Year 4 Weekly News 15.3.25

This week's maths lessons have continued to develop our fraction skills. We have practiced simplifying fractions by finding a common multiple across the numerator and the denominator. We used our key fact knowledge well to times or divide the numerator and denominator by the same number. In the next two lessons, we then learnt about fractions greater than one, using fraction strips, we showed how a fraction can be represented as mixed number and improper. We then also learnt about adding fractions. For this, our denominator stays the same. At the end of the week, we enjoyed using visual representations and number lines to take away improper fractions and mixed numbers.

We became traditional tale experts in English this week. We enjoyed sharing our favourite stories and looked carefully at how the good characters differ from the villains. We then started to develop our ideas for our own villain characters. We decided who we would be writing about and gathered words and phrases to describe them. We wrote character studies too. We have then learnt about the writer's knowledge used within the text. We focused on fronted adverbials, using the correct verb form, rhetorical questions, the use of phrases and so much more.

In reading, we have begun a poetry unit by looking at two different poetry books. The front covers gave two contrasting settings where animals may live. We are enjoying reading these poems and we are becoming familiar with the vocabulary to describe the features of a poem.

Our spelling time has been devoted to practising our common exception words this week.

As geographers, our task in our new unit was to explain How does the water go round and round? This then led us onto a drawing task to draw and label a river.

In D.T. our pavilions are almost at the completion stage. This week, we saw lots of proud faces to overcome difficulties when some of the structures became wobbly and resilience when the materials were running low, and we had to think of alternative ideas.

In our RE lesson this week, we reflected on whether the actions of Peter were the same as Judas. We compared their betrayals and thought about how everyone involved would be feeling. We looked at more art work depicting the scene of Peter betraying Jesus and thought about what this showed.

We started our Hockey lesson this week by playing a game of 'Truck and Trailer'. In pairs, oone child (Truck) dribbles a ball around a coned area followed by their partner (the Trailer) who also has a ball. We then swapped roles. We focused on having our heads up, ball in front of our body, small taps which keep the ball close to the stick. We then took part in four stations to practice our dribbling. We had:
Straight speed dribble – Children line up and dribble ball from one cone to another in a straight line
Close Control – row of cones close together in one straight line, in which children dribble ball in between cones concentrating on close control one at a time
Cannonball Run – Two children dribble from one side of the playground to the other while others try and roll a sponge ball to try and touch the ball they are dribbling
And Slalom – moving through cones in a zig-zag formation
We ended our lesson with a fun game of king of the ring.

In our trumpet lesson this week, we learnt how to play a new song – we have got boogie shoes. We started by playing this in all c notes. However, then adapted this tune to fit E, C and D.

As part of our HeartSmart activities this week, we completed our end of unit reflection from last term.

During science week, we have been busy completing two experiments. Our first one was creating tabletop glaciers. We used blue coloured ice cubes and pebbles. As Antarctica is home to some of the largest and oldest glaciers on Earth, we decided to show this and created our own glacier models. This represented the impact that water contact and changes in temperature have on glaciers and how they shape the landscape around them. We learnt that if the entire Antarctic ice sheet melted, sea levels would rise by about 60 metres! Our second experiment was about the water cycle. One fact we learnt was that our Earth has been recycling water for over 4 billion years!! We now have a good understanding of the process of the water cycle so we decided to make our own mini water cycles. We used a clear plastic cup, compost, water, cress seeds and placed some clingfilm over the top of the cup. We cannot wait to observe our mini experiments!

Dr. Cocks came into school as part of science week to tell us all about his role as a sports scientist. He told us all about the positive effects of exercise on your whole body. He discussed lots of different ways of staying healthy and then had a go at a short exercise ourselves and looked out for body changes, like breathing, heart rate and the redness of our skin. Thank you to Dr. Cocks. You inspired our children and the staff! Children, would you like to be a sports scientist when you grow up?

In our second PE lesson this week, we have used hockey, football and basketball to practice shielding. We started with a game that relied on good peripheral vision as this is important when trying to keep our bodies between the ball and our opponents.

In French this week, we continued to learn how to say the names for rooms in our house by playing a team game.

In our History lesson this week, we have learnt what life was like in a Victorian prison. We took part in hard labour style activities and imagined what it would have been like for people day in and day out. We realised it wasn't a very pleasant life but we preferred this type of punishment to the brutal forms we had learnt about throughout earlier history.

We have worked amazingly hard to stay at the top of the TT Rockstars leaderboard this week and only have a a short amount of time left! Keep going Year 4!

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

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Morris and Mrs Pointon