Author: Mrs Freeman

I’m sure you will agree – this week has been a fairly tricky one! It was great to see the majority of the children return to school today.

Over the next few weeks, Year 3 and 4 will be very busy rehearsing for their production. This takes place in the last week of term. We’d like all the children to learn their lines and the songs. Next week, your child will bring home a letter informing you of the costumes they will need for their part. Please don’t worry if you can’t provide some items. However, it would be much appreciated if you can search through your wardrobes and help us with this.

So far, the singing from both classes has been superb and we’re really looking forward to the children putting on a good show for us all to enjoy!

Many thanks.

Scientific enquiries are what children do in order to answer scientific questions about the world around them.

What are the benefits of scientific enquiry?
As children carry out scientific enquiries, they  develop a host of skills and competencies, knowledge and understanding, bringing enormous benefits to them as growing scientists.

Scientific enquiry increases children’s capacity to:

• problem-solve and answer questions
• work with independence
• ‘be a scientist’
• communicate effectively

One way to work scientifically is to carry out an observation over time. In Year 4, we are doing this using two amaryllis bulbs. The children are observing and recording information on a daily basis. This involves measuring, recording, observing changes and watering if needed. Each day, the observation generates questions.

What happens if…

“Predict what you think would happen to the growth of the plant if we added some plant food.”

Over the half term holidays, the bulb, planted in stones, had a small amount of plant food added to its water. Year 4 made predictions about whether or not the food would make any difference to the plant’s growth.

• “I think the plant will grow a lot more as it is getting nutrients from the food.”
• “Why is the stem leaning?”
• “Do you think we can see rapid growth? How can you prove this?”

We studied the line graph and the children used great scientific language to describe the changes they could see. The purple line represents the the plant given food.

• “The plant that had food is growing rapidly now! I know this because the purple line is now moving up vertically and before it was quite steady.”
• “I wonder why the speed of the growth has changed?”

• “Do you think this speed of growth will continue?”

Bulbs before half term and…

…after half term!

This afternoon, Year 4 came face to face with some fascinating creatures. We held and learnt about a range of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and mini-beasts. This was a real hands-on experience and every child was shown how to handle the animals with care and respect.

Welcome back to what is set to be a very busy half term indeed!

With links to our current topic and history, the Year 3/4 production of Darwin Rocks, is set to be a must see!

With booming beats, groove-filled guitar anthems and a dubious dress-sense, a theatre company from the distant future pays tribute to history’s most famous advocate of evolution in an adventure of discovery.

This story is about the work of Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist who changed the way humans viewed themselves and the world around them through his amazing ideas on evolution and natural selection.

Auditions to begin next week.

Darwin Rocks coming to a school near you soon!

In our writing lessons. we’ll be looking closely at traditional stories with a big focus on the type of language used. These all-time classics will also form the basis of some reading sessions. Year 4 will be acting out and retelling some of these great tales.

The children will investigate the styles and voices of traditional story language and identify typical story themes, such as good over evil.

As we have an upcoming competition, for PE, we’ll be mainly working on our skipping skills. Some of these are quite technical and will take time to learn. It was great to see lots of the children investing in a skipping rope at school.

Topic ‘Life Forces’

On Monday, the whole school have an onsite workshop.

Meet a Creature, an exciting animal-handling workshop, is coming into school.

The Year 4 workshop will be focused around  predators and prey.

Pupils learn the terms predator, prey and producer and make links between plants and animals in the form of food chains. Children will discuss the different diets of animals and learn how herbivores eat the plants and then they are eaten by carnivores, so the food (energy) is passed along the ‘chain’.

Photos to follow!

As always, please feel free to pop in if you have any queries. We’re always happy to help.

Using our current topic of ‘Life Forces’, we decided to theme this half-term’s cooking around it.

What could be nicer than a hedgehog bread roll?

These are a great way to introduce the children to the art of bread making. With this fun and easy starter recipe, these mini hedgehog rolls are the cutest bake we’ve ever made!

We have done a fair bit of cooking so far this year and the children are becoming very confident in all the skills needed. These include staying safe in the kitchen and the need for good hygiene. Year 4 were able to weigh and measure the ingredients, and then could follow the recipe well.

Next, came the hard part – kneading the dough!

Using their knuckles, the class worked hard to knead the dough for five minutes. There were a few aching arms after this!

We discussed that when making yeast bread, the kneaded dough has to have some rise time. During rising, the yeast ferments (‘eats’) the sugar and develops the dough. Rising also improves the flavour and texture of the bread.

After kneading,  we rounded the dough into a ball and left to rise for an hour.

When the rising was complete, the children set to work on shaping their balls of dough into hedgehogs. Using a pair of scissors appeared to be the best way to create the spikes.

Finally, with two eyes and nose, the little hedgehogs were ready for the oven.

The finished product – healthy, fun and of course cute!

In Year 4, we regularly chat and remind the children of the importance of staying safe online. This afternoon, we had a discussion about some of the potential issues that could arise when using technology.

We used this video to remind us of all the safety problems and how to solve them.

Another useful site is  www.thinkuknow.co.uk.

There are age-appropriate activities on both these sites.

Ask your child are they SMART:

Today, we welcomed three university students who are currently studying medicine.

They gave a very informative talk to the class all about the digestive system. The children asked some great questions about the varying functions of different organs during the digestive process.

It was interesting to find out about each organ and the crucial role it plays breaking down the food, keeping the food we need for our bodies and getting rid of the waste!

Year 4 have been learning all about fractions and their equivalents. Some children were finding this concept quite tricky in class. We’d like the children to revise fractions at home and below is some useful information and ideas to support your child.

All children in Year 4 are expected, by the end of the year, to be able to recognise and show, using diagrams, families of common equivalent fractions.

What is a fraction?

A fraction represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half and three-quarters. The numerator (the top number) represents a number of equal parts, and the denominator (the bottom number), which cannot be zero, indicates how many of those parts make up a unit or a whole. For example, in the fraction 3/4, the numerator, 3, tells us that the fraction represents 3 equal parts, and the denominator, 4, tells us that 4 parts make up a whole.

This is a cake with one quarter removed. The remaining three quarters are shown. Dotted lines indicate where the cake may be cut in order to divide it into equal parts. Each part of the cake is denoted by the fraction 1/4.

Using a fraction wall to help to visualise equivalents is a very useful tool.

Using this wall, it’s clear to see that ½ is equivalent to 2 quarters. Can your child write and draw three more fractions that are equivalent to a half?

Following some fluency work, we then look at some reasoning skills to show a deeper understanding…

A pizza is cut into 8 slices.

Zara says, “If I take half of the pizza, and my brother takes 4 slices, we will both have the same amount.” Is she correct? Convince me by using a diagram.

Ideas to help at home

• Cut fruit and veg into pieces of equal amounts and look closely at the sizes of each piece. How many are equivalent to a half? Children find it hard to see that the larger the denominator, the smaller part.
• Ask word problems to secure understanding. If I had 48 grapes and my friend ate a quarter, how many grapes did my friend eat? Prove it!
• If ¼ of a packet of Jelly Babies is 7 sweets, how many are there in a whole packet?
• How many eighths are equivalent to one quarter? How do you know?
• How many eighths are equivalent to three quarters? Draw a diagram to show how you worked this out.
• True or false? Four sixths are larger than one half. Prove it.

There are fraction related activities on Mathletics that will also help your child to further their understanding.

Last week, the children were asked to show what they’ve learnt about habitats or food chains.

Yet again, the standard of homework produced was excellent and so very creative. Ranging from food chains made with paper links to lifelike habitats, Year 4 had the lot!

All the staff are constantly amazed by how much effort the children put into their homework. It is always a pleasure to see the class celebrate and share their work with each other. There are lots of great examples of homework below. Well done, Year 4!

We began our topic lesson today with some Liquorice Allsorts on our desks. Why, we hear you ask?

The children were asked to work as a group to sort the sweets according to clear characteristics that can split the specimens into two new groups.
They had to think of some questions that may help them to sort and split the sweets. The children thought about the following characteristics or features:
• structure (layered, encased in a shell)
• shape
• size
• colour

Using the idea of a flow chart, we began to group the sweets. The children tried to make their questions interesting and ensured that they always needed a ‘yes’/‘no’ answer, for example, ‘Is the sweet a primary colour?’

Next, our aim was to recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways.

Using the same idea as before, the children had to generate questions that only had a yes/no answer, such as:

• Can the animal fly?
• Does it lay eggs?
• Does it have feathers?
• Is it a mammal?
• Does it breathe air?
• Does it live in water?
• Does it live on land?

The class were able to create their own animal flow charts to group the various creatures.