We have had a fantastic week. The children have started term 4 with an excellent, positive attitude. Well done Year 4!

Here is what we have been up to this week.

English

In English this week, we have begun reading our new text called ‘Pebble in my Pocket: A History of our Earth’ by Meredith Hooper. This is a non-fiction story of how a pebble is formed over millions of years, however it is told in a story-type text. The children have enjoyed the first part of the book, where we have found out about volcanoes, mountains, rivers and seas. We are learning to write an historical setting description (places from the past) for the first 2 weeks of term. This week, the children have learnt to include expanded noun phrases, ambitious verbs and adverbs and prepositions in their setting descriptions. Next week, we will continue with setting descriptions and learn how to use paragraphing and to include complex and compound sentences. In guided reading this week, the children practised and performed a section of the text as a 'readers theatre' performance. Here are some pictures of them performing...

Maths

In maths this week, we have been learning about position and direction. Some of the children have been mastering their left and right, and learning about quarter, half, three quarter and whole turns. We have been learning about how to describe a position on a 2D grid using coordinates, and then how to describe movements on 2D grids as translations using the vocabulary up, down, left, right. Next week we will be learning about statistics and how to create time graphs for the first time.

Topic

This week, we have started our new thematic curriculum unit called ‘Mi Casa es tu Casa’ which is Spanish for ‘My home is your home’. In this unit, we will be comparing the UK to Spain. We will be covering Geography, Science and Art. We started off this week with our ‘Art Part’, where the children learnt how to print pictures of landmarks of Spain using polystyrene tiles. We then completed our first Geography lesson using 3 maps of different scales. The children located and labelled the UK, Europe and Spain on a World map, the UK and Spain on a map of Europe and located cities in Spain on a map of Spain. Next week, we will continue to be Geographers and look at physical and human features of Spain.

Here are some pictures of us doing our printing lesson...

Spellings

Words to learn:

funniest, happier, luckiest, prettiest, jollier, tastiest, spikiest, tidier

Challenge words: experience, experiment, medicine, politician

Love to Learn

This week, we would like you to create a poster showing the human geographical features of Thanet and the physical geographical features of Thanet. (human = man-made e.g. roads, towns, physical = natural features e.g. cliffs). You could make your poster on the computer, or you could draw pictures of the features, or even head out and about around Thanet and take some photos of these 2 different types of features. We look forward to seeing your home learning. Please hand in by next Wednesday.

Messages

• Please see email from Mrs Law regarding the Strike day next week (Thurs 2^nd March).

• Friday 3rd March is World Book Day - the children are invited to come to school dressed as their favourite book character if they would like to but please don't feel the need to buy anything specifically for the day, please use anything you have at home.

• Friday 17th March - Comic Relief

• Parent Teacher Consultations will be during the last week of term - week commencing 27th March - more information to come. Parents invited into class to see their children's work on Friday 24th March between 3.15pm and 3.45pm.

• PE is now on Mondays, Sports Project day (just trainers) is on Wednesdays

Many thanks

Have a lovely weekend

The Year 4 Team