Year 4 Class News

Living and Learning: I know that being physically active is healthy mentally and physically.

In Living and Learning, Year 4 have been discussing how to stay healthy mentally and physically.

Physical activity helps us to strength our muscles, develop our coordination, improve our fitness and maintain a healthy weight.

Being active also releases chemicals in your brain that make you feel good – boosting your self-esteem and helping you concentrate as well as sleep well and feel better.

It is recommended that children get one hour of physical activity every day. We spent time going through a typical week and assessing whether we met the criteria each day.

It was reassuring to know that most children in our class meet this target each day – it seems some never sit still!

Help at home and ask your child when they have been active today.

We are physicists!

In Science, we have been learning as physicists about electricity.

The class were given a variety of components and asked to make a lightbulb light up. The children were given two wires, one cell and one lightbulb.

After much trial and error, all the groups were successful!

We discussed how we would stay safe when handling the equipment, particularly the lightbulb as it was made of glass.

Help at home by asking your child how they stayed safe when we did this experiment.

Living and Learning – I know the importance of a balanced diet.

Year 4 have been discussing how we can make sensible choices that help our bodies stay healthy.

One way we can help our bodies stay healthy is having a balanced diet. This means eating a wide variety of foods in the right proportions. 

We discussed our own diets and whether they are balanced or not. Here are some questions for you to discuss with your child at home:

Have we eaten five portions of fruit and vegetables today?

Have we eaten enough protein today from meat or other sources?

Here’s a guide to the amounts of food we should be having:

Help at home: Can you plan your next meal using these proportions to help you?

Triathlon

This week, thirty of our Key Stage 2 pupils took part in the Brownlee Foundation Mini Triathlon event at John Smeaton. This is always a great event and it introduces the children to the elements of triathlon – a swim, a bike ride and a run.

Well done to all the children for taking part.

If your child is interested in triathlons, please see more details in our physical activity guide or have a look at this bike and run offer at the Brownlee Centre.

Residential

We have had an fantastic first day at Herd Farm!

We spent the day busying about doing the Leap of Faith, Crate Stack, Zip-Wire, archery and bushcraft!

Pictures tell 1000 words so here are some smiley snaps from our adventures…

We’re now in for the evening – watching Hercules with hot chocolate and resting before another big day tomorrow!

Living and learning: health and prevention

Over the past couple of weeks in Living and Learning, Year 4 have been learning about how we can keep our bodies healthy.

Last week, we learnt about germs and how we can prevent them from spreading and therefore keep ourselves well.

We started off the lesson by talking about the different types of germs there are; bacteria, viruses and fungi. These are all around us. Some are helpful but some are harmful!

We then discussed how quickly and easily germs can spread. We spent a lot of the lesson talking about the importance of hand washing and how this is the most effective way for us to combat spreading harmful germs.

Help at home by looking at this hand washing guide with your child to remind them to wash their hands thoroughly!

We are geographers!

This half term, we are geographers.

In our previous Geography unit this year, we were learning about the U.K. This half term, we are expanding our horizons in our explorers unit.

We have been learning about different climate zones and the capital cities of some European countries (which I must admit after all our practise playing Globle, we are very good at!)

Our geography topic will continue to look at flooding, flood defences and learning about the two cities of York and Venice.

Here is the vocabulary for this half term:

Help at home by asking your child what climate zones are!

Term 3.1 spellings

This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative graphemes: sh (ch, ss, ti, s)
• alternative graphemes: k (ch)
• adding prefixes: mis, re
• adding prefixes: sub, tele, auto
• spelling patterns: gn, kn
• homophones: piece / peace, main / mane, fair / fare

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

Summer term after-school clubs

We are computer programmers!

In computing, we have been learning about sequencing, repetition and decomposition.

Sequencing is where we have to arrange instructions in a particular order for program to run successfully.

Repetition is where we repeat the execution of certain instructions to make our algorithm simpler.

Decomposition is the process of breaking a task down into manageable chunks in order to be successful.

Today, Year 4 applied all their learning and created their own ‘Crossy Road’ games on Scratch Jr.

Help at home by encouraging your child to go on Scratch Jr and show you what they have learnt this half term!