“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”

 

Thank you for taking the time to read Year 4’s second blog of the year. We have been so busy this half term and it is truly hard to believe that we have almost finished the Autumn term. Read on to find out what we have been getting up to.

English:

In our writing lessons, we have been writing lots of different genres including writing a narrative (finding tales), playscripts and persuasive speeches. In order to do these, the children have been learning different grammar skills and thinking carefully about our audience and purpose. We’ve been busy learning about using inverted commas, fronted adverbials, expanded noun phrases, subordinate clauses and determiners. We have had some fantastic pieces of work where the children explored their artistic side and planned their stories in this way. More recently we have been learning to write playscripts and have had fun performing the model text in groups. This has helped us to understand the different features, particularly the use of stage directions. Year 4 were particularly good at this considering they’ve had lots of practice from the play they took part in in year 3!

  

Reading:

In our reading lessons we have been reading a variety of different texts including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The children have had fun looking at these texts and exploring them in different ways. We have performed choral reading, echo reading and using drama and role play in groups. Important skills such as inference, retrieval and authorial intent have been practiced and the children are beginning to think more deeply about why an author has chosen to use certain language and why they have chosen to write in a particular way. A reminder for over the holidays to keep reading with your child as much as you can and have their reading record signed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maths:

There have been lots of skills taught this half term. Then children have leant abut different methods to multiply and divide, addition and subtraction and length and perimeter. The children also worked really hard during assessment week where they completed an arithmetic paper and a reasoning and problem solving paper. In the length and perimeter topic, the children have been looking at the perimeter of different rectilinear shapes and finding missing lengths. They have also been looking at quicker methods to find the perimeter of shapes with multiple sides. In our addition and subtraction topic, we looked at efficient ways to add and subtract including the use of a number line to find the difference and we focused a lot on key vocabulary. It may be worth asking your child if they can tell you any synonyms for the words ‘add’ and ‘subtract’!

 

History:

We have continued our topic on the Romans this half term, particularly focusing on Roman Britain. We learnt about the famous Boudicca and explored her life through timelines and fact files. We understood the importance of Roman roads, Roman towns who lived in Roman Britain and what we can discover about the Romans from archaeological sites. We are excited to start our new topic next term which is going to be a geography unit, so history will be continued in the summer term.

 

Science:

In science we have been learning about states of matter (solids, liquids and gases). We started the unit by exploring the states of matter and what they are. This included some retrieval activities as the children have briefly explored this in previous years. We have explored what happens when different liquids freeze and the process that happens when liquids turn into a solid. After the holidays we will be continuing this topic and then moving onto our new unit ‘Living things and their environments’. This will link in well with our trip to the zoo in February!

Take a look below at our ‘Wall of Fame’. Each class in Year 4 chooses a fantastic piece of work and this gets displayed in the photo frame! Take a look…

 

Thank you for taking the time to read Year 4’s blog. We hope that you all have a restful break – we look forward to seeing all of the children back at school on Monday 6th January!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!