This week, we have been getting to grips with being able to respond quickly and accurately to mental arithmetic questions – particularly times tables. We have been playing ‘Hit the Button‘ which is a quick fire game against the clock. It would be great if your child could have a go at this at home and keep learning their times tables.

We have also been looking at the features of instruction texts. We have carried out activities involving following, reading and responding to verbal and written instructions. The features of instruction texts have been looked at closely and the children will get chance to write their own set of instructions following a baking session tomorrow!

In Class Worship, we discussed ‘Attitude of Gratitude’. The children thought of ways that they have ever shown or experienced gratitude in return for being generous.

In Design and Technology, we made further progress with investigating and evaluating the effectiveness of a variety of levers and linkages. We drew diagrams of products featuring levers and labelled and commented on the design and mechanism. We will move onto developing ideas for our own product using levers.

A busy week in Class 4 again since half term.

In English the children have been writing play scripts based on a chapter of Charlotte’s Web.  They enjoyed performing each other’s play scripts in our lesson this morning.

In maths we have been working on multiplication and division, practising times tables and simple division problems.

In History we have looked at different objects and inventions and found out when and where they were invented to create a class time line of inventions.  Next week we will be exploring some Stone Age to Iron Age artefacts from the local library.

In Science we have just begun our new topic on ‘sound.’  We carried out a listening walk around school to try and identify different sounds and where they come from.  We also explored instruments and how they make sounds.

On Monday, the children in Class 4 began to explore the features of a play script. The children were able to recall features from previous work and could relate to some of the features from having played the role of characters in plays and performances in school. The children worked in small groups on Tuesday, to perform ‘The Meeting’ scene from Chapter 12 of Charlotte’s Web.

In Maths, the children carried out activities relating to doubling and halving. They used the partitioning method to double 3 digit numbers and to halve 3 digit even numbers. Some children revisited and practised the written division method too – they refer to this as the ‘Bus Stop’ method.

The children enjoyed learning the days of the week in French. They were given a word search to do during the lesson and were encouraged to recite the days of the week as they completed this. A ‘Chatterbox’ game was given out for the children to make and play at home – it was nice to see a few children had already had a go at doing this by Tuesday.

During Class Worship, we started to think in depth about ‘Generosity’. We discussed the three main things that God encourages us to generous with – our time, talent and treasures. We put our heads together to think of ways we have all been generous with our time, talent and treasures.

In PE, the class carried out activities involving balancing in different ways and practised the skills in jumping and landing safely – head up, looking forward, jumping upwards instead of forwards, strong body tension and using our ankles, hips and knees as ‘shock absorbers’.

On Tuesday, the class started their new Design and Technology unit of work. The time, the children will be working with levers and linkages to create a product – this will be decided next week. The children used a useful website programme to learn about the different levers and linkages that can be used to enable things to move. Here is the link to the website.

See you on Monday 🙂

Mrs Conde

On Monday, we started to look at the relationships between characters in Charlotte’s Web. This involved searching for evidence in the book which helps us to build a picture of how Charlotte, Wilber and Fern feel about each other. We gathered evidence in groups and recorded quotes from the book. Today, we explored features of poetry. We looked at several poems and found examples of poetic features, such as alliteration, personification, similes and repetition. The children will move on to planning and writing their own poems based on friendships.

In Maths we had another lesson carrying out a mental arithmetic exercise. The children had 25 minutes to answer questions and we then worked through the answers altogether, paying close attention to how we arrived at our answers and the different methods used.

I have found another fun game that I think will help improve times tables skills – click here to play!

Today, some children spent time revising written subtraction methods and also applying their skills to problems solving exercises. Some children completed an activity where they had to record costs of items from a garden centre and total up the costs using the column addition method.

In PE today, we used different parts of our bodies to mark out numbers and letters. For example, we used our elbows, knees, hips and feet to mark out the letters in our names on the floor. This was done to music and the children had to create a really smooth sequence to demonstrate to others.

French involved revising the vocabulary for items in the classroom. The children were set the task of creating signs for different objects such as pens, books, paper etc. The children are making good progress in their pronunciation of vocabulary.

This afternoon, we continued our art work from last week. The children added watercolour paints to their sketches of the barn from Charlotte’s Web. We made sure we thought hard about techniques such as adding a small amount of water to the paper before adding colour and using light strokes.

The class have been reading Chapters 7, 8 and 9 of Charlotte’s Web so far this week. It is lovely to see so many children keen to read on in the story and to find out more about the story each week.

Well done Class 4 – you have all worked very hard.

See you next week,

Mrs Conde