Year 4 update including Chinese New year & Fitness February (dress up day)

 

Hello everyone,

I am struck by what an incredible class the current year 4 are. It has been an unusual week, with various staff absences but the children have worked hard and behaved impeccably. It is such a privilege to watch the class mature and develop in their final year of POW. 

This week, the children have written some super stories, deepened their understanding of multiplication and learnt about Sikhism and emailing. At the end of the week, I was blown away but their acting as we continued rehearsals for A Midsummer Night's Dream. A big thank you and well done to those children (and their  supporting families) that have started learning their lines. This makes a massive difference in rehearsals and allows the children to focus on their acting. 

Home Learning for this week is for all children to learn their lines as well as learn their spellings and play times tables rockstars please. In the year 4 parent information session some parents asked for paper times tables booklets for children to use at home. If you would like a booklet please email me and I am happy to send one home with your child. 

We have another busy and exciting week ahead next week. On Monday, the children will will have a Chinese New Year workshop (in preparation of Chinese New year on Tuesday).

Tuesday is the first day of February and again we will be running our popular Fitness February event. Just like last year, children and their families are invited to get more active and share the kilometers they have travelled on the Fitness February form. Again, classes will be comparing kilometers travelled and the collective distance travelled by the school and preschool will be plotted on a map with the aim of travelling further than last year. 

Tuesday is a sporting dress up day where children are invited to dress up in their preferred sporting clothes to celebrate and launch a month of fitness and exercise.   

Next week, the class will be rehearsing the play scenes in earnest with the hope that by Friday we can start whole class rehearsals. We are hoping to order T-shirts for the children so if you could let the children know what size T-shirt they are for Monday that would be helpful and appreciated. 

As ever, if you have any questions please get in touch.

Kind regards,

Ms Browne & the Year 4 team. xx

Supply Teacher Reflections

 A note from our supply teacher, Mr Spracklen -

Wow! What an inspiring day of learning we have had in Year Four.

We began the day continuing (and in most cases finishing) our cold story task from yesterday. In our story we were asked by Ms Browne to -

- Use correct punctuation 

- Have at least two characters 

- Have our characters talk to each other

A calm, focused writing environment led to some excellent pieces of work being produced. At the end of the lesson, we were all given the chance to read another child's piece of work and leave a positive post-it note to encourage them as writers. 

After break in Read, Write Inc. we explored how the suffix ‘-cian’ is used instead of ‘-sion’ when the root word ends in ’c’ or ‘cs’. These words gave us much food for thought -

We also read, answered comprehension questions based on a challenging Shakespeare extract and even sneaked in a quick game of Wordle -

By line three... the whole class were gripped! 

After a tasty lunch (Gammon Roast) we were back for an afternoon of Computing and RE.

In Computing, we explored '2Email'.

2Email is a completely internal email system and your child cannot get email from outside of Purple Mash. It has been developed to provide a safe environment for children to learn about email. It has various settings that are controlled for safeguarding purposes.

Please see the below guide for more information -

During our '2Email' lesson a live 'spam scenario' email was introduced. Some of the children fell for the bait while one child came to an adult and said "I don't know who has sent me this email" (which is exactly what we ask the children to do - tell an adult). 

We used the scenario as a learning and discussion point.

Finally, we ended the day with an RE lesson focused on Sikhism. We explored with Mrs Scott the story of Guru Nanak and the Boulder. 

It was a pleasure teaching Year 4 today. Ms Browne is expected back tomorrow.

Mr Spracklen

  

Last week and Next week

 

Hello everyone,

I hope you are well and have had a good week and are looking forward to the last full week of January.
Last week we continued to work on our Shakespeare play, it is wonderful to see the children's confidence and expressiveness grow. All scripts were sent home on Friday for the children to start familiarizing themselves with their role. They will need to memorise their lines by the 16th February but for now if you could support them by helping them read unfamiliar words that would be wonderful.   

Children should have black leggings/ joggers and black (or dark) long sleeved T-shirts and black plimsolls for the performance please.

The children enjoyed making electrical circuits and we will do more of this next week with a greater problem solving element to the activities.

Last week, we were looking at perimeter in maths and I noticed some children were using fingers to calculate number bonds within 10 and 20 (that is number that are added together that make either 10 or 20 or are no more than those numbers). This is something I will focus on in class, but just like having a fast recall of times tables a secure knowledge of number bonds will help your child tackle more complex mathematical problems. Hit the button is an online game that can help children practice their number bonds or you may like to verbally give them numbers to add together to develop their mental arithmetic. 

Home learning.

This week's home learning is to 

- start reading their MSND script (these need to be brought back into school everyday). 

- practice spellings. The super speller groups are changing this week so there isn't a spelling test on Monday but children can still practice their spelling shed spellings. Awesome orthographers and Spelling bees have their own spelling lists. 

- mathletics.

- times Tables Rockstars. 

- regular reading. 

Coming up this week:

- This week we will continue to rehearse our play.

- In guided reading, we will be exploring the life of William Shakespeare.

- In literacy, we will be learning how to punctuate direct speech with inverted commas and other appropriate punctuation. With this knowledge, the children will convert their MSND cartoons into a story. 

- In maths, we will be multiplying and dividing multiples or 10 and 100 and multiplying by 1 and 0. 

- In RE, the children will learn about Sikhism and the importance of sharing. 

- In Art, we will be colour mixing. Learning jwo to mis secondary and tertiary colours. 

Don't forget on Friday it is our Virtual Disco!!

As ever please get in touch if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

Kind regards,

Ms Browne & the Year 4 team. 

   

A week of Shakespeare

 

Hello everyone,

Our Shakespeare unit has well and truly begun! We had a wonderful visit to the Weymouth Pavilion where the children were able to experience how it will feel to be on stage and they got to go behind the scenes and learn about the history of the Pavilion. 

Throughout the week, the children have been continuing to find out more about our play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. It can be a little confusing when you first read or listen to the play so if you would like to watch the BBC cartoon adaptation with your child this may be helpful (the children have watched this in class). We will be continuing to understand the story further next week. A link to the film can be found here.    

This afternoon, all children that were in school were told their parts for the play. It was very tricky to cast and there was lots of demand for just a few roles. As the children may have explained, some of the larger parts will have two children playing them and our narrators will have the important role of also acting as understudies for those children without an acting partner.

The performance date is fast approaching and so if you haven't already booked your ticket you may want to do so by visiting the Weymouth Pavilion website directly. 

For the performance, I would like the children to wear black or very dark long sleeved t-shirts and black leggings or jogging bottoms with black plimsolls please. The school will be providing coloured T-shirts to go over the long sleeved tops. If you anticipate any difficulty sourcing these items please contact a member of the year 4 team as soon as possible please.   

Home Learning - click here
For this week's home learning I would like the children to continue practicing their times tables and spellings as well as reading and accessing mathletics. Their reflective task is to complete a worksheet on perimeter which we have been studying in class this week. Here is a reminder of how to calculate it should they need one.    

Don't forget to apply to Middle School
The deadline for applying to middle school is tomorrow Saturday 15th January 2022. If you haven't already, please click here to apply.  

As ever, if you have any questions, comments or concerns please contact me by email in the first instance or talk to a member of the team.

We all hope you have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Ms Browne and the Year 4 team. 

First week of 2022

 

Hello everyone,

We hope you had a lovely Christmas break. The children have come back to school beautifully. They have been full of enthusiasm and energy and it has been wonderful to have everyone together. 

This term our main topics will be Shakespeare, Multiplication and Division and Electricity. In PE the children will be doing cricket on Mondays (please feel free to send in leggings, joggers and sweatshirts to keep them warm) and Gymnastics on Thursdays. Our PSHE topic will be dreams and goals and in year 4 we will be focusing on measurable individual learning targets for each child which will change every two - three weeks. 

Urgent action needed.

Please could all parents and carers complete the online pavillion attendance form that was emailed to you today (Thursday). This is for our trip on Monday 10th and for our February performance.   

Home learning. (click here for link)

This week's home learning project encourages children to look around the home and recognise the household appliances that use electricity. We would also like them to continue to practice their times tables regularly, read daily and also practice their spellings. We have been trialing an online spelling program with the children that they seem to be enjoying. They will come home with their logins tomorrow although they should also have their hard copy spelling sheets. 

As ever, if you have any questions or concerns please get in touch. 

Kind regards,

Ms Browne, Mrs Hall, Miss Street, Mrs Thompson and Mrs Burgess. xx