What an eventful week with all of the flooding!

We have had a really good, productive week in Year 4.
In English, the children really picked up the skill of using subordinate conjunctions within sentences. We started by using them in the middle of a sentence and then challenged ourselves to vary the position of the subordination. We watched a really funny video news report about a creature called a ‘Wabub’ and we have started to say the phrase ‘I saw a wabub’ to help us remember the main subordinate conjunctions- if, since, as, when, although, while, after, before, until and because. We also tried to develop our vocabulary, using the thesauruses and descriptosaurus to find effective adjectives and phrases for emotions. We will be using both of these skills in the diary entries we are building up to writing.

In Maths, we have been having a real focus on our times tables and I am so pleased that lots of children are gaining new badges. We use the ‘Supermovers’ videos lots and apply our time stables in problem solving activities too.

We enjoyed Science this week in which we started our new ‘States of Matter’ topic. The children had lots of matter and had to identify whether they were solids, liquids or gases. Some were very challenging such as sugar and rice, that pour like a liquid, or a sponge that doesn’t keep its shape when you squeeze it like a solid typically would. The children really had to think carefully about their justifications when deciding what state the matter was in. We then found out about non- Newtonian fluids and created oobleck!

We love the new John Lewis advert with Edgar the dragon! How perfect for our topic- I am sure we will be using it lots as a stimulus for our writing in a few weeks.

Have a lovely weekend everybody. See you next week.

We have had a brilliant first week back at school. The children made us so proud on our Open Day (and evening!) as they talked so confidently and engagingly to prospective parents.

In Maths, we have been working on multiplication of the 6, 7 and 9 times table. Please continue to practice as much as possible at home. We have been chanting, dancing to supermovers and playing games such as Splat! The children have recorded their tables by drawing them in equal groups, in arrays, on a number line and with repeated addition. They have also worked on some challenging reasoning and problem solving questions!

In English, we looked at a new text type- diary entries. The children looked at lots of examples, finding similarities between those that they read. We read our new text map and there was lots of discussion and analysing of it, so that the children were able to learn from its structure and grammar.

In Science, we planned an extremely fun investigation using the ‘Tasc’ wheel. This was a child led enquiry and they decided that they would like to test whether a humans sense of smell was better than a dogs. Maisie came in to help us with this and absolutely loved the opportunity to prove how brilliant her sense of smell was by finding the treats we put under cups for her!

The children have very much enjoyed Computing, in which we have been working on developing and coding a quiz multiplication game on Scratch.

Have a good weekend!

What a wonderful first half term! I am really proud of all of the children and the progress that they have made over the last couple of months. 

Have a well deserved rest and a good holiday, Year 4! 

It was lovely to see everybody at Parent’s Evening this week and to discuss your children’s progress. I am very proud of all of the children and how they are working in Year 4!

In Maths, we have continued work on addition and subtraction and have applied our column method in the context of problems. We used the bar model to represent the problems before the attempted them.

In English, the children planned for their non- chronological report on Toothless. We acted as ‘dragon spotters’ and collected information about him from the film. We were very surprised about the differences between the book and film! The children have started to write their information texts, applying the skills of organisational features and fronted adverbials of manner.

We loved the opportunity of participating in the Invasion Skills Festival at Birchensale on Thursday. The children took part in three different activities- football, netball and hockey and enjoyed practising skills. It was lovely that we had lots of past Tardebigge pupils leading the activities as Sport Leaders. The children had lots of fun at this event and obviously got very muddy! Thank you for washing the kits.

In Science, as part of our ‘Living things and their Habitats’ topic, we have been looking at how environments can change and how this poses dangers to living things. We watched a few different adverts, such as the Blue Planet II plastic pollution clip, Rang- tan clip, WWF and Greenpeace adverts. We found out about Greta Thunberg and the courageous advocacy that she demonstrates in trying to help encourage others to save our planet.

On Thursday afternoon, we had a very interesting assembly, led by somebody who set up a charity (The Starfish Foundation) helping children in need in Uganda. The children listened so respectfully and have decided they would like to help raise money to support the charity.

Have a good weekend everybody! See you next week.

The highlight of our week so far was definitely our visit from the England netball player- Jade Clarke. Information about her can be found on;
https://www.englandnetball.co.uk/where-it-all-began-jade-clarke/
The children loved the opportunity to see and hold her medals as well as enjoying the different activities that were set up for them to do. They asked lots of relevant questions and were very inspired by the visit.
This week, the children have been applying the skills we have previously worked on (organisational features, expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials of manner). We applied this in the context of an information text about Maisie! We loved having her ‘huge, bear-like paws’ and ‘mischievous, puppy- dog eyes with a sparkle to them’ in our classroom, whilst we interviewed Mrs Green for information about the tricks and naughty things she does at home! Sorting out which pictures to use in our text was also really good fun.
In Maths, we have been working on subtraction of four digit numbers, including renaming of the ones, tens and hundreds. We did lots of practise with the place value counters to start with and the children did some brilliant journaling of pictorial representations.
Our Science work this week has been all about classifying animals using a classification key or ‘dichotomous key’ (Hilariously, we all say this with an American accent, as we needed to listen to a Youtube clip to find out how it was pronounced!) The children then created their own.
Chocolate fingers caused a real stir in our RE lessons this week! We are learning about temptation and the children had ten minutes with the biscuits on their desks. Listening to the conversations was extremely interesting, as nobody ate them as they ‘knew it was the wrong thing to do’ until one child (who I had briefed to!) picked up his and ate it. After that and seeing that he didn’t get into any trouble, lots of children also gave in. At the end, the 7 children who didn’t give in to temptation were rewarded with a second chocolate finger! We asked Mrs Noor all about when she faces temptation as a Muslim and she told us lots about fasting and how difficult to not give in to temptation, especially when she is around lots of people eating yummy things!
I hope everybody enjoyed cinema night this evening! See you next week everybody.

We have been enjoying our learning in Year 4!

In English, we looked at our new text type of non-chronological reports and identified the features. We also worked on our new skills which are organisational features and fronted adverbials of manner. The children split up my ‘boring’ text (based on the Gronckle from ‘How to train your dragon’) and added a heading, sub- heading, captions and pictures to the text. They also wrote fronted adverbial sentences based on vertebrates, which linked to our Science learning.

In Maths, we have continued working on addition. We have used the place value counters and our journals to show representations of adding four digit numbers with renaming. The children were then very confident in adding using the column method.

Our art work this week involved using water colours, taking inspiration from Jackie Morris’s illustrations in ‘Tell me a dragon.’ In History, we continued our learning about the Stone Age and used key vocabulary, such as chronological/ chronology, BCE and CE, era, Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic. The children asked questions about what they would like to find out more about.

In Science, we have been learning about vertebrates. The children enjoyed an experiment making a little plasticine animals with a backbones (pipe cleaners) and without. We then tried to see how many Jenga blocks their ‘animal’ could hold before collapsing and concluded that backbones help vertebrates to stay upright and keep their shape.

Have a lovely weekend everybody!

This week has really whizzed by!

The children have been working up to writing a Hungarian Horntail dragon description, with the goal of applying expanded noun phrases and time/ place prepositions. We have used a boxed up plan to support with this and wrote the first paragraph. I am really looking forward to reading the finished descriptions next week.

In Maths, we have worked on rounding numbers to the nearest ten, hundred and thousand. The children created number lines to support with this and we had a poem with actions to help us.

In Art, we focused on the artist Jackie Morris (who illustrated ‘Tell me a Dragon’ and ‘The Lost Words’) The children very much enjoyed sketching the outline of a dragon, re-creating the image.

Our invertebrate hunt in Science was a real highlight of the week and I cannot believe how enthusiastic the children were! We carefully observed them with magnifying glasses and used a classification key to identify each of the invertebrates.

We have had a very active week with not only swimming and PE with Mr Alexander, but a jump rope session! We are also loving taking part in the daily ‘Supermovers’ dances as our Wake and Shake.

Have a well- deserved rest and good weekend everybody! See you next week.

Our dragonlogists have had a fantastic week in Year 4! We have very much enjoyed exploring the book ‘How to train your Dragon’ in Guided Reading sessions. In English, the children have been working on using place prepositions to describe the position of the dragons in the beautiful illustrations from the book ‘Tell me a dragon’. The children have also used time prepositions to explain the when things happened. After working on these skills, we applied them in a short, descriptive paragraph- of course based on a dragon!

In Maths, we have been working on place value of four digit numbers to order and compare numbers. The children have used concrete resources, such as the base ten blocks and place value counters, as well as their place value grids to support them with this. They have easily been able to add or subtract, 1000, 100, 10 and 1’s and worked on renaming. Our first lesson on rounding numbers to the nearest thousand was challenging!

In RE, we worked on our new topic based on what religious people believe about what is right and wrong. We shared ‘The Golden Rule’ of ‘Treating others as you would like to be treated’ and looked at each religions variation of this. The children created a piece of art work to symbolise this and we watched an advert that demonstrated a man following this rule.

In Computing, we worked on input and output devices.

In Science, we grouped animals in a variety of ways including Venn and Carroll diagrams.

Have a lovely weekend Year 4! See you all next week.

The children have settled absolutely wonderfully and I feel really lucky to have such a brilliant, enthusiastic class!

The book ‘Tell me a Dragon’ has really inspired our work on description this week and the children have created some beautiful expanded noun phrases. Some examples that the children have written are below;

‘The vivid blue, striking sea dragon with mermaids surrounding it’

‘The graceful, sleek dragon with whisper- thin wings’

The children enjoyed reading example descriptive texts, including our text map, which was inspired by Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback dragon from Harry Potter.

I was pleased to see that we have a class of keen mathematicians and we have straight away got into our Singapore Maths unit. The children have used concrete resources, such as the base ten blocks and place value counters to create four digit numbers and then drew pictorial representations of these. They also represented four digit numbers in place value grids and in part- part whole diagrams. We have been counting in 25’s and 1000’s.

In Science, our unit is ‘Living things and their Habitats’. The children were introduced to our focus scientist- Jane Goodall. We enjoyed finding out about her job as a primatologist in Tanzania and the discoveries she made about chimps.

In Art, we focused on using water colour paints to create a colour gradient, which we then focused on using in our dragon eye sketches. Everybody put so much time and care into their work!

Our Computing work this week was based around e- safety. We watched ‘The adventures of Kara, Winston and the Smart Crew’ and then used the app ‘Book Creator’ to give advice to others about the SMART rules.

Overall, a fantastic first week in Year 4. I hope everybody enjoys a well- deserved rest! See you on Monday!

I have missed you this week, Year 4/ Year 5! I really hope those of you who had your transition days had a wonderful time at your new schools on Wednesday and Thursday; it sounds as though you have from the conversations we have had today! Good luck to those of you who have your transition day on Monday! I know you will all make your new schools extremely proud.