Year 4 Blog Friday 22nd September 2023

Date: 21st Sep 2023 @ 8:54am

Welcome to your Friday blog. We have had a very busy week in Year 4! Here’s what we have been learning:

In English, we continued reading our class novel ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’.  We discussed Michael’s personality and then wrote a character description, attempting to use different sentence openers. In addition, we looked at the features of an informal letter. Next week we will be planning and writing our own letter from Michael to his best friend Eddie Dodds.

In Maths, we practised rounding numbers to the nearest 10 and 100. We also investigated adding and subtracting 1, 10, 100 and 1000 from 4 digit numbers. This was especially tricky when we needed to bridge the tens and hundreds.

In RE, we heard the story of Esau and Jacob. We discussed their differences and how Jacob managed to get God’s blessing!

In Computing, we refined our symmetrical patterns by accurately rotating, resizing and recolouring different shapes.

In PSHE, we recapped our ground rules and then discussed what we thought ‘self-esteem' meant. After watching a video, we shared and wrote down our ideas about how we can boost our self-esteem. Some suggestions were: be confident in the things you do, keep practising, believe in yourself, be positive, try to achieve new things and don't give up.

In Science, we continued our topic Living Things and their Habitats and learnt how we can group animals in different ways. We recapped the five animal groups and their features: Fish, Mammals, Amphibians, Reptiles and Birds.

In PE, we continued with our netball skills, practising a chest pass and thinking about our footwork. We then applied these skills in a match.

This week in French we used our review sheets to practise responding to key questions: ‘comment ?a va?’, ‘comment tu t’appelles’, ‘comment ?a s’écrit?’, ‘quel âge as-tu?’ and ‘quelle est ta couleur préférée?’. We also started to learn how to say names of family members, for example, brother and sister.

In Art, we had a brief look at the work of Shaun Tan. We also made our own 'scene' and gave it a title. Following this, we practised sketching our scene carefully in our sketch books. Over the coming weeks, we will be exploring how we can create sequenced imagery to share and tell stories.  Have a look at us hard at work sketching in the gallery.

Home Practice

Reading

Please read for 20 minutes each evening to an adult at home.  Make sure you discuss the story and the characters.  Find the meaning of any new words too.  Reading every night will help you read more fluently and with understanding. 

Counting

This week, please practise counting in 100’s – draw a line and some marks on it like I do in class. You could write the numbers down as you count up.  When you count down, cover the numbers up, say the number, then reveal what you have got written down to check you’ve said the correct number.

Count in 100’s

For example, start at 0 and count up to 1500 and back again 

0   100   200   etc                      1500   1400   1300   etc

For example, start at 278 and down up to 1878 and back again

278    378    478           etc              1878   1778   1678   etc

Times tables

You should have been given your times table target this week. Please therefore practise your times table in preparation for your test next week.  Ask someone at home to test you on your tables – can you recall them quickly and accurately?

Remember you can also practise your tables playing Hit the Button and timestables.co.uk

Another app for practising tables and number facts is One Minute Maths from White Rose.  It is free to download from the AppStore and PlayStore. There are lots of excellent games you can play which will help you brush up your mental maths skills.  Please do your best to access this fabulous free resource!  Knowing your tables and number facts off by heart is crucial and will help you in many different areas of maths.

It is crucial that you learn all of your table facts as this will help you with many aspects of maths.

Spellings

Next week, our spellings will involve revisiting and revising the possessive apostrophe with singular proper nouns. Therefore, there will be no spellings to learn. Instead, we will practise this spelling rule each day in class. You will be tested on this rule next Wednesday.  

Sumdog challenges

You have been set 2 challenges on Sumdog:

• A maths challenge adding and subtracting numbers mentally
• A times tables challenge based on the 5 and 10 times tables

Please make sure you log on and have a go!  Little and often is the key to success!

Have a fabulous weekend

The Year 4 Team