The children in class 10 have been busy since coming back to school for the Autumn term. We have started our new Power Maths lessons and are using the manipulatives well to support understanding. We have also been exploring the three times tables with practical resources. In PE, we have been working with a coach to develop ball control skills. Also in computing we are learning about networks, today creating our own “human LAN” to explore how our school network functions.
In guided reading one Year 4 group are reading the gorgeous story “The Lost Happy Endings”. We have been thinking about the character of the witch. We were inspired to improve our vocabulary and have been so excited to use thesaurus’ to find synonyms for our adjectives.
Year 4 finished their Literacy topic on “Dragons of the Dark Woods” by creating their own dragons eyes.
They learnt about how texture is created in images and sculptures and then had a go at sketching pictures of dragons eyes. They then designed their own dragons eyes before practising clay skills. They learnt how to make spirals, flowers and leaves etc and then followed their designs to make intricate patterns. Once dry, they painted them with metallic acrylic paints.
They look absolutely amazing and the children are so proud!
They then produced some amazing fact files about their own dragons that they created using lots of features such as subheadings, varied sentence openers and scientific words! They displayed them proudly alongside their dragons eyes.
This week we celebrated 25 years of World Book Day by coming to school dressed as our favourite book characters.
All around the school, children had a fantastic time completing activities related to World Book Day, reading with their friends and discussing their love of reading!
Here are some photos of us in our costumes…
This week we have celebrated National Storytelling Week in lower KS2.
As a school we already share a class story each day at 3pm but Miss Fraser asked us to try some extra activities from the list to celebrate.
Year 4 chose to celebrate with Harry Potter Day (Miss Ingoe’s favourite). We watched some clips about the potions class and created an ideas board of the ingredients we could use in our own potions. The children decided what their potion was for and wrote instructions on how to make it, while listening to some magical music for inspiration. Their ideas were fabulous such as a potion ‘to make me lucky’, ‘to make me meet the Arctic Monkeys’, ‘to make me be a princess’ and my least favourite ‘to make the teachers be quiet!’.
Finally, they wrote them neatly (some children even illustrated them) in their spell books we made before Christmas.
We also had a great time with paired reading today. We chose a book to share with a friend and either listened to the story or took turns to read the story. It was brilliant to hear!
This half term Year 4 are looking at ‘We Planted a Tree‘ by Diane Muldrow.
This book is written entirely in free verse poetry and is illustrated magnificently by Bob Staake. The story centres on two families who plant trees in very different locations. It helps the children to compare differences and similarities and look at the importance of trees to our planet.
We will be looking at the poetry in the book and comparing it to other types of poetry such as Kenning, Haiku, Tanka, Cinquain and rhyming couplet poetry. The children will have a chance to create poetry collaboratively, on their own and have a go performance poetry (which is always a favourite).
Look below to see a version of the book being read aloud.
This half term, Year 4 are reading The Time Travelling Cat and the Egyptian Goddess by Julia Jarman. The children will be reading the book which links with our history topic Ancient Egypt. We hope this book will engage the children and encourage a love of reading and learning about history.
Topher and his father are trying to get over the death of Topher’s mother, an Egyptologist, when they take in a stray cat. This cat bears an uncanny resemblance to a cat ornament given to Topher by his mother and so they name it ‘Ka’, meaning ‘double’. Topher becomes very attached to Ka and is puzzled by her mysterious absences. One day when he is playing a computer game with an Egyptian theme, Ka jumps on the keys and spells out the name Bubastis, which was the centre of cat worship in Ancient Egypt. Could Ka really be leading a double life and what is she trying to tell Topher?
The children are already very engaged in our new book and are already creating ideas and predictions about Ka and how the goddess is involved. We will be using the book and our new knowledge from our history topic ‘life in ancient Egypt’ to help us write diaries and non-chronological reports.
Big Writes (final pieces)
- Diary Entry
- Non-Chronological Reports
National Curriculum Links
Writing composition:
- Pupils should be taught to: plan their writing by: discussing writing similar to that which they are planning to write in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar discussing and recording ideas
- draft and write by: composing and rehearsing sentences orally (including dialogue), progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures
- organising paragraphs around a theme in narratives, creating settings, characters and plot in non-narrative material, using simple organisational devices [for example, headings and sub-headings]
- evaluate and edit by: assessing the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggesting improvements proposing changes to grammar and vocabulary to improve consistency, including the accurate use of pronouns in sentences proof-read for spelling and punctuation errors
- read aloud their own writing, to a group or the whole class, using appropriate intonation and controlling the tone and volume so that the meaning is clear
Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation:
- indicate grammatical and other features by: using commas after fronted adverbials
- indicating possession by using the possessive apostrophe with plural nouns using and punctuating direct speech
Writing- Transcription:
- use further prefixes and suffixes and understand how to add them (English Appendix 1)
- spell further homophones
- spell words that are often misspelt (English Appendix 1)
- place the possessive apostrophe accurately in words with regular plurals [for example, girls’, boys’] and in words with irregular plurals [for example, children’s]
Here is a video of chapters 1-3.
This half term, Year 4 will be reading ‘The Firework Maker’s Daughter’ by Phillip Pullman.
The story is a wonderful adventure which mixes old and modern fairy tales together. It features the main character Lila, who is on a quest to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a great firework maker. She must journey to get Royal Sulphur from Razvani the Fire-Fiend at Mount Merapi, a journey which is filled with peril and wonder.
For the first few weeks Year 4 will be focussing on character descriptions of the main character and letter writing to Lila’s father using the skills we developed in the first half term. We will then learn about the features and structure of a narrative. We will write setting descriptions and include them when we write a missing chapter about the Fire-Fiend.
Watch a reading of the story below:
Class 9 took part in a spooky writing lesson this week.
We were using the techniques we have practiced in literacy to create a setting description of a haunted mansion. To help our imagination flow we wrote in the DARK using a torch and listened to some creepy music.
We all had a wonderful time and created some impressive writing!
Year 4 have been learning about persuasive techniques in Literacy. We looked at the features such as rhetorical questions, emotional language and backing up your point with evidence. We used the techniques to tackle scenarios such as solving a disagreement and convincing parents to allow them a mobile or a sleepover. We then developed into a full debate discussing whether Wilbur the pig from Charlotte’s Web should be saved or not.
Check out our ideas!