Living & Learning – Family and Friends
This half term we’re using resources from MindMate to support our learning in Living & Learning. They have lots of resources that are useful for families too – check them out here: MindMate for parents
Today we’ve been thinking about why family and friends are important to us and what qualities we need to have to have healthy relationships with our friends. We’ve enjoyed debating whether you always have to be fun to be a good friend and whether you always need to be happy to have a healthy relationship.
Love was the most common reason that our families are important to us and we spoke passionately about our families helping us through hard times.
World Book Day – Love of Reading Assembly
We can’t wait to talk to you about our favourite books and perform Joshua Siegal’s poem ‘Not Just a Book’.
World Book Day – Wordsearch
We’ve enjoyed talking about our favourite books and choosing some key words from the books to make a word search. This afternoon we are going to try completing our friends’ wordsearches.
World Book Day – Read How You Want
We’ve really enjoyed a relaxing start to our World Book Day! We chose a book from our Book Club collection or from our KS2 Honesty Library and read it wherever we wanted with whoever we wanted.
Reading in a ‘desk den’ was a popular choice …
… as was our favourite seat …
… and the brightly lit reflection area.
TTRS fame!
Did you know that every week, Year 4 have the chance to get their ROCKSTAR selfie on our TTRS Wall of Fame? They also have the chance to feature on our TTRS Wheel of Fame in Achieve and Believe assembly. The lucky winner of the Wheel of Fame challenges a teacher for the ultimate honour of winning the TTRS trophy!
What does my child need to do?
Play 15 minutes of TTRS games in the week leading up to the Friday (when we check how much each child has played.) We recommend little and often. 3 minutes per day every school day might be easier to achieve than doing it all in one go.
Why does it matter?
If children know their times tables they will find the rest of the maths we learn in school much easier. This is true from Year 3 but is particularly important in Year 4 where we learn column multiplication and learn more about fractions.
Questions?
If you have any questions or need any help do let me know. Send me an email / call the school office / speak to me at pick-up. If you don’t like your child to use electronic devices at home let me know and I can provide alternative ways for them to practise their times tables.
I can’t wait to see even more of our superstars on the Wall of Fame and challenging (and answering faster than) teachers in Achieve and Believe!
Number Fact Challenge
Year 4 have done a great job learning their number facts over the holidays! Children are bringing home the tests they did today to show you how well they’ve done. When you have collected your sponsorship money please bring it in to school and we will let you know how much we have raised as a school!
Multi-sports at Wetherby High School
We’re really proud of how Year 4 represented St James’ on their trip to Wetherby High School this afternoon.
The children took part in a circuit of sporting challenges using skills they have learned in their PE lessons as well as learning new skills.
The day finished with a variety of relay races. The teamwork was incredible and was matched by heart-warming team spirit displayed by children cheering on their teammates.
Year 4, you are amazing sports people! We are super proud of you!
Trip to MAGNA
We’re all really proud of how Year 4 enjoyed exploring the exhibits and learning about rocks and volcanoes at MAGNA this week. The children enjoyed exploring all the different pavillions but the water pavillion was their particular favourite.
Times Tables Facts
If your child doesn’t know all of the times tables facts we have learnt in school so far, they’ve been given 2 facts to learn this week. It’d be great if you could ask your child what their facts are and quiz them on them over the week.
We will continue to do this for the rest of the year so any extra practise you can do at home would be great!
Writing – Diary entries
We’ve really enjoyed writing our diary entries this week! We’ve been bringing our learning about volcanoes from Geography into our writing by writing a diary entry about the day a volcano erupted. We’ve been using expanded noun phrases to provide a detailed description and conjunctions to join clauses.
Elara was really proud of her writing, particularly when she reviewed it against the R2s (things we need to do to be successful.)
Elara’s writing skills continued to amaze me when the next day she wrote another diary entry. We will be editing and self-assessing these next week but you can already see how she has used more conjunctions and expanded noun phrases in the initial draft of the second diary entry. This time she also used her dictionary skills to correct her spelling mistakes.
Check back next week to see some more of our formidable writing!