26/10/18

Hello Year 4!

I cannot believe that we have reached the end of the first half term! I am so incredibly proud of each and every one of you, you have worked so hard and have settled into Year 4 fantastically! It was really lovely to be able to meet with all of your parents this week and share the amazing learning that you have been doing, and tell them how much you have amazed me.

Highlights of the week:

This week the children have drafted, edited, published and performed their onomatopoeia poems. I have been really impressed at how well the children have been able to independently reflect on their targets to improve their writing and produce fantastic pieces of poetry. The children have also been consolidating their understanding of all of our learning from this half term in maths. I was really proud of the resilience and ‘can do’ attitude the children showed when we completed some practise test questions. This week we also conducted our teeth experiment. We used eggs to represent teeth and placed them in lots of different liquids to see what contributes to tooth decay. The children chose to place the eggs in, Dr Pepper, tea, coffee, apple juice, Fruit Shoot, chocolate milk, and hot sauce. We have observed the effect over 10 hours and lots of the children were really shocked to see the effect of the liquids that they considered healthy, like apple juice, which actually produced holes in the egg shell! We have also begun practising for our class assembly and the children have chosen to perform their favourite feel good song from this half term ‘This is me!’ Please continue to practise this over the holiday so we are ready to perform this in our assembly.

Home learning over half term:

Children must be reading at home and completing learning on Mathletics. The children also need to be practising their times tables. I have sent each child home with a post it of which times tables they are focusing on. I have added a times table tab onto the blog page which will direct you to a really good website that you can use to practise. I have also sent children home with the list of spellings that they are expected to know by the end of Year 4. Please look through this with your children and choose some to focus on.

Below are some suggestions of mini tasks you can complete over half term to help your children become more independent. It would be great if you could photograph your children completing some of these tasks so we can create a display in the classroom. You do not have to complete all of these, choose the ones you think would be most beneficial and interesting to you.

-          - Learn how to tie a tie.

-         -  Learn how to tie your laces.

-          - Getting undressed and dressed with clothes folded in under 2 minutes.

-          - Take a walk outside and complete an observation drawing of nature.

-         -  Learn or practise riding a bike.

-         -  Practise swimming.

-          - Write a letter to me (Miss Bradford) with the correct address of Little Heath and either bring it in on the first day back, or you can actually post it! It can be about anything you like!

-          -Visit the local library.

-          -Practise telling the time.

-         -Research the festival of Diwali.

What we are learning in the first week back after half term:

Maths:
Telling the time. Any pre learning you can do over the half term will be really helpful as this is a very abstract concept.

English:
Myth and quest stories.

Science:
Living things and their habitats.

D&T:
Linkages and levers.

ICT:
Mindfulness photography.

Geography: 
Volcanoes.

RE:
Diwali.

PSHCE:
Anti-bullying.

I am finalising our trip to the Potters Bar Museum over half term so you will receive information on this in the first week back.


Have a lovely rest and I look forward to seeing you after the half term.

Miss Bradford

23/10/18

Hello Year 4,

Apologies for the late post due to my illness late last week. 

I can not believe we are into the last week of half term already! The children have really enjoying learning about Halloween and The Day of the Dead and were really creative in making decorations for our classroom. The class fully embraced ‘celebrating differences’ week and I was so impressed with the maturity and respect they showed during our discussions.

This week we have no spellings as we are going through spelling strategies in class. We are creating our own onomatopoeia poems in English and finalising our topic on multiplication and division with some word problems in maths.

I look forward to seeing  you for parents evening

Best wishes 

Miss Bradford 

12/10/18

Hello Year 4.
I cannot believe how fast half term is approaching! The children are working really well and impressing me more and more each week with their hard work and attitude to learning. All children have been given a parent consultation slip with their allocated time on it. Please email me if you do not receive this and I can confirm your appointment time.

This week’s highlights:
We have had a fun filled week of learning, continuing with the practical style of learning that the children are really enjoying. We have been integrating Spanish into our everyday routines and I have been really impressed with the children’s pronunciation and willingness to give it a go…even if I got called Mr Bradford a few times! In science we made clay models of teeth to reinforce our learning on the shape, size, texture, position and names of the different teeth. In maths the children have been playing interactive games and board games focusing on place value to help with multiplication and division. We had a special guest visit us in history, and the children had the chance to ask lots of questions about the history of Potters Bar. In Art we used torches to help us with shading light and dark for our objects which represents ourselves, and a massive CONGRATULATIONS to Alana for winning the firework art competition! We are all so proud of you and the class were so supportive and happy for Alana when she won. Our mindfulness song of the week was ‘Conqueror’ chosen by Veer–Ram and the children really enjoyed picking out the lyrics which meant something to them. We also listened to ‘Firework’ in English to get some inspiration for metaphors and similes. We looked at the importance of using descriptive language in songs as well as writing.

Next week:
Next week is ‘celebrating differences’ week, and a lot of our learning will be focused around raising awareness and tolerance about the differences that exist between all people.

English:
This week we will be looking at a different picture book each day which symbolises the difference in all of us. The children will be creating writing pieces based on these stories.

Spellings:
Please can I ask for you to continue practising spellings at home, as the children will be having their weekly spelling test on Friday. The spellings this week are as follows:
- calendar
- caught
- centre
- century
- certain
- circle
- complete
- consider
- continue
- decide

Maths:Next week we are looking into mastery questions for multiplication and division and begin looking at how to work our word problems. The children have all decided the times tables they are focusing on this week, so please ensure they are practising at home. The children need to be fluent in the times table with speed and accuracy before they can move on. From now on, I am going to be giving out the weekly maths investigation on a Friday and I will be posting it on the  blog so that you can look at it over the weekend if you wish. This week our maths investigation was chosen by Edward!
Maths investigation:
Add one line to the set of numbers below to turn it into a time.

 |0  |0  |0

Science:
Next week we are going to be focusing on different food chains and making our own both physically and in written and picture form. 

PE:

Please can I remind you that children need trainers for PE on Monday, a swimming kit on Wednesday and a football/PE kit on Thursday. I am going swimming this week so I am really excited to see how much progress you have made!


Apologies for the mistake in last weeks blog, our class assembly is November 30th. 

Have a lovely relaxing weekend and I look forward to seeing you on Monday!
Miss Bradford

05/10/18

Hello Year 4!
Another fabulous week of learning with lots of children becoming free readers and receiving pen licences!

Highlights of the week:
We have had a very practical week of learning to help our understanding of difficult concepts. The children have really enjoyed getting up out of their seats and solving problems practically. For example, we were singing and dancing greetings and numbers in Spanish. We also had a practical maths task where children were sorted into groups of different numbers to develop a deeper understanding of division. We also had a science lesson investigating all the different types of teeth and we even got to look at some puppy teeth and compare them to human teeth! The children also had the chance to share objects from home that represented themselves. It was so lovely to hear about all the individual things that make us different and the children really impressed me with how respectful they were to each other during this sharing time. On Monday we will be sketching these objects in our art lesson. I have told the children they are welcome to keep these in the classroom, or take them home over the weekend and bring them back on Monday. So please don’t worry if you forgot your item this week, there will be an opportunity to share on Monday.

This week we started to introduce slippers in the classroom. This idea comes from the Norwegian education system and statistics have shown that wearing slippers or comfortable socks in the learning environment helps to reduce anxiety and stimulate calmness. I have certainly seen the children become more relaxed with their work and more determined to have a go, so we will continue to use these in the classroom. However, I have explained to the children that this is not compulsory and they do not need to take part in this if they do not wish.

Our song of the week was ‘Don’t stop believing’ and the children have been reflecting on what this means to them in their learning. We have been discussing the importance of making mistakes and having a go to help us learn and progress.

Next Week:

Spellings:
In English, children have been using the strategy ‘does it look right?’ with spellings that do not follow the phonetic rule. This is a really important skill for learning spellings and it would be great if you could encourage this at home too, because as we know, the English language does not always follow the rules! Please ensure you are practising spellings at home as we will be having our spelling test on Friday.
This week’s spellings are:

-          address

-          answer

-          appear

-          arrive

-          believe

-          bicycle

-          breath

-          build

-          busy

-          business

English:
The children have now finished their poetry unit on riddles, and today we edited our work and produced fantastic riddle stories. I have sent children home with a poetry competition letter that they are welcome to take part in. They can use some of their riddles they created in class or come up with their own poems. There are prizes for the school with the best entries so it would be fantastic if we could get as many submissions in as possible. The deadline for this is the 19^th October. Next week we are moving onto report writing based around our local history topic.

Maths:

We are continuing our work on multiplication and division. Please ensure that you are practising timetables at home, but also encouraging your children to explain what multiplication and division means. We have been using a lot of resources and physical representations to show what it means to multiply and divide.

Extra information
I have included a tab with information about Sharing Assemblies. If you click on the link at the top the page titled ‘Sharing Assembly’, you will find a list of all of the assembly dates and the children’s names.

Our class assembly is on the Friday 30th November which seems far away, but it is fast approaching! It would be great to see as many of you there as possible if you can make it.

Please make sure you are reading at home, completing Mathletics and finding time to look over your spellings. Have a lovely weekend and I am looking forward to seeing you on Monday. 
I wonder if Alan the Alien will pay us another visit this week….

Miss Bradford