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!)