Author: Miss Newman

This week, Year 4 have been writing their recounts about escaping a volcanic eruption. This links nicely to our volcanoes topic in geography this half-term.

A recount re-tells events and describes what happened.

Our R2s (remember to) were:

• conjunctions (subordinating and coordinating)
• impressive vocabulary
• past tense

Your children used these R2s when planning, writing and editing their recounts. I was wowed by the final pieces! Your children really put themselves in the shoes of an escapee and were able to write exciting and gripping recounts.

Help at home: ask your children to write a short recount of their day at school using conjunctions and past tense.

Coordinating conjunctions:

Subordinating conjunctions:

In Year 4, our current class novel is The Land of Roar by Jenny McLachlan.

“Everyone remembers their secret imaginary world…but what if you discovered that yours was real? When Arthur and Rose were little, they were the heroes of Roar, a magical world they invented where the wildest creations of their imaginations roamed. Now that they’re eleven, Roar is just a distant memory. But it hasn’t forgotten them.”

We’re all really enjoying it so far! It’s funny and full of action.

Your children have been sharing their opinions and making some predictions…

Wininja’s my favourite character so far because he’s so funny and his magic tricks are ridiculous.

I think Rose will end up joining Arthur in Roar, even though she thinks she’s too cool, because she misses him and her grandad.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen next but I think Arthur will  defeat Crowky and be able to save his grandad.

I’m excited to keep reading it because I don’t know how its going to end.

Help at home: ask your child to summarise what they’ve read so far. You can also explore some of the other books in the series.

   

This week, Year 4 have started column multiplication! I’ve been so impressed with how quickly your children have grasped it.

We broke the process into three key steps:

 1. Multiply the ones.

2. Multiply the tens and add any exchanges.

3. Multiply the hundreds and add any exchanges.

We’ve had a fantastic week in maths and look forward to seeing the children apply their column multiplication skills in worded problems next week!

Help at home: watch this video (column multiplication) of me showing you the column multiplication process and ask your children to complete these calculations:

• 532 x 7 = 
• 283 x 9 =
• 538 x 3 =
• 379 x 4 = 
• 247 x 9 =

In Living and Learning this term, we are looking at drugs, alcohol and tobacco. In Year 4, we discussed what a drug is:

A substance that changes the way the body or mind works.

To begin this topic, we looked at a range of medicines and household products and spoke about their benefits.

Medicines can make us better when we’re ill.

Bleach is good for cleaning the toilet so we can be more hygienic.

Soap is really important so we can wash our hands and body properly.

Calpol can help if you’re in pain for something.

We then discussed the importance of staying safe when using these products. We identified the risks of these items and how we can reduce these. I was really impressed to hear so many brilliant suggestions for how we can always stay safe when using these products.

Always put medicines and cleaning products up high or locked up so children can’t touch them.

Never take medicine that isn’t given to you by a doctor or a trusted adult.

Wear gloves when using bleach.

Always read the label on medicine to make sure you’re using it safely.

Help at home: talk about some household products or medicines you have at home and how you make sure you’re always using these safely.

Welcome back and happy new year!

In writing this half-term, we’ll be starting with a recount.

The purpose of a recount is to re-tell events and describe what has happened.

Our recounts will be about escaping a volcanic eruption! We’ve been exploring some recounts this week to identify what makes a good one and your children have come up with some success criteria:

• impressive vocabulary
• thoughts and feelings
• description
• past tense
• adverbs
• adjectives
• different sentence starters

Help at home: watch this interactive video and ask your children to describe what they can see and what the person might be thinking and feeling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G7LUQS3X6E

We’ve come to the end of art topic and the children have created some fantastic collages based on Sir Christopher Wren’s or Dame Zaha Hadid’s architecture.

Throughout this half term, the children have been exploring a variety of media in our art lessons, such as using carbon paper, tracing and freehand drawing. They then used these different media in their final collages of a piece of architecture designed by either Sir Christopher Wren or Dame Zaha Hadid.

We made sure to think about the composition of our collages before beginning to stick the pieces together. They came out brilliantly!

Have a happy and healthy Christmas break!

For the final week of term, we’ve been reading The Santa Trap, written by Jonathan Emmett and illustrated by Poly Bernatene.

This story’s all about a very naughty boy called Bradley. Each year, Bradley only gets socks from Santa which he’s not happy about. So one year, he decides to set up an enormous santa trap!

Year 4 took on the role of Bradley in our hot seat lesson. Using information and hints from the book, the children had to answer questions from the class from Bradley’s perspective. There were some very convincing Bradleys!

How does it make you feel when you only get socks at Christmas?

Why do you think Santa only brings you socks every Christmas?

Your parents do so much for you, why are you so ungrateful?

Do you think trapping Santa was the best way to get more presents?

How does it make you feel that your plan to trap Santa didn’t work?

Will you behave differently next Christmas?

What were you feeling when you saw that you had more than a pair of socks in your stocking?

Help at home: recreate the hot seat at home and ask your children some of the questions above.

Every Friday, we do Philosophy Friday.

Philosophy is thinking deeply about the world around us.

Each week, we have a philosophical question that we discuss and share our answers to. This week it was…

‘What is so great about the world?’

It was fantastic to hear some really brilliant and mature ideas from your children. I loved seeing how they respectfully listened to each other and built on others’ opinions and ideas.

Here are some of your children’s responses:

I think what is great about the world is that we’re all unique and different with different opinions.

I think a great thing about the world is that we can play football and do hobbies we like.

I think the world is great because we can just have fun and learn stuff.

I think what is great about the world is that we have family and friends.

I think the best thing about the world is that we can travel to different places because the world is so big and we can meet new people.

My favourite thing about the world is when people listen to others and then great things happen.

Help at home: ask your children some philosophical questions from this article. https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/feb/14/philosophical-questions-children-should-ask-bernadette-russell

This week in maths, the children have been multiplying by 10 and 100.

We’ve discussed how when we multiply a number by 10, all the digits move one place to the left and we put a zero in our ones column.

When we multiply a number by 100, all the digits move two places to the left and we put zeros in our tens and ones columns.

When writing our multiplication expressions, we must remember they are commutative (you can swap the factors around and get the same product).

• 3 x 100 = 300
• 100 x 3 = 300

Help at home: ask your children to complete these multiplications and explain their processes.

• 30 x 100 =
• 6 x 10 =
• 904 x 10 =
• 55 x 100 =
• 42 x 10 =
• 13 x 100 =