Literacy

In literacy, Year 4 have been learning about different spelling rules, including how to add the suffixes ‘ous’, ‘ful’ and how to spell words with the ‘ei’ sound but are spelt ‘eigh’. Each class has been reading either: The Jungle Book, The Explorer, Wonder or Treasure Island and learning about different reading skills, especially using our inference skills to think about justifying why things are happening in a story and how events make characters feel. We have been learning to read aloud and with the appropriate fluency and expression to engage the audience. Other reading skills we have been focussing on this term are: predicting, skimming and scanning, comparing, summarising and sequencing events in the story.

Maths

In maths, Year 4 have been focussing on how to: read and understand the time on a 24 hour clock and an analogue clock, describe positions of shapes on a 2D grid, read coordinates on a grid and how to translate shapes on a grid and describe the movement. We have been learning how to apply our previous learning of different methods and operations to solve multi-step word problems. We have had a strong emphasis on times tables practise, using Times Tables Rockstars to improve our accuracy and speed in this area.

 

Afternoon Lessons

Since the children have returned, we have been using our afternoon learning to re-engage with each other in groups and use our creativity to get active and inspired! Building on the fantastic Topic work that children completed at home, we spent the first week back using our drama skills to create short plays about The Romans, consolidating home learning about who the Romans were and their impact on life here in Britain.

Following on from this, in our Art lessons, children took inspiration from Ancient Roman art to create paper mosaics or objects from clay.  We saw amazing pieces of Art work so well done everyone!

In Science, we have been exploring sound; what it is and how we hear it.  Again, children had begun this work and home and so we were able to build on this learning to investigate sound waves, vibrations and the anatomy of the human ear.

In addition to all of this wonderful work, we have also be learning about Easter and its importance to the Christian community, and in PSHE lessons we have been considering the impact of our presence online and how our actions affect others in our digital interactions.

 

Home Learning Update

In literacy, Year 4 learnt about newspaper articles. We started by looking at examples of newspapers and examining the features that they are made up of. We focused on literary features in newspaper articles, including; writing in the past tense, the use of third person pronouns, using inverted commas to write eye witness accounts and creating catchy headlines. We used Now Press Play to listen to a story about the battle of Watling Street, where Boudicca was finally defeated by the Roman army. We then created our own newspaper report to describe the battle using descriptive language.

We created our newspaper report using Google Slides.

Maths

In maths, we started by recapping place value and the properties of numbers. We learnt to answer different questions by using a range of methods including using the column method, grid method and a number line. We built on this foundation to attempt a range of reasoning and problem solving style questions. This included looking at word questions that involved multi-steps and using different operations to be able to successfully calculate the answer. We also learnt to solve calculations involving negative numbers and started to break coded messages.

Topic

During home learning, we started our new topic about the Romans. We learnt lots of fun information about the Roman army and tactics they used to ensure they were well trained and ready for battles. We used a range of history skills throughout the topic and examined how the Roman Empire grew over time. Investigating the Roman invasion of Britain, we looked at how the Romans changed the way people in Britain lived in the past. We also created presentations to read on zoom to the rest of the class to share how the Roman legacy still influences life today in modern Britain, including the invention of the calendar, the drainage system and roads.