"Buzz! Buzz!"

Well done to the whole of Year 4 for making a tremendous effort with your spellings this week - without exception!!!!!! Keep practicing your personal times tables - they are soooooo important to make links across all areas of numeracy! Mathletics will help you - there are fun times tables songs on the home page.
We have a very busy week ahead, preparing for Harvest festival - artwork, singing and cooking, our Nothe Fort Trip (Very exciting!!!!), examining the results of our science experiment (or should I say "eggs....periment!!!") - the effect of acid on your teeth, brass lesson, a tennis taster session on Wednesday as well as finishing our evacuee stories in Literacy and subtraction strategies/problem solving in Numeracy!!!!!
Incidentally please come in to the class room where the children have been working on a colossal blitz picture, which has also been recreated in the main school, on the Year 4 display board, as a backdrop for the opening chapters of our evacuee stories.


A call out again for any volunteers to listen to readers on a day and time which suits you!!!!!!!!
Another plea for any unwanted but good quality books for our Year 4 reading area.

Thanks

The Year 4 team

Autumn Fest - "Read all about it........"

Come and spend quality family time, wrapped up warm and cosy, enjoying wonderful stories, warming yourselves by a bonfire, listening to music, eating scrumptious jacket potatoes........if you want to bob for apples, enter a carved pumpkin into a competition or take part in some Autumn art then why not have a go too!!!!!!! There's lots of family fun to be had at POWSA's Brand New Autumn Fundraising event - "AUTUMN FEST"...........Look out for posters around the school, letters will follow with options to buy tickets and food attached! We would love to see you all there......... "Celebrating Autumn, celebrating Families and Supporting the School."

 

No end to our talent in Year 4!

 

We were all very excited today, awaiting the arrival of Mr. Penfold for our first brass lesson! We were introduced to our instruments (I have a trumpet!) and instructed how to look after it and not to fiddle with it if something is not right - Mr. Penfold will fix it! The children were transfixed, amused and excited - we have to practice, with the mouth piece only, making a siren sound, saying/blowing "tu tu" into it and trying to blow a tune of our choice (using the "tu tu" technique). The way to get a sound is to purse your lips and blow a raspberry, but NOT to puff out your cheeks!!!!
My neighbours will love me 0 I don't know about yours? I'm sure, with the wealth of talent in Year 4, sweet melodies will drift out of our class room before long!

Spellings and x tables went home in book bags today - choose one spelling list to learn - homophones! The children should have circled the x table they are learning for next Friday - A BIG WELL DONE to all of you who tried your very best to learn spellings and x tables this week - they were tricky words!

Still time over the week end to write your play time warden letters and hand them in for an extended dead line of Monday morning!

Request: If any one has any childrens books that they no longer read or want, and that are in fairly good condition and age appropriate, then we would love them in school for our class reading area ( or if you have any appropriate for lower year groups they would appreciate them too!) We are in the process of creating exciting, inviting, inspiring and cosy reading corners in each class.

Thanks, have a great and tuneful week end!!!!!

Year 4 Team :-)

Brain Power!

Yet again our learning has rocketed through the roof.................
Numeracy has seen us learning about multiplying and dividing whole numbers and decimals by 10, 100, 1000 etc, understanding what happens to the number (getting 10, 100, 1000 times bigger or smaller) and seeing how the number moves places using 0 as a place holder.

We immersed ourselves further into the life of a WW2 evacuee by watching a clip from Good Night Mr. Tom followed by some very moving drama today. This generated a huge amount of vocabulary ready for the first installment of our WW2 evacuee stories..........I can't wait to read them!

We continued our second dance lesson learning the Cha Cha - the children were amazing - exercising mind and body.........as well as working with a partner! We will be learning The Waltz and hopefully The Jive (maybe The Quickstep) all with a view to having a WW2 Tea Dance with a VE Day party towards the end of our topic! (Get practising........we would love you to come but you must dust off your dancing shoes!)

RE saw us beginning to explore Hinduism - The Tri Murti and the many deities (Gods and Goddesses) - we were learning that although there is one God in Hinduism, there are many "faces" or "sides" to God. We also learned the story of Ganesh (the elephant headed God) and how he got his head - gruesome stuff!!!!!

In Science this week we began learning about teeth - the names and function of the different teeth - we used a tasty digestive biscuit and a mirror to help us investigate! Mmmmmm!

I hope the spellings and x table practice is going well?

Well done to Eliza, Alexandra, Amber and Zoe for your EXTRA home learning - SUUUUUUPER impressed! :-)

A call out, again, for any volunteers to help listen to children read - please pop in and let us know if you can!

Reminder: Playtime Warden letters need to be in to me by Friday, however I will allow an extension of Monday 23rd September - please please consider applying - we need you!!!!!! Thank you to all those of you who have applied - your letters are of a very high standard!

Keep up the hard work!

Year 4 Team

Playtime Warden Poster

Playtime Wardens………..we need you!!!!!!!!

If you would like to develop your leadership skills and self esteem as well as leading the top of the school then please apply for this job.

You will be required to help with peer mentoring duties on the playground during playtimes, one day a week.

Please write a letter to me, Mrs. Johnson explaining why you think you would be suitable for this job. Letters need to be handed in to me by Friday 20^th September with interviews to follow.

Please apply – you will be great!

A blog or a novel???? :-)

 

Where to begin..........????? A busy Year 4 has begun!!!!!!!!!! We launched into our World War 2 topic this week, carrying out research and note taking in a cross curricular way, with the aim of producing an information leaflet using Publisher on the computers. As you can imagine this requires a vast amount of skill, acquiring knew knowledge, skimming, scanning and interpreting information as well as other writing skills and ICT skills........I have been really impressed at the focused, hard working and resilient attitude with which they have approached their learning, making great progress already!!!!! This enthusiasm for learning has also rippled through Numeracy, RE, ICT, Art, Dance, Reading and general Year 4 responsibilities. I will keep you posted with all the other wonderful cross curricular learning taking place and hope to include some examples of their fantastic leaflets on a blog!

Trip
Advance warning of our trip to The Nothe Fort Evacuee experience on Monday 30th September. In order to make this a fun and authentic experience, we would ask that the children come to school dressed as evacuees on that day. A letter will follow shortly.

Home Learning
Get your designer heads on and make a World War 2 Gas Mask Box - What will it look like? What will you make it out of? How big will it be? IMPORTANT: You will need to wear it round your neck on our trip to The Nothe Fort so it needs to be in school by Friday 27th September.

  
Spellings and times tables will be sent home on Friday. Spelling tests will be on a Thursday, tables tests will be held on a Friday.

The children have recorded their new mathletics, purple mash and reading eggs details into their new home learning diaries. Thank you for all your feed back so far in the diaries I have read!

Requests
Mr. Farrington was super impressed with swimming today!  Just a reminder that all children need to wear a swimming hat, thank you.

Please could all children have water in their bottles for the classroom - juice or squash is fine for lunch times, thank you!

Finally, if there is anyone who would like to come in to Year 4 to listen to readers at a regular time convenient to yourselves, we would really love to see you - just pop in and let me know! We are really keen to promote a real enjoyment of reading and that all children are confident fluent readers before leaving the school!

Sorry for the VERY long blog, but sooooooo much to celebrate!!!!!!!

(The Playtime Warden poster is up in the cloakroom - so please apply! I have had some superb applications already!)

Thank you from a busy, buzzing and bustling Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Thomas

Proud!

Just to drop you a quick line as I had to let you all know how fantastic every single child was today - they should be very proud of their attitudes, behaviour and their excellent role as Year 4 buddies to the Reception children! They really have helped them to settle in and have demonstrated what kind natured children they all are (Year 4 that is!)

There will be a a poster appearing in the Year 4 cloak room next week advertising a new job of "Playtime Warden". This is an exciting job which is new to The Prince of Wales School and which will bring a sense of achievement, responsibility, self esteem, leadership skills and respect to anyone who applies. If the children would like to do this job, they will be asked to write or type a letter of application to me explaining why they think they will be good at this job and why they would like to do it. I am really excited about this opportunity as I think this class will be brilliant at it and I hope that you all apply for the job!

Spellings and times tables will be set next week to learn for weekly tests, the children will also get new reading books and home learning books. I will write in these books after each guided reading session.

Well done Year 4!

Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Scott

Welcome back Year 4 Police Force!

Welcome back and a very warm welcome to Year 4, where you will meet myself, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Thomas!

It was lovely to meet many of you this morning - if not a little chaotic - if you didn't get a chance to say hello, then please make yourself known to me over the next few days as I would love to meet you all!

We had a fantastic first day and I am sure they are all very tired!!!!!!! There was lots of information to take on board as well as discussing our rights and responsibilities and using these to devise our class charter. The children, I am sure, will fill you in on all the many systems in the class and if they are not sure or you would like more information, then please come in and ask - the door is always open! :-)

 House keeping: We try to encourage independence as much as possible in preparation for their Middle Schools so we would kindly ask for you to encourage the children to bring themselves into the classroom and settle in - unless, of course, you need to speak to myself - I am also happy to arrange appointments to meet for a more convenient time. There will also be a board in the cloakroom for you to write who your child is going home with if it is different from the norm!

I will blog regularly keeping you up to date with home learning, spellings and any general information as well as exciting learning taking place in the classroom.

Make sure you ask the children about our visitor this morning!?

See you soon - Year 4 information morning is Tuesday 19th September, 9:10 in the hall

Mrs. Johnson