries and unpicked the poem to answer questions. We spent time this week to discuss our favourite poem we have covered in our reading comprehension lessons.

We have loved taking part in England Rocks on TT Rockstars this week!

We celebrated Children in Need today by coming dressed in our colourful clothing.

For Anti-Bullying week this week, we have taken part in many activities. We loved having Bart Gee in on Tuesday to share what life is like for him and giving us the chance to think about how we can overcome challenges which we may initially think are impossible. We then focused on this year's theme of Respect. We have discussed what respect is, reminded ourselves of the definition of bullying and role-played different scenarios that we can change. As part of a Cheshire East wellbeing initiative, the children have also created their own wellbeing logo focusing on representing the spirit of the Healthy Young Minds Service. We focused on our logos representing kindness, respect, honesty and support.

In our Heartsmart lesson this week, we reflected on how we have learnt more about loving ourselves and other this term and how we could continue to work on developing these skills.

In Computing, we paid particular attention to the way an online search can direct you to sponsored links. As website users, we talked about ways that we can navigate these, and what choices we have. We also discussed why people write or share fake information.

During PE, we have begun our first football session with a focus on teamwork, sportsmanship and communication. We practised our skills to receive the ball and pass the ball with accuracy. In teams, we played football matches to develop our passing skills.

We have welcomed PC Nick into our classroom this week to share important messages about staying safe at home, online and when we are out and about, including water safety.

We have started to think about our Christmas service that we were be showcasing at Church alongside Y3. We have started to learn our wonderful songs for this.

In music this week, we continued learning the next Young Voices songs. We sang – Lean on me, Let's Dance, Little Blue and Marley Magic. We also practised the dance moves to Get Loud Breakdown 1. To end the lesson, we sang two of our Christmas Service songs.

With Mrs Whittingham, we enjoyed our first gymnastics lesson.

In our RE lesson, we looked at the story of Terry Waite. Waite, a former envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was captured and imprisoned for 5 years. He spent 1,763 days in captivity. For most of the time he was alone and blindfolded. We discussed how this might have left and that when he came out, he told people that Jesus gave him hope in the darkness. We then thought about whether light is a good metaphor for Jesus? In John 8:12 Jesus tells the people that he is the light of the world. We had a range of light sources and created our own similes and metaphors to describe Jesus. E.g. Jesus' light is like the sun because it shines all over the world. The light of Jesus is like a torch showing the way along a dark path.

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

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Morris and Mrs Pointon