Year 4 Class News

PC Louise

Today, KS2 had a visit from PC Louise from West Yorkshire Police. She came in to talk to us about how to stay safe when we are out and about in our local community.

The first thing Louise spoke about was the importance of telling our parents or a trusted adult about where we are going and what time we will back home.  This is crucial as it helps us to stay safe.

The next thing Louise spoke about was the importance of observing signs when we are out and about. Signs linked to roadworks, railway tracks, water and building sites were spoken about. She also mentioned that we MUST NOT enter sites that are abandoned for many reasons.

PC Louise spoke to us about what to do if we see someone acting suspiciously at the park or if there is someone who makes us feel uneasy. We should take ourselves away from that situation and make sure we speak to a trusted adult. If something doesn’t feel right – take yourself out of that situation.

Finally, PC Louise spoke to use about the importance of ALWAYS wearing a seatbelt when travelling in a car. It doesn’t matter if the trip only takes 10 seconds or if we are travelling at 5mph, ALWAYS WEAR A SEATBELT.

Help at home – speak to your child about how they can keep themselves when out in our local community.

That fun maths game …

I spotted Year 1 playing a fun new maths game and knew that Year 4 would love it! Think Only Connect but for Primary Maths!

We’ve played a couple of games (on the Year 4 setting) in class and I promised to share the link so you can play at home: SQM Connections

Enjoy!

Writing – direct speech

We’ve been working really hard this week to increase our confidence with writing direct speech.

Last week we wrote a narrative to accompany the wordless picture book The Flood by Alvaro Villa. As part of the narrative we included some direct speech.

We’ve only recently learned how to accurately punctuate direct speech:

• Write the words spoken first (remembering to start with a capital letter)
• Add the inverted commas around the words spoken
• Add punctuation at the end of the words spoken and inside the inverted commas
• Add a reporting clause
• New Speaker New Line

Having drafted and edited direct speech in our narrative, we’ve enjoyed recapping the rules again and then becoming more fluent by practising independently.

Help at home – our super writers have really enjoyed the challenge of writing direct speech so if you would like to learn more at home you could look here for more information and a couple of challenges: BBC Bitesize direct speech

Alternatively, when reading together, look out for examples of direct speech.  You check if the author has followed the rules we have used in class or think about how they have made the reporting clause engaging.

Living and Learning – I know that being physically active is mentally and physically healthy

In living and learning we have been thinking about the physical and mental benefits to our health of being physically active.

We were surprised to learn that it is recommended that we should be active for one hour per day. We thought about our favourite ways of being active and made them into a word cloud:

Then we made a list of all the times that we are active across a week and added them up.  The highest weekly active minutes recorded was a fantastic 21 hours!

We were surprised by how quickly walking/cycling to and from school, wake up shake up, break and lunchtime added up!  We reviewed what the biggest ‘contributors’ were to our active minutes and found that playing at school and ‘playing out’ after school were often the biggest chunk.

Help at home: discuss with your child how you make sure you stay active to look after your physical and mental health.  You could also think about if there are any new ways of being active you would like to try together.

Living & Learning – Speak Out Stay Safe with the NSPCC

In living and learning, we’ve been thinking about being safe .

We’ve considered a message from the NSPCC which tells children to

‘Speak out. Stay safe’.

We discussed how all children have the right to:

• speak out and have their views taken seriously,
• be kept safe,
• get help when they need it.

We’ve identified trusted adults who are people that we feel confident to ask anything to. We discussed the importance of having these trusted adults and why we should always speak out rather than bottling things up.

If children don’t feel confident speaking about their feelings or worries, we also have a ‘Living & Learning’ box in class where children can write how they are feeling and either include their name or share it anonymously.

Help at home: visit the Childline website with your children (https://www.childline.org.uk/kids). Explore the games, interactive tools and age-appropriate advice.

Class Novel – The Last Bear by Hannah Gold

I hope you enjoyed reading a chapter of The Last Bear as part of this week’s homework.

In class we have been working on summarising the key information in the chapter we have read. We started by drawing a picture and then trying to summarise in one sentence.

If you would like to know more about The Last Bear or some of Hannah Gold’s other books you might want to watch some of her videos with your child on Authorfy. We’ve already watched a couple as part of our Book Club in class.

https://authorfy.com/masterclasses/hannah-gold/

Your child may also be interested to explore Bear Island (where the story is set.) In class we used Google Maps to see what we could see.

Google Maps Bear Island

Please let me know if you are enjoying sharing this story together.

Philosophy Friday – Is it easier to be peaceful by yourself?

This half term our Christian Value is peace.  We define peace as feeling calm and content.

In our Philosophy Friday sessions, we take the opportunity to think deeply about the world around us.  Our reflection this week was about whether it is easier to feel peaceful by yourself.

Before we shared our reflections, I was very confident that I found it easier to be peaceful by myself but following much debate I was persuaded to think differently.

“When I feel angry I find it easier to find peace by myself but when I feel upset I prefer to be with a friend.” Bea

“Sometimes when I am playing out and I want to find peace I sit by a tree and watch the bees pollinate.” Jack

“If you feel peaceful you can make other people feel peaceful too.” Poppy

“On the one hand it can be easier to find peace when there is no-one to bother you but on the other hand you feel protected when you are together.” Arthur

Help at home: Discuss how you find peace by yourself and as a family.

Welcome back to the Summer Term!

Welcome back to the Summer Term!  I trust you had a restful Easter break and are looking forward to all of the excitement of the Summer Term.

Reading

I hope you enjoyed sharing the final chapter of The Wolf Wilder. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster with some very nerve-racking points but hopefully the children enjoyed seeing that friendship, courage and being true to yourself can lead to great achievement and happiness.

We will be voting for our next class novel this week.  The current shortlist is:

•  A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll (recommended by Aria)
•  The Last Bear by Hannah Gold (recommended by Arthur)
•  The Wild Robot by Peter Brown (recommended by Jack)

There may be some late additions if anyone has found any other great books this holiday – I will let you know the outcome!

Following feedback, I will continue to send a chapter of our class novel home for you to share together – any further feedback on whether this is something you enjoy (or not) would be very welcome.

Writing

The first skill we will be working on this half term will be how to write direct speech.

The children will  learn the rules needed to write direct speech:

When you are reading together, it would be great if you could occasionally pause and discuss the direct speech.  Has it followed all of the rules? Below is an example from the first page of A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll, note how this example doesn’t have a reporting clause – you could ask your child why they think the writer has not included a reporting clause for this direct speech.

Handwriting

I am really proud of how hard the children are working in class to ensure that their handwriting is joined and legible.  If your child does any handwriting practice at home, please do encourage them to bring it in to show me so we can celebrate (and reward!) this effort.

Spellings

Maths

We will be completing our unit on multiplication and division this half term including learning what happens to numbers when you multiply or divide them by 10 or 100.  If your child would like some fun extra practice at home, they could play this game: Multiply by 10 and 100 game

In the next couple of weeks, we will have looked at all of the times tables facts up to 12 x 12. If your child has some facts that they are not yet secure with (this will have been communicated with their Learning Updates at the end of last term) it would be great if you could continue to practise these.  As always, please do let me know about any consistent effort from your child or increases in confidence in recalling times tables facts so that we can celebrate and reward this in school. Just a quick reminder that the national Times Tables Check will be held during the first two weeks of June.

Science

This half term we will revisit our enquiry to find out how the animals in Forest School change over the year. We will then move on to learn about the difference between urban and rural habitats and how humans can impact habitats.

When I have taught this unit of work previously, lots of children have wanted to know more and to know how they can help. If your child is feeling inspired, this would be a good place to learn more: The Regenerators (BBC)

Geography – Explorers

This half term we will begin by thinking about the concept of location and scale. We will learn about imaginary lines used to split the world into parts. We will then recap the difference between a city, a country and a continent.

We will then think about the concepts of place and interdependence. Over a series of lessons, we will use York and Venice as case studies to think about the impact of tourism and the challenges that water can bring.

Call for help to bring our curriculum to life: If you have visited York or Venice as a tourist and would be happy to host a short question and answer session with the class, I would love to hear from you!

PE

There will no swimming in the first week of term but we can’t wait to get back to the pool on Tuesday 28th April! Please send children in their PE kit on Tuesday 21st April as we will do an extra PE lesson in school.

Our in school PE lessons this half term are through the sport of Basketball.  Over the half-term we will be learning to pass and catch accurately (using ‘throw and point’ and ‘ready position’ that we have used in other sports), to dribble, shoot and intercept the ball.

Living and Learning

This half term we will think about how we keep ourselves physically healthy and fit and how we keep ourselves safe. See the school calendar and weekly homework for further details.

Feelings First

The feelings we will think about this half term are:

• relieved
• horrified
• concerned
• overloaded
• furious

We will also be thinking about how our capacity to function well (represented by the green part of the battery) can be impacted by lots of things such as feeling tired or hungry or by other things that are happening in our lives. This can explain why something might not have an impact on how we feel one day, but could have a significant impact on another day.

As always, please do catch me on the door at pick up, send me an email or give me a call if you have any questions or I can be of help at all.

Living and Learning: I know the importance of a healthy diet

This week, Year 4 have been learning about having a healthy, balanced diet.

We recapped the five main food groups that we learnt about in Science last year.

• carbohydrates
• fruit and vegetables
• protein
• dairy
• fats

We need a balanced diet of these food groups to keep us healthy and strong. For example, carbohydrates give us energy and dairy is full of calcium that is great for our teeth and bones. We also need some fats as they give us energy and help us to absorb the vitamins and minerals that we eat through fruit and vegetables.

We had a go at creating our own balanced meal. Here is one great example:

Help at home by planning a meal with your child and checking that you have a balanced amount of each food group.

Science – Electricity

This half term we’ve been learning about electricity.  We started the unit thinking about how different appliances were powered and sorting appliances in different ways.

We then made a circuit with a cell, wires and a bulb and had great fun problem solving when some of the bulbs didn’t light.

As all super scientists do, we have lots of questions we wanted answers to! What happens if you use more cells?

What happens if you use more bulbs?

To help us to work scientifically to answer these questions, we created model circuits using this online tool: Circuits  To say the children were excited would be an understatement!

We also experimented by adding switches and considering how the switch worked by ‘breaking’ the complete loop that the bulb needed for electricity to flow all the way round.

Help at home: explore the online tool Circuits  and use it to answer some questions your child still has about the changes that happen when you change parts of the circuit.