Reading: reading poetry out loud.
This week in reading we’ve been reading the poem ‘Matilda who told lies and got burned to death.’ We have explored new vocabulary as well as comparing the poem to stories and tales we’ve heard before. The week culminated in the class breaking into pairs to learn and then perform the poem to their peers. We thought about what makes a successful performance, including volume, tone and pace of our voices. After a bit of practice, we were able to perform the poem excellently.
Help at home by practising reading stories and poems out loud. This will help when we are given a poem to learn for National Poetry Day next week!
This week’s poem – The Great Fire of London
This week our poem was a few stanzas from The Great Fire of London by Paul Perro. This poem links to our History topic.
Our focus words were billowed and awoke.
Autumn 1: Week 4
Rainbow challenges
This week, the children have really started to enjoy completing their independent rainbow challenges during choosing time.
Each week, there’ll be seven challenges across different areas of learning. The children are encouraged to complete the challenges independently and tick them off on their rainbow challenge card.
When your child completes a challenge, they’ll be encouraged to explain or show an adult what they’ve done. This helps us develop their confidence, independence and ability to talk about their learning.
Help at home: Ask your child if they’ve had a go at any of the rainbow challenges this week. Can they tell you what they did?
Daily movement (PE)
We’ve really enjoyed our daily movement sessions this week! We have been practising lots of different movements: running, balancing, rolling and crawling.
These activities are important for developing our core strength and gross motor skills, which provide an important foundation for later writing and fine motor control. Movement also supports our physical health and wellbeing, helping us to be happy and healthy learners.
Help at home: Have a go at crawling around a room together. Can you crawl forwards, backwards or around obstacles?
Maths
This week in maths, we’ve been exploring the purpose of counting – finding out “how many?” objects there are. We discovered that we can count all sorts of things, including sounds. We’ve also been practising our counting sequence by singing “1, 2, 3, 4, 5”.
Help at home: Look for opportunities to count together at home. You could count toys, steps, pieces of fruit or even sounds such as claps or taps!
Stay & Learn
We’re very excited about our first Stay & Learn session on Tuesday!
The focus will be on fine motor control and early writing. You’ll have the opportunity to take part in some fun fine motor challenges alongside your child before joining us for a short presentation.
We hope you leave the session with a better understanding of the learning that takes place in Reception and some ideas about how you can support your child’s learning and development at home.
We look forward to seeing you there! Have a happy and healthy weekend.
Autumn Hunt
Thank you for finding and bringing in so many autumn treasures. This afternoon, we sat on The Green in the sunshine and explored and talked about the pinecones, conkers, acorns, sticks, leaves, feathers and other autumnal objects you found on your hunts. We then sorted and grouped them in different ways, such as by their size or colour.
We also found time to count tyres and trees – and, of course, have a play on the trim trail!
Year 4 Reading Records
Thank you to everyone who brought their Reading Record in today for Book Club.
In class, we enjoyed our ‘Book Wars’ discussions. You all gave some great reasons why your book should be read by others.
Here are some fantastic examples of completed Reading Record tasks so far this year.
Well done, everyone.
Help at home by regularly listening to your child read.
Writing: Grammar Games 2026
This week, Year 6 took part in our ‘Grammar Games’. The children were in teams playing head to head against other members of the class to be named champions of ‘Grammar Games 2026’. We recapped our previous learning about adjectives, verbs, modal verbs and tenses.
Help at home: Discuss with your child what the difference is between a verb and a modal verb? Can they identify the word class of each word in the following sentence: The brave girl can run quickly.
Maths: exploring tens and ones
This week in Maths, we’ve been exploring numbers to 100 in lots of exciting ways! We’ve been using part-whole models, 100 squares and place value charts. Your children have been breaking numbers down into tens and ones and representing these using Base 10. Take a look at our brilliant work!
Help at home: play this fun and simple place value maths game:
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/place-value-basketball
Library day change
Our library day will now be on a Thursday.
Easier to remember – library books and reading records to be brought in on Thursdays.
Thank you!
Miss Birch
Skeletons
In this science unit, we’re biologists and we’re learning about skeletons.
Today, we looked at animal skeletons and found they were actually very similar to ours.
We worked as scientists by grouping them into different categories. For example, the skeletons which had a large skull vs small skull or animals with femurs and those without.
“We worked hard today and I feel like I’m getting better at science!” said Rayaan.
Laila said, “The lesson today was very fun because I like animals.”
“I have learnt what an animal looks like inside and it was fun!” – Edie.
Topic: GFoL role play
Yesterday, we learnt all about Samuel Pepys and his important role during the Great Fire of London. We read adapted versions of his diary entries and discussed how these have helped us learn lots about the Great Fire of London. His diaries are a useful artefact that have taught us about how people responded to the fire across the four days.
Your children were given different scenarios that people in London, during the Great Fire, faced and they used the information from Samuel Pepys’ diaries to role play what the people of London might have done.
We ran away from the fire and then got on boats.
We were digging holes and putting our jewels and gold in to keep them safe.
We helped pull down houses and then we ran away after.
Four of us were running away form the fire and the other helped us into their houses.
Help at home: ask your children to explain how people reacted when the fire started.