Author: Miss Newman

We are coming to the end of our fractions topic in Year 4. I’ve been so impressed with your children’s maths this unit – they’ve wowed me!

This week, we’ve been looking at adding and subtracting fractions with the same denominator.

When the denominators are the same, to add the fractions we must add the numerator.

When the denominators are the same, to subtract the fractions we must subtract the numerator.

We’d previously learnt about converting between improper fractions (fractions where the numerator is greater than the denominator) and mixed numbers (a whole number with a proper fraction). Your children deepened this knowledge by applying it into their addition and subtractions.

 

Help at home: ask your children to complete these addition and subtractions:

This half-term in PE, we’re doing netball!

Netball is a fantastic sport for your children to practise a variety of different skills (e.g., passing, catching, shooting, defending etc.).

This week, we began exploring some different ways we can pass the ball in netball – chest pass and bounce pass. We recapped our ‘pass and point‘ technique which we used in rugby. When you release a ball during a pass, your fingers should end pointing towards where you are aiming. This is a great technique to ensure an accurate pass.

Help at home: if you have a ball at home (any ball will do) practise some chest and bounce passes with your child. Remember, you must not move with the ball!

As part of our health and prevention focus in L&L, today Year 4 learnt all about allergies.

We began by answering the question: What is an allergy?

An allergic reaction happens when a person comes in contact with something that their body thinks will be harmful to them (called an allergen).

We discussed how all our bodies are different and something that may not harm us could make somebody else very poorly.

There are 14 main food allergens:

It’s important to remember that even though we might not see an allergen in our food, doesn’t mean it isn’t in there. To make sure we’re being careful and only eating foods which are safe for us, we must always look at the packaging. The main allergens are always in bold so it’s clear for us to see.

Your children then had the challenge of reading through some recipes and highlighting any allergens that appear.

Then, we discussed some signs of allergic reactions and what we should do if we suspect somebody is having an allergic reaction.

Mild/moderate signs:

• itchy skin rash
• tummy ache or being sick
• puffy eyes or lips
• itchy/tingling mouth

Serious signs:

• difficulty breathing or noisy breathing
• difficulty swallowing
• feeling dizzy, floppy or sleepy

Help at home: watch this video (until 3.22) and discuss these questions with your child. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFAbgaHg26U

• What happened?
• How did Max feel?
• What was the hospital worried about?
• Why did Max’s body react this way?

This week, we’ve been reading the poem ‘Walking with my Iguana’ by Brian Moses.

We began the week by exploring the poem and discussing vocabulary we were unsure of. We then watched the poet performing his poem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoqCyDyc5Rc). While watching, your children noted down what made Brian’s performance so good.

He had a good rhythm.

He got the audience involved.

He had good voice projection and was really clear.

He used some actions.

He had good prosody.

Alongside our oracy (speaking) targets, we used these to come up with our own R2s (Remember Tos) for our performances.

In groups, your children rehearsed the poem before performing it in front of the class. It was great to see how confident and creative your children were and there were some fantastic performances – well done Year 4!

Help at home: read the poem (or choose a different one) and ask your children to perform it to you while thinking about their oracy (speaking) skills.

 

Every Friday, your children bring their reading records with a completed activity to our Book Club sessions. This week, the children were asked to do a fact file all about a character from their book or the author.

I love getting the chance to see and hear about all the brilliant reading your children have done over the week.

A reminder of the reading record key info:

• Each week, the activity your child must complete is given on the homework sheet. More information on these activities are inside the record. If you are ever unsure which activity it is, please ask or choose a random one!
• The children need to bring their reading record in every Friday for Book Club where we discuss their books and develop their love of reading.
• The children’s grown-ups also need to sign and write a short comment about the lovely reading their child has been doing at home!

Any questions, please ask!

Help at home: continue to read daily with your child and sign their reading record to share this.

Today, Year 4 were learning all about electricity in science. We spoke about…

conductors: a material that allows energy to flow through it

insulators: a material that does not allow energy to flow through it.

Your children worked in small groups to sort a variety of objects into conductors of electricity and insulators of electricity. They had some brilliant discussions while trying to reason why an item must be an insulator or conductor.

The plastic cup must be an insulator because we know the outside of a wire is plastic and that’s an insulator.

The metal objects are conductors because the inside of wires are metal and electric fences are made of metal.

What they found…

Conductors:

• coin
• key
• nail
• paperclip
• metal sharpener 

Insulators:

• rubber band
• plastic cup
• newspaper
• mug
• glass

Then, we discussed why insulators are so important. They keep us safe and protect us from the electricity flowing through devices. Without insulators, we would get electric shocks when using electrical devices.

Help at home: walk around your kitchen and ask your child to identify different conductors and insulators of electricity. Ask them to explain how they know.

This week in L&L, our statement was…

I can find solutions to different problems.

Before we try to solve a problem, we must recognise what emotions that situation is making us feel. Often, these emotions make things difficult for us because our brains are not very good at problem solving when our emotions are very high. Therefore, the first step of problem solving is trying to regulate our emotions.

Some of your children’s suggestions for regulating our emotions:

Take deep and slow breaths.

Listen to some relaxing music.

Do some colouring.

Go for a walk outside for some fresh air.

Talk to a trusted adult.

Write your feelings down.

Once our emotions are regulated, our mind is a little bit clearer and we are able to think of more appropriate and effective solutions to our problems.

Year 4 then became Agony Aunts. They were given two problems and had to work together to come up with suitable solutions to these.

I was really impressed by your children’s mature and responsible solutions to these problems. It was brilliant to see that they all knew the importance of speaking to a trusted adult whenever there’s a problem.

Help at home: practise some emotion regulation techniques with your children. Read through these problems and ask your children to come up with some solutions:

• Jalisha and her best friend Ella, both wanted the part of Cinderella in the play but Ella got the part.
• Daniel’s family are moving to Australia but he is really sad because he is going to miss his friends.
• Tom’s friend did better than him in the spelling test and keeps talking about it at break time.

This half-term, Year 4 are computer programmers!

A computer programmer is someone who writes instructions, called code, that tell a computer what to do.

Your children have been using Scratch on the iPads to demonstrate their programming skills. On Scratch, you can program sprites to do a variety of things like move, change costumes and make sounds.

A sprite is a 2d character in a computer game.

Your children worked with  a partner to  program three different sprites to move in three different ways. We had some really creative ideas like an astronaut floating through space or a fish swimming underwater. It was great to see your children thinking like computer programmers and building some really effective programs.

I’m looking forward to seeing how their programs develop over the next few weeks!

Help at home: visit the Scratch website (https://scratch.mit.edu/) and practise programming. Can you get your sprite to talk? Walk? Change costume?

Here are the target pages for this week’s group reading. These need to be read by Friday 21st March. Your child’s reading record activity needs to be completed based on the pages they’ve read.

65-storey Treehouse: up to page 83

The Accidental Secret Agent: up to page 43.

Chatty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again: up to page 43.

Chatty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon: up to page 53.

The Twins at St Clare’s: up to page 23.

An Elephant in the Garden: up to page 56.

Help at home: read these pages with your child and sign their reading record activity.

This morning, Year 4 have been making Bruschetta in food technology. We were very impressed with their knowledge and skills at each stage of the recipe and the final products were fantastic!

The main skill we were practising in this recipe was cutting safely with a knife. Your children used two different cutting techniques: bridge and the claw. They used these confidently and safely.

• We used the bridge to safely and securely cut the tomatoes into smaller chunks.
• We used the claw to cut the basil leaves up into small pieces.

Then, we peeled the garlic and used a garlic crusher to squeeze it into our tomato and basil mixture and give it a good stir. It’s safe to say the room (and your children) smelt very strong!

Once all the ingredients were combined in a bowl, the final challenge was to spoon the Bruschetta mixture onto the sliced and toasted baguette without making a mess.

Finally, your children got to dig in to their Bruschetta and enjoy all of their hard work! Almost all of them loved it. We had some very happy chefs, rating it a 10/10!

Help at home: remake the recipe at home with your child. Could you add something new: onion, avocado, ham or cheese?