Welcome Back Y4 (07.11.25)

Welcome back, everyone! I hope you all had a restful and fun-filled half term. It’s been so lovely to see your smiling faces again, ready for a brand new half term full of exciting learning and adventures. You’ve come back with fantastic energy and enthusiasm, and it’s been great to see you jump straight back into our lessons with such a positive attitude. Let’s take a look at what we’ve been up to this week!

In Maths this week, you’ve explored lots of different strategies to deepen your understanding of number. We began by revisiting some key number facts using an addition grid, and you did a fantastic job spotting patterns and making connections. You then tackled scaling problems, using what you already knew to solve challenges involving 100 and 1000. Later in the week, we focused on finding complements to 1000 using multiples of 25, which was tricky at first, but you showed brilliant resilience, using number lines and tens frames to support your thinking. Finally, you used your place value knowledge to add and subtract efficiently, and lots of you found that counters and column methods made things clearer. You worked really well both independently and with your partners. Great teamwork and determination all round!

In English, we have carried on writing our newspaper reports. At the start of the week, we recapped what we had done before half term and then jumped back into planning and writing. You have worked hard and written beautifully. Well done!

In Book Club, we explored Viking and Anglo-Saxon kennings. We learnt that these are creative compound words that describe something in a poetic way. It was like solving riddles! We matched fascinating phrases like blood-ember and spear-din to nouns such as axe and battle. We were surprised by how descriptive these two-word phrases could be. By the end of the lesson, we all had our favourite kenning and a great appreciation for Viking poetry!

In our afternoon lessons, we started a new RE topic this week. For our lesson, we turned off the lights, pulled the blinds down and lit a candle. It was an unusual but very intriguing thing to do. We took a moment to think about what the light does to the dark. We talked about how it makes us feels safe and brings us comfort. We then learnt that you will be exploring why Christians call Jesus the "Light of the World" in this unit. W You shared some really thoughtful ideas and created some fantastic mind maps to show your understanding.

We also had our first art lesson this week. We did something very unusual – we creating a piece of artwork without actually drawing! How did we do this? Well, we did something called a sensory drawing. We used the end of our pencils to punch holes in paper which allowed us to create patterns. It was lots of fun and very usual!

We also started a new science unit this week. Our new unit it about states of matter. In our first lesson, we learnt that you can classify materials by sorting them into solids, liquids and gases.

In our History lesson, we considered how the Vikings should be remembered. Were they bloodthirsty raiders or hardworking settlers? We moved around different stations, gathering evidence to support various ideas: warriors, farmers, travellers, and more. Using what we’ve learned so far, we created visual organisers to show the many sides of Viking life. This helped us realise the Vikings were more than just invaders—they were people who adapted, farmed, traded, and left a lasting impact on Britain. It was great to see everyone's opinions backed up with historical evidence! We have also been finishing off our Black History Month work as well.

This week in our PHSE lesson, we explored how alcohol affects the body and behaviour. You started by building a set of ground rules to help us talk openly and respectfully, before thinking about what we already know about how different substances affect our health. Using photos of different drinks, you worked together to sort alcoholic and non-alcoholic options, and you learned that alcohol is actually a type of drug. In groups, you sorted cards to explore how alcohol can affect the body and our actions, and we talked about how these effects can vary from person to person. You showed real maturity during these discussions. To finish, you took part in a quiz to test what you’d learned and reflected on your new knowledge. It was brilliant to see how engaged and thoughtful you were throughout the session.
Hope you have a fantastic weekend,

Miss Pennance