Friday, 1st October 2021

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This week, the children in Year 4 carried on with their Place Value learning by comparing, ordering and flexibly regrouping whole numbers. In English, they copied up their first final pieces in their neatest handwriting. These are  now displayed in class. We therefore started a new unit of work, still based on persuasion inspired by a story titled, ‘The day I swapped my dad for two goldfish’. The children enjoyed this book and have written great persuasive paragraphs swapping someone in their families for something valuable or exciting like a real life submarine or a pet puppy.

In Science, as the pictures show, the children used ziplog bags to simulate how the stomach functions and why it has an important part in the human digestion, whilst also learning the names and roles of the rest of the basic parts like the liver or pancreas. In Geography, they started recording some of their ideas creatively about the advantages and disadvantages of living in megacities whilst in RE they looked at the life of St Vincent de Paul and made links between the Vincentian values and their lives.

We also started rehearsing for their class assembly on St Francis of Assisi for next Friday. Great first reading from everyone.

Thank you again for the lovely plants; our class garden looks lovely.

Have a lovely and safe weekend,

Ms Varga

Please see your Home Learning below:

Home Learning Due by Tuesday, 5th October 2021
Spelling Please practise this week’s spelling words by either copying them out or by segmenting them like we do them in class.

disappoint (dis-app-oint), disagree (dis-ag-ree), disobey (dis-o-bey), inactive (in-act-iv-e), incorrect (in-cor-rect), illegal (il-le-gal)
I include a worksheet in case you would like to use that: Spelling sheet
Reading Please log onto Read Theory and complete two activities. Please also update your reading log with details about the book you are currently reading. Be ready to present your logs on Wednesday, 6th October.

https://readtheory.org/auth/login
Multiplication Please log onto ‘Hit the button’ and spend 10-15 minutes practicing your mixed facts.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
Maths Please log onto Mathletics and complete your assigned activities (5) based on ordering, compering and re-grouping whole numbers of up to 4 digits.

https://www.mathletics.com/uk/
English As a preparation for the children’s next writing piece, I would like them to research a favoured destination.

It can be a holiday location like Center Parks, or a theme park like Chessington World of Adventures or Lego Land. It can be a museum like the Natural History Museum with all its dinos or the London Eye, etc.

I would like them to create a plan where in simple bullet points they have about 10 facts they can include in their writing later.

  • Where is the attraction?
  • How many people visit every year?
  • What is exciting about the attraction?
  • What facilities are there? (restaurants, cafes, pools, etc)
  • Anything that makes it unique?
  • What age range is it suitable for?
  • Why would you recommend that attraction to someone else?

I am NOT expecting the children to write paragraphs. All we need is a bank of facts and ideas that the children can have in front of them, so they can lift those details into their persuasive pieces. About an attraction that they feel excited about to motivate them. Please be prepared to present your facts by Thursday, 7th October 2021

 

 

 

Friday, 24th September 2021

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This week in Year 4, the children consolidated their understanding of Place Value in Maths and played a very competitive strategic game using nine sided dice as a finish off to their first unit. In English, they carried on using their inference skills when telling the story of Flotsam, discussing the pictures in the book and posing questions. They also discussed some statements to practice their persuasive skills as a preparation for next week’s big writing task, trying to convince each other about their point of view.

The children absolutely adored David Wiesner’s book, that interestingly has no words, so I strongly recommend his other works as well, which are available on Amazon (used and new copies) as well as on Youtube. Please see the link below for his work titled ‘Tuesday’. (please be aware of the pop up advertisements in the side bars) I think the children would enjoy watching it, if they have time. (It is not part of their home learning and therefore it is not compulsory)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtQ4DdzCZMA

In Science, the children learnt about the different types of teeth and their functions, whilst in Geography, they looked at Brasilia, the fastest growing city in Brazil. This week, the children also enjoyed their first hymn practice as well as their first whole school Mass today. In art, they created still lifes using pencils, thinking about shades and tones, whilst in RE they looked at Human Experience as the third source of Revelation.

Thank you for those of you who sent in plants to go into our class garden which looks lovely already, however more plants would be greatly appreciated as we have lot of space left.

Have a lovely weekend,

Ms Varga

Please see below your Home Learning:

Home Learning Due by Tuesday, 28th September 2021
Spelling Please log onto Spelling Frame and practice this week’s spelling words before testing yourself on them.

https://spellingframe.co.uk/spelling-rule/10/3-The-sound-spelt-ou

You don’t need registration to access these activities.
Reading Please log onto Read Theory and complete 2 activities.

https://readtheory.org/

Please also update your reading logs with details about your current reading books. Be prepared to show your logs on Tuesday, next week.
Multiplication Please log onto hit the button and spend 10-15 minutes practicing your mixed tables.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
Study Ladder Please log onto Study Ladder and access the ‘pod’ assigned.

https://www.studyladder.co.uk/

In your pod, you will find 2 multiplication activities and one place value activity, regrouping 4 digit numbers.

Friday, 17th September 2021

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The children in Year 4 had yet another busy week.

In English, they spent a few days planning and writing their own ‘Dirty Beast’ poems inspired by Roald Dahl before starting their new unit of work based on David Wiesner’s Flotsam. They became beach detectives on Thursday, opening bags of flotsam left behind, trying to guess who it must have belonged to. They used their reasoning and inference skills well.

In Maths, they built whole numbers using Dienes equipment and place value counters to show their understanding of the value of each digit in 3 and 4 digit numbers. They extended this task by re-grouping numbers flexibly, thinking about core facts such as how many tens make a hundred, etc.

In Re, the children looked at the 4 sources of Revelation and reflected on the first one, Creation. They wrote beautiful explanations on what they have learnt about God’s nature through his work of art.

In Pe, we played team building games and moved on in our multi-skill unit by re-introducing throwing and catching. In Geography, the children reasoned about why certain cities in the UK grow faster than others, whilst in Computing they carried on extending their basic Scratch designs from last week. In Science, we looked at types of enquiries and ways of testing.

Thank you for those of you who sent in plants to go into our Class Gardens. We tidied the bed on Thursday and started planting our bulbs and other seasonal plants.

It has been lovely to see the children Tuesday afternoon in Sewing Club. I introduced three basic stitch types (running, back and cross stitch) which the children practiced on pieces of felt. Great progress in just one lesson! I look forward to seeing them again next week.

Have a lovely weekend,

Ms Varga

Please see your Home Learning bellow:

Home Learning Due by Tuesday, 21st September 2021
Spelling Please log onto Spelling Frame and practice your weekly words one last time before testing yourself on them.

https://spellingframe.co.uk/spelling-rule/9/2-The-I-sound-spelt-y-elsewhere-than-at-the-end-of-words

(you do not need registration to access these activities)
Reading Please log onto Read Theory and complete 2 activities.

https://readtheory.org/auth/login

Reading records were also sent home today with the children’s reading targets set by their previous teacher. The children should record their own reading regularly including a brief summary of what they have read, the date and the title of the book.
Multiplication Please log onto ‘Hit the button’ and spend 10-15 minutes practicing your  multiplication facts. You can start practicing them by tables, however you should try and extend this by practicing them mixed up, as well.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
Maths/English Please log onto Study Ladder with your existing login details and access the ‘Pod’ assigned to you.

https://www.studyladder.co.uk/

Please start your learning with the ‘Tutorial’ explaining expanded notation. We call that ‘re-grouping’ in class. We identify the value of each digit in a number and re-write it as a number sentence.

E.g.:

1257= 1000+200+50+7

It’s different from ‘decomposition’, which would be flexibly breaking a number up, such as:

1257=800+200+240+17

With ‘regrouping’ the children can prove they understand the value of each digit according to its place within the number so later they can re-group in a more complex way:

1257= (10×100)+(20×10)+57

 

In English, I would like the children to create an A4, colourful learning poster. I would like them to use their learning from this week and think about 4-5 pieces of ‘flotsam’ (debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident) that would represent them the best.

Would it be:

a book, a pair of football boots, a tinful of Pokemon cards, a box of special sweets, ballet shoes, a specific soft toy?

Could I guess who they are just by looking at their chosen ‘Flotsam’? Could their classmates guess?

Please be prepared to present your poster by Tuesday.

 

Friday, 10th September 2021

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Happy Birthday Mary!

During a busy week in Year 4, the children revised their key writing tools such as adverbs, conjunctions and noun phrases in English. We put emphasis on handwriting and introduced the first set of spelling words.

In Maths, we introduced Roman numerals and looked at the history of this ancient number system. We put our learning into action by writing the date using Roman numerals, as well, which we will carry on doing in the future. We also introduced Place Value as our first topic beside completing mental fluency tasks and multiplication practice.

In Science, we looked at facts the children already knew about healthy eating, the health of our teeth and digestion whilst in Geography, they started locating megacities around the world, using atlases and satellite pictures.

In PE, we played invasion games and in Art we used different media to create beautiful birthday cards for Mary.

The children really enjoyed this Wednesday’s celebration and completed a lovely piece of learning comparing the qualities of Mary to other contemporary women who changed the world. They also took part in a beautiful class Act of Worship launching the ‘Year of Growth’.

Well done children for a great start to the year!

I am looking forward to see you all for Monday’s ‘Meet the Teacher’ session starting at 2.30pm in the hall!

Have a lovely weekend,

Ms Varga

Please see your Home Learning below:

Home Learning Due by Tuesday, 14th September 2021
Spelling Please log onto Spelling-Frame and practice your weekly words before testing yourself on them.

https://spellingframe.co.uk/spelling-rule/8/1-Adding-suffixes-beginning-with-vowel-letters-to-words-of-more-than-one-syllable
Reading Please log onto Read Theory and complete at least 2 tasks.

(New reading records will be given out next week.)

https://readtheory.org/
English In preparation for Roald Dahl Day next week, please use the official website to learn about his life and work. Read the biography and look through his work.

(You might need parent help with that to ensure you understand new vocabulary and please be mindful of the pop up advertisements)

https://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/about
Maths Please log onto Mathletics as usual and complete the assigned activities (4) consolidating Place Value.

https://www.mathletics.com/uk/
Multiplication Please log onto Hit the Button and spend 10-15 minutes practicing your multiplication facts.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

 

Welcome Back

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It was wonderful to welcome the children back to school for their first day as Year 4 pupils. I hope they enjoyed their day and I look forward to seeing their smiling faces on Monday. Mondays and Wednesdays are going to be our PE days this term, so please make sure you come in your full PE uniform that is labelled with your name.

Have a fantastic weekend,

 

Ms Varga

Friday, 16th July 2021

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This (final full) week in Year 4, we have finished planning and writing our extended narrative pieces based on Stitch Head by Guy Bass. The children have truly enjoyed telling their ending to this lovely story. After they finished, we read the last chapters together comparing their versions to the original ending.

We also painted the clay Tudor Roses. In History, we looked at Edward VI and in Maths we played code breaking games. The children also designed and created Stitch Head board games with lots of creative ideas. In RE we reasoned about what makes a good leader; someone worth following.  Following on from our leader focus in RE, the children learnt about another great leader, Nelson Mandela.  It is Mandela Day on Sunday 18th July and the children learnt about this wonderful man and what he stood for.  They also spent time collaboratively working together to create Mandela Pop Art.

I wish those of you travelling home, a safe trip and a lovely summer holiday.

For next week, please may I ask that you send in a strong plastic bag with your child as I am sending home books and art work. We used multiple sets of books in most of our subjects so they will be quite heavy. Also, please send the children into school in their PE kit on Monday as we still have one cricket session with our outside training team.

Thank you so much for our lovely gifts, we really appreciate your thoughtful gestures.

We wish you a safe and sunny weekend,

Ms Varga and Mrs McNamara

 

 

Friday, 9th July 2021

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In Year 4 this week, we have carried on with our narrative unit based on our class book, Stich Head by Guy Bass. It has been wonderful to see how many of you kind parents purchased the book series for your children. They absolutely love the story and it’s greatly impacting their outcomes too!

In Maths, we have been focusing on applying our scaled number facts in multi-step problem solving and extended that by using bar models as a representational tool.

In History we thought about the reasons behind Henry VIII’s decision to break off the relationship with the Pope (Rome) and the consequences it had for the country. We also used clay as our medium to create 3D Tudor Rose models which we are going to paint next week.

In Science, we carried out practical investigations to find out if gas has weight; what happens to gas when it is heated and finally if it is possible to create gas by adding a solid to a liquid.

On Wednesday, we had a wonderful day participating in Sports day. Well done to all the children, they did marvellously. Congratulations to St Vincent’s House! The children also enjoyed their session in the go karts and in the bouncy castle. The looked fabulous after receiving their glitter tattoos and enjoyed the Euros 2020 themes classroom activities too.

We carried over the party atmosphere into Thursday when after a busy morning, the children played cricket on the field, followed by biscuit decoration, party snacks and a short snippet of a movie.

Due to a changed schedule, the children participated in their final Djembe lesson this morning, performing their West African song, now including Caroline’s and Ela-Maria’s winning composition. Well done!

Have a wonderful and safe weekend before our final full week together,

Ms Varga and Mrs McNamara

Please see your Home Learning below:

Home Learning Due on Tuesday, 13th July 2021
Spelling Please log onto Spelling Frame and practice your mixed strategies.

https://spellingframe.co.uk/spelling-rule/74/36-Random-selection-of-12-words-taken-from-years-3-and-4-word-list
Reading Please log onto Read Theory and complete at least 2 activities

https://readtheory.org/
Fluency Please log onto Study Ladder and complete the  assigned Fluency activities.

https://www.studyladder.co.uk/

Friday, 2nd July 2021

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Children in Year 4 were busy using their talents this week.

They spent time looking at secondary sources and evaluated them for reliability to judge Henry VIII’s character and ruling style as part of our Tudor topic. They then used Hans Holbein’s famous painting to create pencil portraits of the prominent king.

On Tuesday, the children participated in watching Mass online celebrating the feast day of St Peter and St Paul and learning about these two wonderful saints from Fr Shaun in his homily.  Later during the week, after doing some research on Simon Peter’s life, they have written CVs acting as Peter, applying for the position of first Pope.

On Wednesday, they have further developed both their bawling and their batting and fielding skills throughout ‘Monster Cricket’, an exciting game taught to us by Coach Tom. Well done team!

On Thursday, we had the pleasure of participating in our next Djembe lesson with Caz, where the class worked in pairs to compose their own call and response patterns as part of a competition. Congratulations to Ela-Maria and Caroline, whose winning composition will officially become part of our performance piece!

Today, lead by Mrs McNamara, the children did some cooking and continued on developing and fine-tuning their Scratch programming skills. They also spent time preparing for Sports Day doing running races and free standing jumps.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend,

Ms Varga and Mrs McNamara

 

Please see your Home Learning below:

Home Learning Friday, 2nd July 2021
Spelling Please log onto Spelling Frame and spend some time practicing this week’s words before testing yourself.

https://spellingframe.co.uk/spelling-rule/73/35-Word-list-years-3-and-4—t-to-w
Reading Please log onto Read Theory and complete at least 2 activities. Please update your reading log about the books you have read for pleasure.

https://readtheory.org/
Multiplication Please spend 15 minutes practicing your mixed number facts.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/
Topic research project Please carry on with your research project set last week based on areas of The Tudors.

The deadline for those are Friday, 9th July 2021.

 

 

Friday, 24th June 2021

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Year 4 has had a great week filled with opportunities to design, investigate and actively participate!

In Science, they have planned and carried out an investigation, building on their existing skills of fair testing to find out how fast different liquids move. They thoroughly enjoyed getting their hands ‘dirty’ and completed learning of great quality.

In PE, they enjoyed yet another fantastic session with Coach Ben, putting their bowling and batting skills in practice playing continuous cricket. What runs!

In English, we carried on with our Stitch Head narrative and worked on our descriptions.

In computing, the children continued designing their Scratch projects whilst during drumming, we learnt the second pattern of our West African song.

We also introduced our last History unit of the year, the Tudors. Children knew a lot already and enjoyed learning about the details of the War of the Roses.

On Friday, the children joined Fr. Shaun, parents and the Church community to take part in the Blessed Sacrament procession. Thank you Fr. Shaun for the lollies, it was a lovely occasion.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Ms Varga and Mrs. McNamara

Please see your Home Learning bellow:

Please log onto Spelling Frame and practice your spelling words before testing yourself. Also take the time, to complete 2 activities on Read Theory and practice your multiplication and division mixed facts on Hit the Button.

https://spellingframe.co.uk/spelling-rule/72/34-Word-list-years-3-and-4—sep–to-su-

https://readtheory.org/

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/

In the next 2 weeks, I would also like you to complete a Project Based Research to support our History unit of the Tudors.

Please create a non-chronological report using all features of the genre (heading, sub-heading, paragraphs, bullet points, diagrams, labels, captions, maps, keys) to present information on one or more of these areas:

  • Food and drinks in the Tudor times
  • Fashion
  • Tudor weapons and jewellery
  • Free time in the Tudor era
  • Schooling

These links might be useful (please ensure you use them with adult supervision as some of them contain adverts)

http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/tudors/food.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/zjbg9j6

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/zq6pvcw

http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/tudors/clothes.htm

https://www.historyforkids.net/medieval-weapons.html

http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/tudors/schools.htm

Please be prepared to present your learning, either hand written, printed or on a pen drive by Monday, 12th July 2021.

Enjoy your research!

 

Friday, 18th June 2021

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Year 4 has had, yet another lovely week in the (mostly) sunshine.

On Monday, we painted silhouette pictures of Castle Groteskew from our class book Stich Head to support our descriptive writing. On Tuesday, we used the iPads to create Popplets in Science. First, we came up with really interesting questions to start our new topic, States of Matter and then we moved on to sorting objects according to their state (liquid, solid or gas).

On Wednesday, the children had the pleasure of working with Coach Ben to further their cricket skills where they were focusing on different throw types for bowling and fielding.

On Thursday, Year 4 had their first Djembe drumming lesson with Caz, which they enjoyed tremendously. They have learnt to introduce themselves using a special pattern; they have practiced tone and base sounds on the drums and started working towards their first West African song. Well done!

The children also worked on their Scratch projects during Computing and finished their fraction learning with a nice problem solving lesson.

Although rain is predicted, I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Ms Varga and Mrs McNamara

Please see your Home Learning below:

Home Learning Due on Tuesday, 22nd June 2021
Spelling Please log onto Spelling Frame and practice this week’s spelling words before testing yourself.

https://spellingframe.co.uk/spelling-rule/71/33-Word-list-years-3-and-4—pro–to-sen-
Reading Please log onto Read Theory and complete 2 activities.  Also, update your reading logs and be prepared to present them on Monday.

https://readtheory.org/
Multiplication Please log onto Hit the button and spend about 15 minutes practicing your mixed multiplication facts.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/
Study Ladder Please log onto Study Ladder and complete the assigned revision activities in Maths and the short description activity in English. We are going to write our description of Stich Head next week, therefore that activity is a good way to prepare yourself.

https://www.studyladder.co.uk/