Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!
Well done Year 4 you were ALL amazing in our Christmas production, a challenging show but I knew you could do it!!!!! You should all be very proud of yourselves!!!!
Thank you to all the TAs who helped support the show and create stunning props and special effects!!!! We are heading for the West End I think!!! :-)


Have a restful, relaxing and fun festive break!!!! Thank you also for your very generous gifts!!!!
I will be thinking of you all on Christmas Day and hope all your wishes come true!

Thursday 15th January is our parents information session and there will be a news letter shortly after we return!

See you all soon-ENJOY!!!!

Mrs. Johnson and the Year 4 Team

Mixed up shoes (boys')

Dear Parents,
One of the boys in Year 3 has come home wearing shoes of a different size. Both shoes are the same model (black Clarks, 2 Velcro straps, green inner) but he has one 13F and one 2E. (Quite a size difference.) It seems likely that these have been mixed up with another boy's shoes;- who is likely to be finding one of his shoes a rather tight fit!
We have tried to sort this out at school, but without success. Please can you check your son's shoes to see if their shoes are mixed up too.
Many thanks,
Duncan MacBean

Lines!!!!

Well, I am pleased to say well done to all of you who have obviously been learning your lines and songs, I saw a massive difference!!! Keep "polishing" them and practise adding expression and volume to you lines!!! Still a couple of you who need to know your cues and be more secure on your lines!!! Some great costumes have started coming in-great! Thank you.....keep them coming please!!!!! We watched some of the "U" Christmas Carol today which was brilliant as the children could follow it and recognised their words!

Still a couple of days left for you to bring in your recycled Christmas decoration in-Thursday is the deadline!!!

In between rehearsals we have been finishing off newspapers and science presentations in the ICT suite!!!

KEEP PRACTISING!!!!!! :-)

Mrs. Johnson

Reminders for this week!

Reminders: I hope you have ALL been practising your words (not many people knew them last week which is leaving it a little late!!!!!!!) - both song and script!?

Costumes can start coming in on a named hanger please.

Thursday morning we are going to the Journey to the Stable.
Thursday is also the deadline for DT Christmas Decorations competition - Well done Georgia B who has put one on our tree!

Friday is Christmas technology day!

Year 4 Team

Costumes and learning this week!

And so the excitement begins.........

Tonight children came home with their costume note - please could they bring costumes in to school as soon as possible, on a named coat hanger then we can pop it straight on a rail! Thank you - if there are any problems with costumes please see a member of the year 4 team!

I would also really urge you to work with your child on practising their lines or song words - it makes rehearsing a lot quicker and smoother if they know their lines - this should now be their only home learning!

This week, in literacy, children have been set an open ended challenge to "show off" their literacy learning and skills so far this term. Having watched a short animation, they had to choose a genre of writing they have enjoyed this term and use the film as a stimulus to write in that genre - they had various elements to consider and include in order to show their progress in writing this term!
Numeracy has seen us embarking on a new challenge, using and applying our measuring skills in a cross curricular link with art. We learned about 2 historical mathematicians, Fibonacci and Pythagorus who investigated and discovered links between, sequences, measure and angles and patterns in nature - specifically the swirl! Children used their skills to produce art work based upon these theories! Impressive stuff! They will be displayed in our cloakroom when finished!

Pleas can I ask you once more, to consider if you child needs to bring in a large back pack to school daily because our cloakroom is very small and quite often, because of the amount of things hung on pegs, coats and bags end up all over the floor! This results in coats being trodden on or items being broken and also is a dangerous trip hazard! If they are able to just bring in a book bag and lunch box this would make a huge difference!

Finally, some children have come to school without coats this week, and as I am sure you will agree it has been VERY cold, so please could everyone have a warm coat, hat etc in school!

Thank you!

Mrs. Johnson

2014 DT Christmas competition has begun!

Design Technology Christmas Competition! This year the DT competition is based around making a tree decoration and all classes are welcome to take part! ·       Your decoration must be able to hang from a tree
·       It must be made from as many recycled materials as possible
·       You must have your name and class on a label clearly displayed.
·       What type of decoration can you create which make it unique from other decorations before?!

The closing date for this competition is Thursday 11^th December. Please take the decorations to the hall; we will be hanging them ready for judges and assembly!  Good luck!  Finally, we do accept parent help will be needed for this but it should be clear that the child has been involved too!

Thank you so much for your generosity!

Thank you so much to everyone that came to the Bring and Buy Sale on Wednesday. We were very grateful that so many of you donated some fantastic items that were no longer wanted.

 

Due to everyone's generosity on Wednesday and on the non school uniform day on the 14th of November we have raised over £340 for Children in Need!

 

I would like to say a big thank you to all of the staff and children that helped on the day. Well done!

 

Mrs Thorpe

Clarinet concert, Nothe Fort and learning.

Thank you to everyone who was able to come and celebrate the children's success and new found skills in playing the clarinet. I would like to reiterate how impressed I have been at their ability to learn so quickly, not only the physical ability to play but also learning the notes and being able to read music - EVERYONE! It was lovely to hear how inspire the children have all been to want to continue learning a musical instrument.

Our trip to the Nothe Fort was excellent. It was a really fitting way to end out topic, the children were able to show they new knowledge, secure understanding of existing knowledge and prior learning and also learn new things about Weymouth and WW2. Despite the weather the children were all enthusiastic and incredibly well behaved! Well done!

A huge well done to the children who played basket ball today, representing Year 3 and Year 4!

We began an investigation in maths, proving or disproving this statement "Tall people make the best athletes!"The children discussed this and have begun to plan how they will prove/disprove it tomorrow and Friday! In literacy we carried out interviews in order to gather information to be abe to plan and write a newspaper article based around the nativity - with a twist!!!!!

Finally, well done to Shannon who shared her gold medal and silver medal with us from a competition she took part in last week end - gold in floor and silver in vault.
Also Rocco earned a silver medal for 50m butterfly and a bronze medal for 50m freestyle in an inter-club gala at West Dorset Swimming Club!

Keep updating me on your personal successes out of school!

Thanks to our change in the use of photographs on the internet, I will be able to add photos to the blog, so watch this space!

Mrs. Johnson and the Year 4 Team

A few bits of information!!!!!

Hello Everyone!

There will be a note coming home tomorrow to remind everyone of a few bits and bobs this week.........

• Nothe Fort Tuesday - WW2 outfit, gas masks and packed lunches needed.
• Running Club - moved to Wednesday this week.
• Wednesday Bring and buy sale.
• Wednesday - 3pm small concert for Year 4 parents/families to celebrate our learning and progress playing the clarinet - in the pre-school hall........please come and support us!

Auditions were held last week for the KS2 Christmas Play - Ebenezer! Auditions were superb, I was especially impressed with the singing auditions - some hidden talents there!!!! Tremendous effort went into some of the auditions which was amazing - well done!!!!

Parts will be given this week and the children have already been issued with song words - home learning will be to learn lyrics and script parts - please encourage and support children to get learning - this will enable us to make rapid progress with staging if they know their words!!!!!!

I will be putting a slip out soon to see if anyone would be able to help form a small working party that could come into school on a set date and help with prop making! I envisage that this will be the week commencing the 8th December!

This week we will be writing our newspaper reports, carrying out a using and applying investigation in numeracy, singing practice and script reading as well as science - molecular structure of solids, liquids and gases - recognising, understanding and being able to explain that these can change.

See you all tomorrow

Mrs. Johnson and the Year 4 Team

Bring and Buy Sale- items needed please!

This Wednesday (26th) the Children's Voice have arranged a Bring and Buy Sale to help fundraise some more money for Children In Need.

 

We are hoping that you have been able to have a sort out of any unused, unwanted; toys, clothes, books etc ready for Wednesday.

 

Please bring any items for the Bring and Buy Sale to Mrs Thorpe in Year 1.

 

The hall will be open to parents from 3pm on Wednesday afternoon so that you can have a look around without your children! Then the sale will carry on until around 4.30pm (unless we have sold everything!)

 

Items will be reasonably priced from 20p- £2.

 

We hope to have lots to sell and raise as much as we possibly can for children who need our help.

 

Mrs Thorpe and The Children's Voice

Sorry!

I do beg your pardon!!!!!!!!

I meant to write in the last blog about our visitors last Thursday afternoon!
We were very lucky and privileged to be visited by Jenny and Granny Belle (Mrs. Thorpe's Husband's Aunty and Granny). Granny Bell's brother was the 2nd in command in the 617 squadron, chosen for the very dangerous and important mission - The Dam Busters. We learned all about John Hopgood, which was mesmerising. We learned of his incredible courage and bravery as he died during the mission, having tried to give his crew time to escape the burning Lancaster. Two survived thanks to him!

Truly amazing!
Thank you Jenny and Granny Belle!

Year 4

Still busy!!!!!!

Well, what an exciting day!

A huge "well done" to all of you who performed, greeted or spoke to HRH Prince Charles today. You were charming, polite, mature and really were good ambassadors for the school. I think he was very impressed with all of you! You can see photos and a video clip on the Dorset Evening Echo website - a true memory to treasure!

Thank you to Mr. Ray who came in last Friday to teach us more about WW2 and set us a very entertaining quiz! This showed how much you have learned - well done!

This week we are continuing our learning about journalistic writing and features of a newspaper. Today our grammar focus was understanding complex sentences - main clause and subordinate clause using "Gimme 5" to help! Ask your child about the "crab family" - Suzy and baby Alan (and the bit of fish hanging from his claw)!!!!!!!!!!!
In numeracy this week we are carrying out investigations and problem solving. Keep learning your x tables - we will be resuming those as normal this week!
In guided reading we are completing our reading comprehensions - it would be good if you could focus on inference skills when you are listening to your child read.
Clarinet is back to normal this week.

Don't forget that auditions for the Christmas play - Ebeneezer are being held this week so make sure you have prepared either a song (if you are auditioning for the singing) or a passage, poem or drama if you are going for an acting role!

See you all tomorrow,

Mrs. Johnson

Great Baking!

Good Evening Everyone!

I would like to begin by saying a HUGE well done to Year 4 for their tremendous cake baking home learning, superb dancing today and brilliant hosts! It was a really fun afternoon drawing our learning about WW2, nearly, to an end. I would like to thank all of the families that were able to support our party today, I know the children were really proud of their efforts and new skills and were really keen to show you - thank you for helping to create a wonderful memory for each child that will never leave them! WOW!

Last Friday, as I am sure they told you, we had a stone carving expert called Bec come in to work with us. You may have noticed a large piece of stone at the front of the school - Bec is going to set Year 4 a competition to create a design that she will carve onto it. She was so impressed with, not only their behaviour, manners and kindness but also their ability to carve Bath Stone cuboids. The children drew a design, then carved it and painted using acrylics. They are displayed in the corridor and the classroom - please have a look!

After composing WW2 themed Haiku and Tankas Monday and Tuesday, we are going to be learning about journalisitc writing. We will be having a big focus on spellings and handwriting across ALL writing from this week on - the pen licence tick list will be making an appearance too!!!!

In maths we are learning to read and interpret data. Keep learning those times tables!

We have 2 more visitors this week, so keep reading the blogs to find out more.............

NO CLARINETS THIS WEEK!

Well done again for some superb home learning!!!!!!

Thankyou to Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Long, Miss. Pearce and Miss. Howard for all their hard work today, setting up and serving.

Mrs. Johnson

Thank you!

Good Evening Everyone!

Thank you to all of you who were able to make it to parents evening - it was incredibly valuable and great to see you all! I will endeavour to tackle tasks that I spoke to some of you about, next week! If you were unable to make it then please come in and arrange an appointment with me - I think there were only 6 families I didn't meet!

This week we have been learning to understand and add/subtract through zero - using negative numbers! In literacy we have been creating fireworks poems, learning to use onomatopoeia and personification (ask your child to explain what they are!) - some truly amazing poems have been created!!!!!!!! In RE we began our new topic about how Christians use symbolism at Christmas. Our Science saw us finishing our electricity topic - as Isabelle put it "Mrs. Johnson, I thought Science was awesomely hair-raising!" (static electricity - great joke!!!) In French we learned more masculine words and are able to construct a sentence with an adjective.......C'est un perroquet bleu! (How do the French use adjectives differently to the English? Tell your family!!!!)

I hope you received the information about our VE Day Tea Dance Party on Monday afternoon from 2pm in the school hall. Home Learning was to make some fairy cakes/a whole cake, decorate it with a WW2 theme and bring it/them in on Monday morning. Please come along and join in the fun. Children also NEED TO WEAR THEIR EVACUEE OUTFIT FOR THE DAY.

Talents that we have seen in school this week include Georgia and Elise wowing us with their amazing recorder playing, Amy, Polly, Mollie and Georgia singing to us - very tunefully and confidently may I add (super impressed!) and Ben, Shannon and Erin singing and playing for us today.....keep the talent coming!

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Miss. Howard and Miss. Pearce to Year 4. They are PGCE students from Plymouth University who are spending 5 weeks this half term with us and 6 weeks after Christmas with us, teaching the class at various points beginning with small groups and lesson inputs, gradually working towards whole class teaching.

Thank you for all the wonderful Poetry competition entries - deadline tomorrow - I look forward to judging them!

Mrs. Johnson and the Year 4 Team

The Great PoW Poetry Competition

The Great PoW Poetry Competition.........

Roll up, Roll up, Roll up..................don't forget the Great PoW Poetry Competition is in town!!!!!!! A reminder that the closing date is this Friday, so you still have a week to get your creative master pieces in to your class teacher.

Check back on the last blog for details, remember the theme is Autumn/Winter, there are no limits, only to say - be as creative as I know you can be!!!!!!!!

I can't wait to read them all and choose a winner from each class!!!!

Good Luck!!!!!

Get writing if you haven't already!!!!!

A VERY excited Mrs. Johnson

On Your Marks, Get Set..............

Hello Everyone,

I hope you have all had a restful half term - refreshing yourselves for the exciting and busy Christmas half term!!!!!

Remember we are not back in school until Tuesday, also there won't be any running club this week as clubs all start back after he first week!

During one of our PE lessons we will be embarking on tag ruby so it will be essential that the children ALL have a warm tracksuit in their PE kits and trainers too as we will be outside weather permitting!

FYI - Next Tuesday the children will need to bring their WW2 evacuee costumes into school. In the morning we will be visiting the War memorial to lay our wreath and in the afternoon you will be invited to join us for a VE Day Tea Dance in the school hall from 2:30pm.

Clarinets continue for another 5 weeks so keep practising and watch this space for info regarding a small celebration concert.

A reminder that everyone should have water bottles in school and, in year 4, they are allowed to have them on their tables so they can easily drink when they need it! This is really important and does have an impact on learning.........those children that regularly have theirs in school are always asking to refill them during the day which is brilliant!!!!

Finally I look forward to meeting you all at parents evenings this week!

Mrs. Johnson

UNICEF Rights of the Child

Today Mr Farrington worked with Year 4 and showed photos and videos of children who have to work making bricks with their families in one of the richest parts of India. We talked about the fact that these children are denied their rights to an education, a decent home, medical care, clean water. We compared their lives with the children's and their rich opportunities to participate in school, community and family life.

POWSA AGM

Just a quick reminder that the POWSA AGM is happening this Thursday 23rd October 19.45 in the school staffroom.
This is a great opportunity to meet the current POWSA Committee, find out what we do for the school and enjoy home made goodies! We are a committed, friendly but small band of parents and we are always looking for new members. the level of your involvement in planning, implementing and running POWSA events is entirely up to you. We don't expect you to be at every meeting and at every event from start to finish but with more members and if we all do a little bit then there is plenty of time for us all to enjoy each event with our families as well as helping out.
It is a lot of fun and in return you receive a huge amount of satisfaction and feeling of pride that you have raised funds which are used to help all our children and our fantastic school.
Please consider coming along and finding out a bit more. Hope to see you there, POWSA.

This week so far........

Evening Everyone!!!!!

The endless talent just keeps pouring out of Year 4........Shannon gave us a demonstration of her gymnastics.....it was great for her class mates to see how much progress she has made - truly amazing!!!!! Rocco goes on to win MORE medals in another Biathlon this week end where he came 4th out of about 25 others across the South West and gained a silver team medal for The Dorst Pentathletes!!!! Wow!!!!!!! It also emerged today that Ben W is a self taught guitarist - he played for us and, literally, blew us all away!!!!!
Well done all of you!!!!!!

We began our Rights Respecting Schools week by exploring what gives us our identity, we then discussed and debated Wants and Needs to secure our understanding of what Rights are. We then started looking at a Unicef powerpoint linking several rights based around refugees from Syria, what a refugee is and why from Syria - extremely emotional and thought provoking - the children were superb showing great empathy, questioning skills and maturity. We will be continuing to work on these particular rights throughout the week, producing some powerful writing and art work!!!!

I will update you on the work during the week!

Mrs. Johnson

The Great PoW Poetry Competition!!!! Get Writing!!!!!!!

What a wonderful, exciting and inspiring time of year we are immersed in - beautiful autumnal colours, leaves floating to the ground and flooding the pavements, conkers peppering the streets, crackling fires, Diwali, Halloween, Bonfire Night, moving towards winter and all the excitement of Christmas............so let's fire up our creativity and use it to compose a poem!

I am thrilled to announce The Great PoW Poetry Competition!

The theme is Autumn/Winter.

BE AS CREATIVE AS YOU LIKE! Your poem can be as long or as short as you like, it can rhyme or not, you can use any particular style (Acrostic, Haiku, Tanka, rhyming couplets........) However you choose to construct your poem make sure it conveys the theme, remember the presentation of you poem is important too and why not illustrate it as well!!!!!

For Reception ONLY: if writing your own poem is a bit tricky, why not find a favourite poem about this theme and try to copy it, get an adult to help you write one, use a computer or even record yourself reciting one!

There will be one winner per class so, PUT YOUR NAME AND CLASS ON YOUR ENTRY AND HAND IT IN TO YOUR CLASS TEACHER BY FRIDAY 7th NOVEMBER.

The winners will also be displayed on the New Golden Writing Wall!!!!!

We are a very creative school with a bubbling and overflowing imagination so I would love to see as many of you as possible having a go...........then we can have more competitions like this!!!!!

Get writing!!!!!!!

Good Luck - Mrs. Johnson (Literacy Coordinator)

What have we been up to.........?

I think you'll all agree that Year 4 were excellent ambassadors for the school last Friday when they served at the Harvest Cafe - I thought you were all courteous, helpful and charming! Well done!

A huge "Thank You" to Mrs. Mystery-Dyer who came into our class last week and taught us all about the Hindu celebrations of Puja, home shrines and Thallis........it was fascinating seeing her home shrine and we all got to make our own group Thallis and learned how to worship - very magical!

The clarinet playing is going from strength to strength - it is very evident that you have all been practising and you are all showing an astonishing ability to read music. Today we learned some new songs - reading the music brilliantly, knowing the notes in a scale, playing a scale and learning note "A". Super work - keep it up!

A reminder that our class assembly is this Friday morning at 9:20 - I have asked the children to bring int heir costumes tomorrow so that we can see if anyone needs some help organising theirs.
You might be interested to know that the Scholastic Book Fair is in school at the moment - it will be open that morning so do have a browse if you haven't already had a chance to - the children did look round it today and some of them have large shopping lists!!!!!!!!! (Great for Christmas presents!)
FYI - during our assembly we will be showing pictures of our trip to Bovington, as a pre-warning some of the pictures show the children wearing gas masks - these masks are MODERN and TOTALLY SAFE - this was also made aware to us and all the children on our visit and we knew this from our visit last year!

Anyone that swam in the Swimarathon - if you have any sponsorship money please could you bring it in by the end of NEXT week - thank you!

We are looking forward to our themed Rights Respecting week next week!

There are still a few slots for parents evening in our cloakroom if you have not already signed up!

Let's hope we don't all have to practise being ducks in the morning on our way in...........

Year 4 Team

Stunning!

I agree Mr. Farrington!!!!!!
I have been well and truly bowled over by the home learning!!!!! I particularly like all the different ways you have approached the project showing us how you have been inspired and in what way you like to learn best! Very creative - the only thing that you wont be able to see is the food that some children cooked, inspired by WW2 rationing - yummy flap jacks, vegetable pie and rabbit stew!!!!! You are all amazing and should be very proud of your efforts - I hope you will use these skills in all your future learning (not just at The Prince of Wales!!!!)

Talking of food..........this week is our themed week "From Farm to Fork" - in our class we are learning about fish!!!!! We began by thinking about the health benefits of fish, and in particular oily fish. The children sampled 6 different types of fish, and were brilliant at trying them even if they weren't keen - super impressed - well done!!!! We spent time thinking about types of fish we eat, what they look like and how big they are!!! We will be exploring fishing around the uk and what fish you can catch where, as well as discussing sustainability. A great website you may like to explore at home =
www.school-of-fish.co.uk have a listen to the codcasts, learn facts, play games and lots more!
We have also been inspired by our fishy themed week to produce some watery/fishy art work and some fish themed poetry - these will all be on display on Friday for you to enjoy at the Harvest Assembly or Cafe. The KS2 assembly will be at 10 o'clock in the school hall, the cafe will also be in the hall from 2:30pm. Year 4 will be helping to serve at the cafe with Year 2.

A reminder that next Friday 17th is our class assembly - 9:20 as usual! I will send a slip home tomorrow just reminding everyone that the children will need an evacuee outfit for the assembly and that the home learning is to make a gas mask box.
4 week countdown to our clarinet assembly - the children really impressed all of us today by composing a 2 bar piece of music including notes, crotchets, quavers, semi-quavers with a 4 beat.........then we put each groups together to make a whole song - they read it and played it with great talent!!!!! It is called the "King of Clarinets".

Great achievements this week - Shannon did very well in her gymnastics competition last week-end, Stan was selected as Cub of the Week and had to do all sorts of tricky swimming challenges, and I believe 3 children succeeded in swimming in the deep end of the pool today which was a big achievement for them!

See you all tomorrow!

Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Long

Sensational home learning about the Second World War

If you haven't already done so, please take a moment to have a good look at the way that Year 4 children have responded to their home learning project about WW2! It is great to see the creativity and enjoyment that this challenge has stimulated. There is some fantastic work n display in Duchy Base and in the entrance foyer. Take a look!

Can anybody help?

On the 20th of October we will be having a Rights Respecting Week to celebrate 25 years of the UNCRC. 

The Children's Voice have decided that they would like to see some of the UNICEF articles of the Rights of the Child displayed in our school entrance. Each year group will be designing and making a flag portraying one of the articles. 

This is where we need your help! We are looking for some plain white flat sheets usually used for bedding that we could have please. As an Eco School we encourage recycling old unwanted items so was wondering if anyone has any old sheets that we could have for our project please. If so please can you either give them to your child's class teacher or pass them on to Mrs Thorpe in Year 1. 

Many thanks 

Evacuees!

Happy Thursday Evening Everyone!!!!!

We had a fantastic time at the farm today experiencing what it would have been like to be an evacuee on the farm..........fascinating stuff - thanks Hazel! The children loved it and learned lots!

I was so impressed in our clarinet lesson yesterday - the progress that has been made in 3 weeks!!!!!! All children are able to play notes E D C G and F as well as reading them. We played London's Burning in 3 layers!!!! Watch this space for our finale concert in November.

Thank you sooooo much to those of you who have come forward keen to take part in the swimarathon this weekend - even if you were not able to. I have been so impressed at your enthusiasm and your considerate attitude wanting to raise money for the chosen charities - well done, I am proud of each and every one of you!!! I am really looking forward to taking part with you on Saturday!!!!!!!

Have a good think of questions you would like to ask tomorrow on our trip to Bovington!

See you tomorrow!

Mrs. Johnson and the Year 4 Team

Whole school home learning

This week all children will be bringing home a whole school home learning project. We are really proud to be a Rights Respecting School and will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the UNCRC in the week beginning 20th October (more information to follow soon).

Article 8 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child:

‘We have a right to an identity’

We are going to be designing a school flag to be displayed at The Thomas Hardye School as part of our DASP Rights Week Project (starting on the 20^th October). We would like the children to design something we can add on our flag linked to our theme. One design from each class will be chosen by the Children’s Voice. It could be a picture they draw or suitable quote/words. Why are the children proud to be them? What makes them special? All entries to be given to class teachers by the 10^th of October.

Swim Marathon

Evening All,

Well, Shannon did well in her competition coming 4th - and 1st/2nd in some of her individual events out of some 30+gymnasts!!!!!! Finals this week-end!!!

We are about to finish our epic WW2 stories, which will be displayed from Wednesday, so please come and have a read! Moving stuff!!!!! We have been working very hard on our handwriting, presentation and appeal to the reader, therefore including fronted adverbial phrases, adjectives, adverbs, powerful verbs, exciting punctuation, similes.............wow!!!!

Our numeracy was multiplying and dividing by 10, 100,1000, 10000 including decimal points - we have cracked it!!!!!! Try it at home and bring some examples in to show me!!!

Last Thursday we had a visit from Professor Yamashita who came from Japan and was visiting some DASP schools to see our science in action! We were "buzzing" with electricity in Year 4, learning about atoms, electrons, positive and negative charge, circuits, universal circuit diagrams and static electricity. He was very impressed! The children also showed impeccable manners - well done!!!

FYI - a letter will be coming home about a forthcoming Swim Marathon for Year 4s to take part in if they can (it is this coming Saturday afternoon at 2pm for an hour - we would love as many as possible to come along!)
Farm this Thursday - so appropriate clothing as usual.
We are looking forward to our visit to the Tank Museum on Friday!

WW2 costumes - for our assembly on 17th October, out trip to the Nothe Fort and out VE Day Tea Dance, we would like all children to wear a WW2 evacuee costume. Use internet pictures to help you, use what you can find at home - don't go buying expensive costumes unless you really want to - its amazing what you can find in the local charity shops!!!!!

Thanks once again for your support!

Year 4 Team

Good Luck!!!

I will be blogging fully on Sunday, but I really wanted to blog now a really big good luck to Shannon who has a big gymnastics competition tomorrow!!!!! You'll be brilliant Shannon, try your best-we will be proud of you!!!!
Keep her in your thoughts!
I can't wait to hear how you do!!!!!

Good Luck!!!!

Anyone else who has any forthcoming events, please let us know!!!!!

Mrs. Johnson and The Year 4 Team

POWSA AGM Thursday 23rd October 7,45pm

We know AGMs are not terribly exciting but POWSA does fantastic work raising funds for the school and developing our sense of community. We need new ideas and new faces and new enthusiasm to join our friendly committee of committed parents. We welcome especially parents of new Reception children. Our AGM is on Thursday 23rd October in the staffroom at 7.45pm. Please come along, meet new friends, help the school!

Time to learn!

Hi Everyone,

We began today by recapping those fronted adverbial phrases and most children assessed themselves as having made progress in their understanding and ability to use them.

Fronted Adverbial is when the first part of a sentence is a subordinate clause (it wouldn't make sense on it's own) that tells us how, when or where the verb in the main clause (the part of a sentence which makes sense on it's own) happened. It is always followed by a comma before the main clause.

Last Saturday morning, I saw an elephant walking down my street!
Last Saturday tells us when the elephant was seen.

Trudging through the gloopy mud, Mrs. Johnson got her wellies stuck and fell over.
Trudging through tells us how Mrs. Johnson got stuck

In numeracy we learned how 0 is used as a place holder when multiplying or dividing whole numbers and decimals by 10, 100, 1000,10000 etc.

This Thursday we will be welcoming a visitor, Professor Yamashita, from Japan. He is visiting local DASP schools observing science lessons. We look forward to his visit.

Runners - remember appropriate clothing tomorrow, water bottles and an EXTRA snack as it is a long wait until lunch time at 1 o'clock when you have exercised so hard!

Don't forget clarinets to be brought in tomorrow for Wednesdays lesson.

Thank you to Sophie and Demi who had been delving into their family history and brought in fascinating WW2 artefacts and photographs! Really moving!!

Finally - Congratulations to Rocco who represented our school yesterday in a Biathlon and won a very shiny medal, coming in fourth! Brilliant! We are very proud of you!

Cheerio!

Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Long

Jumpers!!!!

P.s. I forgot to ask you all, please, to thoroughly check any blue school jumpers that you have because a couple have gone missing-one certainly since the second day of term!!!! Please ensure ALL uniform is named and bring in any that you may have belonging to someone else!!!
Thank you!

Mrs. Johnson

The Challenge Is On!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you Mr. Duncalf - we love a challenge!!!!!! No problem!!!!!! (Give us a couple of days!!!) Before I put you out of your misery as to what exactly a fronted adverbial phrase is, I will give the children another few days to explain it (they may need a bit more practice first!) - A tricky concept! With that in mind, as I will explain in the parents information session, expectations have risen and you may find there are more terminologies referenced and spoken about and I appreciate that these may sound daunting, so I will put together a pack that you can refer to to get yourselves up to speed. The children love nothing more than learning something that sounds like it will impress and confuse their parents!!!!!! This, of course, has made them even more enthusiastic to learn about them!!!! :-)

Clarinet was fantastic today, Mrs. Reeves was very impressed, as was I - superb progress in just 1 week! I could tell that you had been practising. Even the Year 4 Team are now going to be learning so we will ALL look forward to playing for you in December!

We began drama today based around the Blitz and are excited about writing stories set during WW2! Can't wait to read those! Keep your eyes peeled over the next couple of weeks because we are aiming to display them in the corridor!

I was soooooooo impressed with the runners who made it to running club on Tuesday - they were so enthusiastic, ran their socks off and are soooooo keen for more - they would like to aim for a long distance challenge at the end - possibly to raise money for school! It was also a brilliant way to start the day ready to learn! (I couldn't keep up Mr. Duncalf - I tried to look sporty instead!!!!!!)

See you all tomorrow!

Mrs. Johnson and the Year 4 Team!

That's the way to do it!

What an excellent start to the week Year 4!!!!! We demonstrated how creative we were when learning about fronted adverbial phrases this morning - see who can remember the ingredients and impress their parents!!!! In numeracy we were reading numbers in the trillions!!!!!!! Mind blowing!!!!!!! Our topic work saw us being incredibly focussed and resilient as we continued with using microsoft publisher to produce leaflets about WW2 - they are looking impressive and I can't wait until they are finished!
We worked on our spelling rules - suffixes and will continue to do so throughout the week. We will assess spellings after the test on Friday and I will decide if anyone needs alternative spellings!

A reminder to bring clarinets in tomorrow for Wednesdays lesson, as we do not want to take them to the swimming pool on Wednesday morning. Please stack them neatly in the music room before coming to class in the morning.

I am really looking forward to seeing those of you who signed up for running club in the morning - wear tracksuit bottoms if it is chilly and trainers, plus a suitable top depending on the weather - a water bottle will be an essential - I will meet you ready to start on the gang plank at 8:15 - if you arrive a little bit before you can drop your things off in the classroom/cloakroom!

Lets keep up the great work Year 4!

Mrs. Johnson

First swimming lesson for Year 4

I was very impressed with the children in their first lesson in Year 4. For some, it was their first experience in the large pool and deeper water. They all did really well and I am very pleased with the progress they have clearly made since the start of Year 3! Well done!

A splashing start!

Mr. Farrington was very impressed at the enthusiastic start Year 4 made to their first swimming lesson this school year! Well done!

As promised, the poster advertising the post of playtime warden is up and I have already had 5 letters of application!

Job Description: mediating  and helping to sort out play time "fall outs" between friends, assisting the adults, helping children that might be sad or lonely at playtimes by either cheering them up, starting a game or finding them a friend to play with, guiding children in to the toilet and encouraging them to go straight outside to play afterwards so that no one is left in the cloakrooms.

If you think you have the skills or qualities to do this job then please apply by writing Mrs. Johnson a letter explaining why you would be good at it. It needs to be in by Monday 15th September and interviews will be next week!

This is a VERY important job and we need you! It would be lovely to have as many of you apply as possible. You will only be on duty for one day a week.

We have launched into our WW2 topic with great excitement and interest - some people have brought excellent books in from home and have also carried out some independent, self initiated home learning already! Wow! A particular well done to Eliza and Amy!!!!

We also began our clarinet lessons today which was brilliant - I know some of you were concerned about the clash with football club - Mrs. Reeves, the teacher, has kindly agreed to move the lesson to 1:30, so everyone will be happy!

Unfortunately I had to speak to the class today about some of the behaviour that I witnessed during this lesson, where several children did not demonstrate very good listening skills or respect for the teacher and I was quite surprised - I reminded the children of the class rights and responsibilities that they had chosen and agreed upon and that all people, including adults, deserved to be treated kindly and with respect. We will be focussing very closely on attitudes for learning and general behaviour over the next couple of days and I would appreciate it if you could reiterate this at home!

Thank you for your support and cooperation.

Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Long

FYI

Good evening,

Keep your eyes peeled for a poster advertising the playtime warden job, tomorrow. I will blog it tomorrow evening as well.

FYI: We will be listening to each child read individually this week, so please could all home school diaries be in school every day. Every Friday there will be a spelling test and a x-tables test. The children will be given their spellings the  Friday before and they will also be told which x-table they need to learn. The first spellings will be sent home this Friday and I will be assessing x-tables knowledge this week before deciding who needs to learn which ones!

This Wednesday we will be having our first music lesson run by Dorset Music Service. The children will be learning the clarinet, they will bring it home on Wednesday and will need to make sure it is brought back to school every Wednesday morning. This is a fantastic opportunity and I know they will learn a lot and thoroughly enjoy it!

See you all tomorrow!

Mrs. Johnson

Welcome!

                                     


Welcome back everyone! We hope you all had a restful and fun summer holiday! It seemed to whizz by...........at least the good weather looks like it might linger - fingers crossed!

Well, the Year 4 Team are very excited and raring to go..........the next couple of days will be focussing on team work and the set up of our class, the room, how we want the year to be, how we learn, expectations and responsibilities. You'll be in need of a good sleep by the week-end!!!!!

By Friday you will all have new reading books, home learning diaries, and information about home learning and spellings etc.

Watch this space for an imminent job advertisement! I would love for as many of you as possible to apply for it! (children!)

Can't wait to see you all tomorrow, to hear about all of your holiday news and I also hope you will give a warm welcome to a new class member in the morning!

Sleep well!

Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Long - The Year 4 Team
(us!)

A Very Fond Farewell!

The end of an amazing Year and the end of an era too!

I knew we would have a super year! Fabulous children, great fun and learning and brilliant support from fantastic parents and families - put it all in the cauldron and the magic spoke for itself!!!

A spell was cast and now 31 sparkling, confident, mature, polite, independent, hardworking and enthusiastic young individuals are taking their next step on the way into the big wide world!

Children, believe in yourselves, take everything you have learnt with you and follow the 7 c's!

We are so proud of each and every one of you, seeing your achievements and watching you reach your milestones and goals over the years, we will always remember you and think about you - remember we will always be here for you!

All our love and luck, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Brown xxxx