Welcome Back

 

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to Year 4. We hope your child had a happy and enjoyable half term break and are ready for the second half of the Autumn term. 

Upcoming Dates

Tuesday 5th November - All children return

Thursday 7th November - Rugby festival. Children were given the opportunity to nominate if they would like to take part in this and those children chosen have been informed. Please note that there will be no swimming for those children remaining at school. 

Tuesday 12th November - Lion's Roar presentation to the rotary club and Mayor of Dorchester

Friday 15th November - Children in Need

Monday 25th November - Inspired writing week 

Friday 20th December - Last Day of term 

Shakespeare 

This week the children will learn what Shakespeare play we will be performing in February. From this term until the performance week, the children will have weekly drama sessions with Razzmatazz on Friday afternoons. We anticipate that Ellie from Razzmatazz and Ms Browne will be conducting auditions for the main roles of our play in the next 2 - 3 weeks, although we will share more information about what to expect shortly. 

Home Learning

We have been really impressed with the home learning that has been returned so far this year. Helping your child establish good home learning habits and routines really helps with the transition to middle school. In addition to the weekly home learning task, we strongly encourage your children to practice their spellings, times tables and to read (and record in reading records) regularly.      

To help reinforce the maths learning in class, year 4 will also start trialing Power maths maths games. On Thursday the children will practice logging on and will come home with their Power Maths games login details. For details about how to login please click here. The games this week will be based on rounding which is what the children are currently studying.

This week's home learning task is a grammar quiz. The children will come home with paper copies but and online version can be accessed here.   

The children in Ms Browne and Mrs Bernard's groups will also come home with spelling this week:      

Ms Browne's group 

Mrs Bernard's group

RWI spellings and personal spellings are also on spelling shed which we recommend as an interactive way for your child to learn spellings. 

Year 4 behaviour and communication

It was wonderful to meet with many of you during our parent evenings last term. Ten minutes can fly by, so if you'd like to arrange additional time to discuss your child's progress at any point throughout the year, please don't hesitate to reach out.

In Year 4 and across the school, we are focused on helping children learn how to communicate and conduct themselves with kindness and respect. We believe that these behaviours are essential to their personal and academic success and, as with any skill, they need guidance and practice—both at school and at home. Through our PSHE lessons and weekly assemblies, we work to develop the skills and character our children need for a positive future.

Our Relationships, Behaviour, Discipline, and Ethos Policy is designed to promote prosocial behaviours while addressing any challenges that may arise. We can only address less desirable behaviours if we're aware of them, so we encourage you to keep us informed. If your child shares any incidents or concerns with you, please feel free to email Ms. Browne, Mrs. March, or Mr. Spracklen. This will help us log and address issues in a timely manner.

Thank you for your continued support as we work together to foster a safe and nurturing learning environment for your child.

Kind regards,

The Year 4 Team. 

Harvest Celebration this Friday

 

It is our harvest celebration this Friday (18th). It will start at 9.15 and should finish around 10am. Following the assembly parents and carers are welcome to try some biscuits that the children have made. This should only be for around 5 minutes directly after the assembly. 

Due to unforeseen circumstances there was no home learning given this week. We would still love it if your child could continue to find their Autumn creativity (if they haven't already) as well as continue to practice spellings, times tables and read regularly.  

Upcoming dates

Friday 18th Oct - Harvest Festival assemblies KS2 9.15 - 10am

Monday 21st Oct - Early Parents' evening

Thursday 24th Oct - Late Parents' evening 

Friday 25th Oct - Last Day of term

Wellies for Friday, Home Learning and upcoming dates

 

Hello everyone,

I hope you and your child had a relaxing weekend after their successful residential last week. The children were amazing and should be very proud of themselves.

Food, Faith and Farming weekend has started with lots of related activities this week and next. On Friday of this week children should attempt to come to school dressed as a WW2 evacuee for our farm evacuation experience. It has been very wet recently so please ensure that every child has some mud-proof boots or wellingtons please.

Homelearning

A hard copy of this week's home learning should be coming home today (apologies for the one day delay). As well as regular reading, practising times tables and spellings, children have been challenged to be creative and create something related to Autumn. 

 

Spellings

The children have been given their RWI spellings and they also have their own individual spelling lists. 

I strongly encourage children to regularly practice their spellings, on spelling shed if possible although I can provide additional paper sheets as required.

There are other activities on spelling shed but the optimal way for spelling practise in below:

Upcoming dates

From Monday 7th Oct - Food, Faith and Farming fortnight

Friday 11th Oct - Farm visit as a WW2 evacuee (dress up)

Friday 18th Oct - Dress as a farmer

Friday 18th Oct - Harvest Festival assemblies KS2 9.15 - 10am

Friday 18th Oct - Autumn Fest 5 - 7pm

Monday 21st Oct - Early Parents' evening

Thursday 24th Oct - Late Parents' evening 

Friday 25th Oct - Last Day of term

    

Home learning information and residential update

 

Hello everyone,

We have a busy and exciting week ahead of us with our popular writing workshop "The Bank of Dreams and Nightmares" on Tuesday and our residential trip from Wednesday - Friday. When packing for our residential, please can you label any snacks/ treats that your child may want to bring. It would be particularly helpful if they were in a plastic bag, container or a zip lock bag. Food items always need to be collected by staff to avoid pests in dorm rooms but it is particularly important where children in the class have certain allergies. 

Home learning

This week's home learning is for the children to continue to work on their TinkerCAD creations for their ROAR projects. Mr Spracklen has created a helpful youtube video which should help explain how to access TinkerCAD logins. You can find this link here. 

I understand that it is not always possible to complete the main home learning activities but I strongly recommend regular reading, spellings and times table practice wherever possible. The effects of regular practice cannot be overstated.  

Spellings

We have been in an assessment period during our spellings sessions identifying those words from years 1, 2 and 3 that the children still need to learn. The children have been tested on 130 words and now have their own personalised and individual spelling lists. 

Today the children were sent home with the first 20 of these spellings to learn. In class, the children will have two mornings per week where they will also be given time to work on their own personal spellings. I am only giving children 20 spellings at a time from their lists to learn but will give parents the full list at parents evening (I can email these before at your request)

 

I am also in the process of uploading the full list of all of their individual spellings onto Edshed/ Spelling Shed. With each list being individual to each child it is quite a time consuming process but I hope to have this done by the end of next week at the latest. 

After Hooke Court, the children will also be given new RWI spellings which they will be tested on weekly or fortnightly (dates will be on the sheets).   

Children will not be tested on their personal spellings until January 2025 although it is hoped that children will regularly practice their personal and weekly spellings as often as possible. 

Upcoming Dates 

Tuesday 1st October - The bank of dreams and nightmares

Wednesday 2nd - 4th October - Residential

From Monday 7th Oct - Food, Faith and Farming fortnight

Friday 11th Oct - Farm visit as a WW2 evacuee (dress up)

Friday 18th Oct - Dress as a farmer

Friday 18th Oct - Harvest Festival assemblies KS2 9.15 - 10am

Friday 18th Oct - Autumn Fest 5 - 7pm

Monday 21st Oct - Early Parents' evening

Thursday 24th Oct - Late Parents' evening 

TinkerCAD: Year Four Home Learning Help

Today in Computing, Year Four enjoyed using TinkerCAD again. Across the class, we are starting to develop some CAD enthusiasts while others are still getting to grips with what you can do with this powerful piece of software. 

One of the fantastic features of TinkerCAD is that you don’t need to start from scratch—you can take an existing design and ‘tinker’ with it! For this week's home learning, Mr Spracklen encourages pupils to find a design they like and make their own modifications as part of their #ROAR2024 project.

Once finished, pupils should share their final design by uploading it to Google Classroom or by emailing Mr Spracklen the .STL file (export to > .STL).

Mr Spracklen explains the task in more detail in the Y4 Home Learning Help video here: 

Trip to the Museum

 Hello Year Four Families

We had a wonderful time at the County Museum today. The children learnt about different habitats that animals live in. Animals big, all the way down to microscopic! They used magnifying glasses to investigate creatures close up.

We then had a chance to go down into the basement which was a real privilege, The children got to see where specimens are kept and how they are preserved and looked after. It really was amazing down there!

Back up in the museum we investigated how birds use different shaped beaks to eat different things. The children took on roles as spoonbills, tweezerbills, pegbills and scissorbills. It was interesting to see what they could collect and they learnt how different birds eat different things depending on their beaks. 

Lastly, we found out how a range of scientists collected information about their findings. We learned that many used field journals to do this. The children then had the opportunity to make their own.

We had a fantastic morning at the museum . . .  and beat the rain home!

I am sure the children will have lots to tell you about their trip today and will enjoy sharing their field journals with you this evening.

The Year Four Team

#ROAR2024

On Friday 20th September we welcomed Bill from the Dorchester Lions Club into Year Four to formally launch our #ROAR2024 project -

2024 is the ninth year of Lions ROAR. This inspirational competition is run by the award-winning education company, 8BillionIdeas and Lions Clubs British Isles. 

The unique Lions programme aims to inspire children and young people to think big and dream bigger about their ideas! 

For more information, please see: https://lionsclubs.co/MemberArea/home/lions-roar/.

Today, we followed up Bill’s input with a Computing session focused on idea generation and exploring what it means to ‘prototype’ -

We worked in our #ROAR2024 booklets to complete the following statement -

The problem my idea will solve is…

Future lessons will see us prototype our solutions in TinkerCAD.