Year 4 have had another excellent week of newspaper reports and geography! Read on to find out what we have been up to…

English

In English this week we have continued learning about newspaper reports and recounts. We have read some more of ‘I was  rat’ by Phillip Pullman and, using the plot from the story, we have written some recounts practising these skills: consistently maintaining past tense, using sentence openers to add detail e.g. Furthermore,… In addition to this,… Therefore,…., and using time conjunctions to show chronology. The children have also learnt that sometimes news reports can be biassed towards a person or an idea, and we have begun to learn how to show opposing viewpoints in recounts. In guided reading, we had great fun acting out one of the Chapters of 'I was a rat' using no sounds or props; we could only use actions and our facial expressions to retell the story. Here we are doing this...

Next week, we will be continuing to learn about presenting viewpoint in news reports and then we will be planning and writing our 'showpiece' newspaper report that will tell the world about Roger from our story ‘I was a rat’.

Maths

This week in maths we have been learning to solve 2-step problems involving volume. Two-step problems involve us solving two calculations to get to the final answer. For example, 'A huge container of water contains 636l. The water is shared out equally between 3 smaller containers. Then 24l is removed from each container. How much water is in each container then?'

The children have also been learning how to solve calculations with brackets e.g. (26 X 5) + 126 =. They have learnt that the calculation in the brackets must be done first. So 26 X 5 is 130, then add on the 126 gives us 256. We then looked at how to balance number sentences like this 3 X 8 = ? + 12. 3 X 8 is 24 so to make the other side of the equals sign also worth 28, we must add another 12, so the balanced calculation would be 3 X 8 = 12 + 12.

Next week in maths, we will be learning about mass and length. We will be converting and comparing units of mass and length and measuring lengths in mm, cm and m.

Thematic

This week we began our new themed curriculum unit called ‘Your home, my home’. In this unit we will be completing geography, science and computing learning. We began this week with geography. We have learnt that the Mediterranean is an area around the Mediterranean Sea including countries such as Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Southern France. We located and labelled these countries on a map of the Mediterranean. Next, the children learnt that time zones change as you move around the globe latitudinally. They used a ‘time zone’ map to find out what the time would be in other countries compared to the UK. We then embarked on our study of Spain. We have learnt about the topography of Spain (the forms and features of the land) such as volcanoes, mountains, plateaus, hills, coastline, bays and rivers. We have found out that the topography of the land effects how the land is used. For example, people do not generally build on mountainsides, plateaus are good for farming on and in central Spain they grow grapes for wine on the La Mancha plateau.

Next week, we will continue with Geography and create a map of Spain showing patterns of land use and then learn how to use and read 4-figure grid references on a map of Spain. We will then move on to some Science and learn about classifying animals into vertebrates and invertebrates, looking at some animals that live in Spain.

Home Learning

This week, we would like you to make a science poster. You have 2 choices, either a poster that shows the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees with some examples, or a poster that shows the difference between vertebrates and invertebrates with examples. Please could this home learning challenge be handed in by Wednesday 19^th June.

 

Spellings to learn for a test on Wednesday 19^th June:

opened, sheltered, wondered, checked, gathered, grabbed, dropped, controlled, wrapped, shrugged

Challenge words: encountered, transmitted, regretted

 

Messages

On Wednesday 26^th June we will be finishing off our Spain learning with a ‘Spanish Celebration’ afternoon. The children are invited to come to school wearing the colours of the Spanish Flag, red and yellow, or they can even wear traditional Spanish clothes such as flamenco dresses or a traditional Spanish Gillet (we may call this a ‘bull fighting’ outfit). We will be enjoying an afternoon of all things Spanish including trying out Flamenco dancing with castanets!

 

Dates to remember  

 

• June 17th - Book Fair in school all week

• June 26^th – Year 4 Spanish Celebration Afternoon

• July 10th - Sports Day – KS2 – 9am – 11.30am

• July 11th - Music evening

• July 15th, 16th & 17th July - Chilton Transition days – The children will spend these 3 days with their new teacher(s)

• July 18th - Inflatable fun day

• July 19th - End of term – school finishes at 2pm

 

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

The Year 4 Team