English

In English this week, we have finished our writing unit on setting descriptions. The children did fantastically well in their final writing piece, using all of the skills that they had learnt in the unit. We then moved on to our new unit – recounts. Recounts recall and retell events that have happened such as diary entries, letters and postcards. They are written in the first person and in the past tense. We have begun this unit learning how to consistently maintain past tense throughout a recount and how to use time conjunctions to chronologically structure the events that took place as we retell what happened e.g. First of all… After that… All of a sudden… The next day…. Later that evening…

Next week we will continue with recounts and learn how to use emotive language, how to show opposing viewpoints and how to use complex and compound sentences in recounts.

Here are some photos of us in one of our guided reading sessions acting out the story of Gregory Cool:

Maths

This week we have been learning about written methods for addition. The children have recapped their learning about column addition from Year 3 and consolidated and practised their skills. They have been adding 4-digit numbers with regrouping (what some of us may have called carrying in the old days!) in the ones, tens, hundreds and thousands columns. They have become very adept at this method and have been able to use it to solve problems involving addition. Next week we will be learning about written methods for subtraction.

Thematic curriculum 

We have begun our new thematic unit this week called ‘Make some noise!’ We started by becoming ‘sound collectors’ and then writing our own sound collector poems based on a famous poem by Roger McGough. We also had great fun playing listening games where we tried to guess what the sounds were. In our first science lesson, the children learnt that a sound is made when an object vibrates and that the vibrations vibrate the surrounding air and then travel through a medium to our ears, where the vibrations vibrate our ear drum. We carried out an interesting investigation to find out if sound vibrations can pass through other media other than air. We found out that sound vibrations can travel through string, water and wood. Here are some photos of us investigating this – can you see our string telephones?

We also carried out an investigation on the field with drums to find out that when you move further away from a sound, the sound becomes quieter or softer. This was great fun and the children acted like professional scientists recording their predictions, a diagram, results and conclusion. Well done Year 4!

Next week we will be investigating sound waves, pitch and volume.

Love to Learn 

Your Love to Learn challenge this week is maths.

Choose 5 of these addition calculations that will best fit your challenge level and work them out using the column method. Don’t forget to regroup if you need to.

Please send completed homework in by Weds 20^th September.

3741 + 2833 =           7409 + 264 =         45 + 43 =          19 + 38 =            7146 + 6317 =

620 + 174 =             1275 + 406 =           75 + 61 =           134 + 125 =          12,483 + 5398 =

Spellings

This week we have focussed on these red words – believe, breathe, breath, bicycle, build, busy and business.

Words to practice for a spelling test on Weds 20^th September:

dishonest, disagree, disable, invisible, incorrect, incomplete, unpopular, unusual, unable

Challenge words for the test (optional to learn): inconvenient, disqualify, disappoint

Other News 

• On Monday we will be investigating sound waves. If any of the children have a slinky at home that they would be happy to bring into school, please could they bring them in on Monday 18^th September.

 Dates to remember  

• PE day is Thursday

• Sports project day (where trainers can be worn with full uniform) is Wednesday

 

Many thanks,

Have a lovely weekend, 

The Year 4 Team