Learning this week!

Good evening,

A reminder: tomorrow is outdoor PE day (as long as it isn't raining!!!) Please make sure you have a warm kit - tracksuit bottoms, trainers and a sweater!!!!
Girls with long hair need to tie it back, especially in PE and also to eliminate the chance of catching/passing on head lice.

Well done to all of those of you who have brought in some BRILLIANT William Shakespeare inspired home learning - so many wonderful ideas and approaches!!!!! Another well done to all of you who completed your maths home learning super quick! Great prioritising!

We've moved from triangles and angles to strategies for solving problems - we will be learning written methods for division over the next week so be prepared for home learning and chunking!!!!!!!

The children wrote some very powerful persuasive letters to Lord and Lady Capulet expressing their opinions reinforced by facts from the text! Great stuff!!!!!
This week we will be embarking on Shakespearean sonnets!

In science we examined the results of the egg/teeth experiment and discussed why and how this happened and what the effect on our teeth would be.

The children have been busy cooking away ready for our French cafe on Thursday 12th February - the school is being filled with wonderful smells on a daily basis! Don't worry we will be sending home some conversational sheets to practise!

See you tomorrow!

Mrs. Johnson and the Year 4 Team.

Learning and a request about swimming!

Good Evening Everyone!

This week we have been learning about quadrilaterals and properties of them, also learning terms such as parallel lines and perpendicular lines, also how you represent these on the shape. We will be moving on to symmetry in these shapes and next week focusing on triangles, angles and a creative assessment opportunity where the children will be able to apply their learning independently.

Our literacy saw us continuing our learning about apostrophes as well as drama and writing leading from Romeo and Juliet. We explored a scene from the story and created freeze frames, in small groups, we then had to flash back in time and then forward in time (using my magic time travelling dust) and create the new scenes - however we were able to change the course of events and were given the power to express our creativity by thinking "if I could change what happened, how would this have changed the chain of events?" We are now beginning to write our new versions, which I can't wait to read.

RE: We launched a collaborative learning project to span a couple of weeks, where the children are working in groups to produce their learning about Hinduism in their chosen format. They must show how Hindus show commitment to their faith and are using Espresso to carry out research.

French: We learned some conversational language that may be used when ordering things in a cafe. We then used french/english dictionaries to find the french words for a list of drinks that you may order in a cafe.

Science: Tomorrow we will be learning about the structure of the tooth and setting up an experiment to explore/test the effect different liquids/drinks have on teeth.

Geography: The Gambia : We will be looking at maps and locating the city and discussing the locality and the situation, expanding from last weeks learning about development and change.

We had hockey outside today - there were some children who did not have PE kits and some who still did not have tracksuits. Please can all children have their kits in school and warm clothes for outside PE if it isn't raining.

It was also brought to my attention that there were several children that had been dropped off at the pool today before any adults from school had arrived. This is concerning to us and would please ask that you wait with your child until a member of staff arrives. There is always someone there for 8:45so children do no need to arrive before this, also please remember that you can drop you child off at school just before 8:30 in the entrance foyer and they can walk up with Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Long.

I look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning, hoping that you are able to make it to the Spring Term information session at 9am in the school hall.

I am also looking forward to home learning coming in soon to add to our display and to share with the class!

Thank you,

Mrs. Johnson and the Year 4 Team

"Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo?"

A great start back and a super start to 2015!
It sounds like everyone had a lovely holiday!

We made New Years Resolutions on Monday during our Jigsaw lesson, having discussed what an exciting year it would be!

In Numeracy we have been learning formal written methods of calculation focusing on grid method multiplication leading to short multiplication.

In Literacy our grammar focus is the uses of the apostrophe. We also had a very dramatic and important job to do yesterday............investigating a crime scene! Not just any crime scene...........a multiple death!!!!!!! We used our inference and deduction skills to examine various clues. Today we discovered if our theories were correct and if we needed to make any arrests! We learned of the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet!!!!!! Everyone loved the story and were surprised at the turn of events and the many twists in the tale. We are looking forward to more work on R&J as well as reading some of the other works by William Shakespeare! (Home learning will be following this week-end relating to Mr. Shakespeare!)

Our Art and Geography is interlinked with learning about the Gambia this week. In Science tomorrow we will embark on a journey starting with teeth and our mouth! Our RE was launched this week with a debate where the children were split into groups and had to work as teams to develop arguments and opinions relating to the cause I had given them. We then held debates which, as you can imagine, were superb! Everyone took turns and maturely used debating language! This was in order to show understanding of the term commitment. This will lead on to learning about how Hindus show commitment to their faith.

In French we immersed ourselves in vocabulary relating to food, cafes, shops and buying/ordering food - we used espresso to listen to French conversations and the children enjoyed identifying and saying different foods. We will be focusing on this over the next few weeks leading up to our welcome to Europe topic and subsequent cafe!

Today the children were extremely fit, with swimming this morning and hockey this afternoon where they learned and demonstrated excellent developing skills - control, movement/dribbling, passing and stopping. I look forward to continuing this love the next few weeks and hope we can get outside!

Home learning, spellings and times tables will all be sent out on Friday!

Any questions about the learning this week, then please ask me or, indeed your children who should be able to tell you all about it (numeracy for example!).

2015!!!!!

Happy New Year everyone - here's to a fun-filled, exciting, happy and healthy year!

Thank you once again for all the lovely, generous gifts - my cups have been endlessly filled with tea, chocolates and biscuits gobbled (exercise now needed!), decorations hung, earrings worn, socks snuggled into and bubble bath relaxed in..........thank you, I hope you all had a wonderful time and I can't wait to hear all about your holidays tomorrow!

Running club starts back NEXT Tuesday morning, parent information session NEXT Thursday morning @ 9:00 in hall, swimming starts this week and PE will be outside weather permitting so WARM TRACKSUITS needed and trainers that may get muddy. Those of you who are continuing with clarinet lessons will need to have them in school on Tuesday THIS week!

I will blog tomorrow with an update of our new topics...........I don't want to give too much away!!!!!

Mrs. Johnson x