Welcome to year 4 and class page 4RW!

On this page we will be sharing some of the learning which we are doing and class news.  Below, we have the curriculum overviews for the Autumn and Spring 1 Terms which set out the learning for these terms.

I hope you enjoy seeing some of your children's learning in action.

Miss Willey

Now we have collected our data, we will be using this to create classification keys illustrating the key characteristics.

Happy New Year and Welcome Back!

We hope that you have had a great holiday and are ready for an exciting and busy term ahead.  

Our learning this year will be centred around the question: Can we Change Life on Earth?  As part of this learning, we will be investigating our local habitats and our science learning will be about Living Things and their Environment.  Continuing on from our rivers learning last term, we will be studying flooding and links to climate change.

As you know, this term we will be swimming once a week on a Tuesday afternoon, please make sure that children come to school with a swimming kit, including towel.

As always, if you have any questions, please contact me on the class email.

Miss Willey

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I would like this chance to thank the children for all of their hard work this year so far. It has been a very busy term in all areas of the curriculum.  I was particularly proud of the children in our Christmas church service and the readings and singing of Silent Night - both in English and German, they were exceptional and I received many compliments from staff who were at the service.

I hope everyone enjoys a well deserved break and look forward to seeing everyone in 2022!

Miss Willey

30th November 2021

Another month has passed by and we are edging ever so closer to Christmas time.  As you will have heard from your children and the information sent home, we have already begun working on our celebrations.

Alongside this we are continuing with our learning on Volcanoes with a focus on Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna - as part of our Autumn Term learning on U.K. v Italy.  This week we are finishing our stories on "Escape from Mascali" inspired by the historical story Escape from Pompeii by Christina Balit.  We will then focus our learning on creating a chronological report of the events in Pompeii from 24th-25th August 79AD.

We are continuing our maths learning around calculating perimeter using our understanding of the properties of shape and mental addition to help us.  Our computing learning about the internet and computer networks alongside staying safe on the internet is also continuing this term.

We look forward to sharing some more photos of our learning soon!

Keeping active - 26th November 2021

We have been making the most of the dry weather and enjoying exploring the new fitness equipment and trim trail we are lucky enough to have in our school grounds.  Alongside using this new equipment to keep fit, we have been developing our basketball skills in P.E. this term.  

Music - Glockenspiel (Friday 19th November 2021)

This term we have begun learning to play the glockenspiel and xylophone in our music lessons.  It has been a really enjoyable challenge learning to play new notes alongside reading notes on the treble clef.  We have worked hard and are really proud with the improvements which we are making each week.

Thursday 11th November 2021 - Armistice Day

We have had a busy week of learning around Armistice Day and the importance of remembering those who have fought for our country.  As well as sharing a range of texts during our reading lessons we have begun our term's art topic on sculpture by creating our own papier mache poppies creating a class wreath. 

Stepping into another world... (12th October 2021)

We have been working hard on our writing this term and in particular we have focussed on how we can create atmosphere with setting descriptions.  Inspired by the story by Angela Macallister and Grahame Baker-Smith, we have created our own magical worlds and used a range of expanded noun phrases to help our readers truly picture what these worlds are like to step into.

The Water Cycle (Monday 4th October)

Having learnt about the processes of evaporation and condensation, we are now learning about the water cycle.  As you may have seen in your child's home learning this week, we have been trying to get our heads around the fact that the water we drink, wash our hands in, or get soaked in by the rain, has been on this planet since long before the dinosaurs bathed in it!!  We have had a go at creating a water cycle in a bag.  If you look closely in the photos from this week, you can start to see the water droplets that have formed after the water evaporated and has now condensed again.  We will keep watching for more evidence of the processes of evaporation and condensation.

Thursday 30th September - Update

What a busy term we have been having! September has just whizzed by.  In our writing this term we have been focussing on creating interesting settings with lots of atmosphere.  We are at the point of writing our own stories which cross into another world and look forward to sharing some of these on this page soon.  

We finished reading our class book "The Bolds" by Julian Clary.  It is safe to say that we have enjoyed all of the Christmas cracker jokes from Mr Bold and the children have shared some of their own jokes with a play on words - just like Mr. Bold.  Next week we will be changing the theme from great laughs to great frights!  

In maths we have been further developing our number sense and are exploring the world of negative numbers.

In our music lessons, we have been enjoying some of Abba's greatest hits whilst developing our listening skills and music appreciation skills.   We have looked at how the different songs have been compiled and the range of instruments.  It has created some interesting discussions as we have compared some of the pop with a more disco element alongside those which are more of a ballad.  As you may also be aware we are learning to sing the famous Mama Mia track (well we are focussing on Italy this term!).

This week we have made a start with our French learning, focussing on numbers.  We have been putting our singing skills into practice too - check out this link if you want to sing along together at home!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsEz58BblMY 

Reading Monitoring

Thank you for taking the time to read with your children during the week.  I appreciate that it is a challenge at times to fit this into our busy lives.  However, it is so important to help us to encourage your children to read everyday and enjoy their books.  We have started to track the words which we are accumulating from our A.R. books. 

On the leader boards for the week ending 24th September are...

Science - States of Matter (24th September 2021)

We have spent the first part of this term focussing on science and states of matter.  We have been learning about materials being classified into 1 of 3 states of matter: solids, liquids or gasses. We have also been looking at how the particles in these materials behave differently when they are in solid form, liquid form and gas form.  Check out some of the photos of your children acting out how the particles behave depending on their state of matter.  Can you work out which group is which?

We have been working scientifically to investigate and prove whether gasses weigh anything.  We weighed a selection of fizzy drinks to find out which had the most carbon dioxide and was therefore the fizziest.  We were amazed at how the gas which we couldn't see actually weighed something!

We have also investigated how a solid can turn into a liquid and that the higher the temperature, the quicker this change will occur.  We also saw how for chocolate, this was a reversible change as the chocolate eventually cooled again and turned back into a solid - although it looked a bit different!

We experimented with the processes of evaporation and condensation using liquid water of different temperatures along with ice to make these processes happen.

Welcome to year 4 and class page 4RW!

What a fantastic first week back it has been!  We have had a busy week of settling in to our new class and our new routines.

On this page we will be sharing some of the learning which we are doing and class news.  Below, we have the curriculum overview for the Autumn Term which sets out the learning for this term.  Our overarching topic is Italy v U.K. 

We will be sending out homework tasks each week.  However, as always, the most important activity that the children can do at home to support all of their learning is to read, read, read!  If you haven't had a chance yet to check out your child's new reading log, please do.  There are lots of tips and prompts for reading along with a list of spelling prompts and grammar terms to help.  Please do listen with your child reading and give the all important signature as children are rewarded with shiny gold stickers!

Our main P.E. day is on a Monday and we will be doing additional P.E. sessions on Thursdays.  Please help us by ensuring your child' P.E. kit is in school everyday each week, in case there are unavoidable last minute changes.  As the weather is getting cooler, please remember to send your child in with a jumper to wear outside for P.E.  All long hair must be tied back for P.E. and earrings removed or at least covered with tape.  So please ensure that, if your child has long hair and/or earrings, they have appropriate accessories for this.  

As soon as we have all of the information regarding photo permissions, we will be sharing lots of photos of our learning, so keep your eyes on this class page!

If you need to contact us directly, please use the class email address Y4-RW@the-castle-primary.devon.sch.uk and we will get back to you as soon as we are able to.

Miss Willey and Mrs Falsafi.