Year 4 have settled into the new year brilliantly. Let’s have a look at our learning this week.

English

In English this week we have been looking at character descriptions. Our book, ‘Fly, Eagle, Fly’ doesn’t describe the characters much, instead relying on the beautiful artwork. This gave us a great opportunity to write descriptions of characters like the farmer and the eagle from scratch. We have used expanded noun phrases, verbs & adverbs and similes to create fantastic descriptions of not only their appearance but also their personality as well.

Next week we will be exploring  how the book is a great example of a 5-part narrative.

 

Maths

In Maths this week we have been rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000. We learnt that if we are rounding to the nearest 10, we look at the ones column to decide if we round up or down. If the number is 5 or above, we round up; if the number is 4 or below, we round down. We then went on to learn that the number line is a lot bigger than we thought and actually goes below zero into negative numbers. It’s a great time of year to learn this as the temperature outside can sometimes sneak into the negative so we can easily see negative numbers in the real world.

Next week we will be continuing with rounding numbers but using them with addition and subtraction.

 

Thematic

This week we have begun to get our teeth stuck into our new topic ‘Cracking the Earth’s Core’. We have learnt about the different layers of the earth and how the crust of the earth is made up of tectonic plates. These plates move very slightly each year which, over millions of years, drastically changes the layout of the land on our planet. We also then looked at active and dormant volcanoes, where they are found on our planet and what makes volcanic eruptions so dangerous.

Next week we will be looking at how the movement of tectonic plates can cause earthquakes.

Spellings

Mr Oxley and Miss Stephens groups:

League, plague, rogue, vague, dialogue, tongue, catalogue, grammar, group, guard

Challenge words: intrigued, fatigue

Mrs Cousins’ group:

clock, black, pick, check, rock, truck, quick, child, wild, children

Challenge words:

duckling, humpback

 

Love to learn

This week we’d love you to explore volcanoes some more (not literally). You can draw, make a model or a collage and then label the different parts of the volcano. You can even add some fun facts about them, especially if you find some we didn’t learn in class.

Use your imagination and show us all you know about volcanoes in whatever way you like.

We have also set a MYON reading challenge. If you log into MYON you’ll see two volcano books to read and quiz on. Just follow the link below:

https://www.myon.co.uk/login/index.html

 

Messages

As the children’s afternoons are now longer (due to the changed time for the Thrive lunchtimes), their PE session is now longer. Therefore, we are no longer doing an additional sports session, so the children only need to wear trainers on their PE day.

Dates to remember

Tuesday 21st January 3.30-4.30 – Thrive Coffee afternoon

 Wednesday 5th February – Young Voices at the O2

Thursday 6th February – Countdown assembly (KS2 only)

Friday 7th February – NSPCC Number Day. Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 to wear a number themed outfit and KS2 to come as Times Table Rock Stars.

Tuesday 11th February – Safer Internet Day

Friday 14th February – School Disco

 

 

Many thanks

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Cousins, Mr Oxley and Mr Abel