Autumn 1
What a great start to the year we have had!
Lots of children have settled back into the school routine brilliantly and they have already started making progress across the curriculum. They have responded really well to the weekly home learning they have been set; spellings, reading, arithmetic and TT Rock Stars.
We kickstarted Mathematics by recapping and deepening our understanding of place value. Addition and subtraction of four-digit numbers was then introduced and within this, the children have solved a wide range of problems using a variety of methods. Multiplication is a big focus within the Year 4 curriculum and the children have shown lots of enthusiasm when taking part in the weekly times table champion challenge and the academy wide TT Rock Stars day.
In SPaG lessons, we have been learning about word classification, with a particular focus on regular, irregular and being verbs. This knowledge should hopefully feed into their writing during English sessions.
Our first Talk for Writing unit this half term was a warning tale, The Canal, and we learned to use features of the characterisation toolkit. We then looked at the features of an information text. The tree giants had destroyed our classroom during the hook session, and this led to some super non-fiction writing when writing information. Throughout these units, children have been taught when to use commas and how to use broad range of sentence openers and descriptive vocabulary.
Our Geography topic this half term has been ‘How important is transport and trade?’. The children have enjoyed discussing different transport needs and the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of transport. They have discovered what kind of items are traded internationally and from where, and they have used atlases and online technology to find these locations. Ask your children to tell you our Geography fingertip facts! This half term, our Science topic has been ‘Animals, including humans’. We have explored our teeth and their function, completed a drama exercise detailing each stage of the digestive system and looked at the diet of carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. We have looked at food chains and the impact a deviation from the chain may have. Our focus religion in R.E is Hinduism and this will continue through to the next half term. The children have learnt about Brahman, the one God, and how he is represented in different ways through deities. We have explored our own journeys in life and thought about our reason for being, known as a dharma. We have discussed friendships in PSHE. The children have defined a good friend, thought about what may affect a friendship and what to do in different social situations and about it may feel to be excluded. We have been fortunate enough to have Mr Kinmen come into school to teach the children ukulele every week. It has been a pleasure to hear the progress they have made. They have such beautiful singing voices too.
We have had a jam-packed 8 weeks and hope the children enjoy a well-deserved break!
