Science: classification keys
We are biologists!
This half-term Year 4 are learning about our second unit of biology:
Living things and their habitats!
As part of this topic, your children have been revisiting classification keys. Classification keys are used to sort living things according to their characteristics.
We discussed what makes a good classification key question…
It must be a closed (yes or no) question.
It must be about an observable characteristic.
It must not be based on opinion.
Year 4 have been using and creating classification keys to help them identify a variety of unknown animals and plants.
Help at home: go outside (in your garden or local park) and pick 4 different plants. Can your child create a classification key to sort these plants?
Topic and Writing: Leeds West Indian Carnival!
What is journalistic writing?
Journalistic writing is like a newspaper report.
The purpose is to tell the news.
We’re going to be writing an online news article about the Leeds West Indian Carnival. We’re learning about the carnival in our History topic at the moment so we know loads about it! A carnival is a festival that is made up of processions, dancing, music and costumes.
Help at home: Ask your child who founded the Leeds West Indian Carnival? How old was this person when they immigrated to Leeds? How did they feel when they moved here, welcome or unwelcome?
Our news article is going to include:
- a headline
- subheadings
- main facts
- history of the carnival
- quotes
Visit this website to research more about it: https://leedscarnival.co.uk/
Check back here to see how the children get on with their news article…
Living and Learning: hydration
This week during Living and Learning, we’ve learnt about the importance of hydration.
Our body is nearly two-thirds water, so drinking enough fluid to stay hydrated is important. Water is essential for life, and it is important to get the right amount of fluid to be healthy.
We can get fluids from many different liquids:
- Water is a great choice because it hydrates us without adding sugar or potentially damaging teeth.
- Milk is a useful source of nutrients like protein, B vitamins and calcium, as well as being a source of water.
- Fruit/vegetable juices and smoothies provide water plus some vitamins, minerals, fibre and natural plant substances from the fruit. However, they are also high in sugars!
Hydration is especially important this time of year because of the warmerweather (which we’ve been very lucky with lately!) We’ve been bringing our water bottles out with us during lunch times for this reason.
We then did a Kahoot quiz to test our knowledge…
See how you get on with these questions!
Help at home by tracking how much water you have in a day. Children should have around 1 litre of water!
Living and learning: healthy eating
This week, we’ve looked at what makes a healthy diet, an unhealthy diet and the associated risks of poor choices.
First, we had fun creating a meal plan full of unhealthy choices. We discussed how skipping meals, high fats and sugars and not eating a balance of the food groups across the day is bad for you. We also discussed the importance of drinking enough water.
Next, we discussed risks associated with poor diets.
Finally, we created a much better, healthy meal plan for the day. We wanted to include a balance of the food groups, based around fruit and vegetables, carbohydrates and some proteins.
Maths: Line Graphs
This week in Maths, we have moved on from perimeter and area and are now looking at statistics. Last lesson, we drew line graphs. Lots of children find this very hard but we broke it down into 4 easy steps to remember.
- Draw and label the horizontal axis. (Remember the horizon is a horizontal line!)
- Draw and label the vertical axis. (Think about the intervals!)
- Plot the points.
- Draw a line to join the points USING A RULER!
Help at home: Draw a line graph and plot these points.
Reading: Class Novel
This term our class novel is ‘Letters from the Lighthouse’ by Emma Carroll.
This book is about Olive and her brother, Cliff, and her sister, Sukie, who goes missing in an air raid bombing. Olive and Cliff are sent away as evacuees to live on the Devonshire coast to keep them safe. Olive must try to solve the mystery of her missing sister using a coded note she found.
We have really enjoyed this book so far and have loved being sat outside whilst we read!
Help at home: Have a discussion about with your child about what they like/dislike about the book so far. Can they summarise the text? What impression do they get of Olive/Cliff/Sukie?
Herd Farm adventures
One of the reasons we take the children on a residential visit is to find out more about the children outside of school as well as the obvious opportunity to experience the adventurous activities. This year was no different – we see a whole different side of the children and even found out that some move around in the splits!
It was an amazing visit and the children were fabulous. There were hesitations and nerves about some activities but nobody refused to do anything and a lot of them surprised themselves. This is what they got up to..
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A huge thank you to Miss Newman and Mrs Charlesworth for giving up their time (and sleep!).
Until next year!
Grammar Games 2025
This week, Y6 have been embroiled in the hotly anticipated Grammar Games 2025. Each day has seen the children take part in a variety of tasks all related to grammar.
We’ve looked at punctuation such as apostrophes, commas and hyphens and we’ve recapped grammatical terms such as conjunctions, tenses and Standard English.
Each round, they totalled their points and worked out their table’s mean average to add to the leaderboard.
As we know, punctuation saves lives…
By the end of the week, we could crown our winners!
Help at home by asking your child which areas of grammar they’re confident with and which they need help with.
VE Day
Yesterday was VE Day which means that WWII ended in Europe 80 years ago.
Y6 took part in a webinar that was all about VE Day, why we should celebrate peace and our British Values.
You can remember the British Values (Individual Liberty, Rule of Law, Democracy and Mutual Respect and Tolerance) with the following memory aid: I Really Do Matter.
The British Values link to VE Day because people had fewer choices for food due to rationing and shortages, people were fighting to have our voices heard, people were sadly treated extremely badly and weren’t following laws.
Help at home by matching the four reasons above to each of the four British Values.
Latin: Roman Numerals
In each of our Latin lessons, we have a section called ‘Living Latin’. In this part of the session, we look at how Latin has impacted our lives today (for example, the derivatives of words).
Take a look at some of the way it has affected us:
Help at home: Take a look at the slides above, can you think of any other words that derive from ‘port’ or ‘form’?
The children have LOVED when we learnt about Roman numerals. Whilst they know each of these numbers would not be commonly represented like this, they have really enjoy trying to create different ways to make the numbers.
Help at home: Can you represent the numbers 301, 482, 792, and 148 in Roman numerals?