Miss Harris Year 4 Teacher
Mrs Bird Teaching Assistant
What have we been learning?
Autumn Term 1
English
We began the year by learning how to write riddles. We created mind maps of vocabulary to help us write clues for our chosen object. We have also been looking at writing non-chronological reports using the Amazon River as our focus. The children have been researching the wildlife that live there and then presented their findings to the class. We also wrote a shared piece of writing for the introduction, the children had some great ideas!
We have been learning about place value using Maths equipment. We have used number lines, base ten and place value counters. This has helped us to compare and order numbers up to 10,000. We have also been learning how to add and subtract 4-digit numbers. Strategies to check our answers have helped to see if we are correct!
Science
In Science, we have been learning about the digestive system. The children learnt about the different organs used when eating and had a handy mnenominc to help them remember: Many Old Sailors Sell Lovely Red Apples! We started to learn about the different types of teeth we have and what they are used for. We tried some different foods to see which teeth we use when eating.
They were also lucky enough to take part in an exciting workshop at Whipsande Zoo, where they got to be detectives and use their knowledge about animal teeth to discover what they ate. The children loved investigating the different skulls and exploring their teeth.
Design Technology
In DT this half term we have been studying seasonal food. For our first lesson, we were learning to cook using British ingredients available all year round. We made fairy cakes using flour, which is produced all year round.
Religious Education
Our topic this half term has been the Trinity. Children created some artwork to show their interpretation of the baptism of Jesus, when all three parts of the Trinity came together for the first time.
Autumn Term 2
Science
Our topic this half term is ‘Good Vibrations’. We began by doing a sound walk around school to identify various sounds and what was causing the vibration. We then learnt about how sound travels through the different parts of our ear and sends messages to our brain.
Physical Education
This half term, we are learning gymnastics and yoga. We have been learning different jumps and rolls in gymnastics, our favourite is the ‘Teddy Bear Roll’. In yoga, we have been stretching and relaxing our bodies while concentrating on our breathing. We have enojyed being calm.
Art
In Art, we have been practising the skill of drawing, looking at tone and shading. We focused on different parts of the animals we saw on our recent zoo trip and created some fabulous artwork for our calendars.
Christmas Celebrations
We celebrated Christmas with lots of fun activities. We had a Christmas Party with games and a quiz, we baked lots of biscuits to sell at the Christmas Fayre, had a delicious Christmas dinner with all the trimmings and made clay decorations for our families.
Spring Term 1
Maths
This half term, we have been focusing on different methods of multiplication and division. We have been building up to working with larger numbers. We have learnt how to use ‘factor bugs’ to help us check we know all the factors of a product. We are experts now at fact families too!
English
We have been learning how to write a playscript. We used ‘The Twits’ as our focus text and wrote a scene for the chapter ‘Wormy Spaghetti’. We enjoyed this a lot as Mr and Mrs Twit play pranks on each other. To help us understand the different elements needed, we did some role play. Our class reading book has been ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’ – we have loved this story! We particularly liked the parts with Aslan and how he overcame the witch’s powers. We used the book to help us write some story settings, using similes and metaphors to help our writing be more interesting to the reader.
Science
This half term, we have been learning about states of matter. We have learned about the three different states; solid, liquid and gas, and carried out different investigations to explore melting, freezing, evaporation and condensation. We also investigated whether a gas can be weighed – we had a lot of fun exploring fizzy drinks!
Physical Education
In PE, we have been learning different skills such as balance, coordination and agility. We moved around different stations to practise a different skill each week. We also learnt to work together in a team to create a short dance to ‘The Greatest Showman’. We had to include a ringmaster, clowns, a trapeze artist and many more!
