Year 4 - Focus Week
We have been working very hard in Year 4 this half term and have really enjoyed our learning!
In English, we have looked at the work of Roald Dahl a lot more closely, studying his style and use of author voice and then applying it to our own writing. The children have enjoyed listening to excerpts from different books written by Roald Dahl and discussing the key features, then planning and writing their own versions of how Willy Wonka rescued the Oompa Loompas from Loompaland to bring them to his factory. They also worked in groups to create their own machines that could produce sweet treats and then wrote explanation texts to describe how their machines would work.
In Maths, we have been learning about shapes. The children have looked at the properties of triangles, quadrilaterals (4-sided shapes) and polygons, and have compared the amount of sides, vertices (corners), parallel lines and right angles they have. They have also learned about finding symmetry in a variety of shapes.
In Science, we have been pretending to be Scientists and have conducted experiments to find out how the viscosity (thickness/stickiness) of liquids affects their flow. The children have worked through the process step-by-step, as a Scientist would, formulating a research question, discussing the method they would follow in order to conduct a fair test, which variables they would change and which ones they would keep the same, and finally conducting the experiment practically in groups. They have entered the data collected into a bar chart and then discussed their findings, and written a conclusion for their experiment.
In Geography, we took a closer look at our local area and discussed the human and physical features that can be found around us. We had so much fun going out for a walk and finding these features practically! After that, we explored our local area further by looking at current maps and comparing these to maps from hundreds of years ago. We were amazed by how much our local area has changed and developed over the years! This week, the children learned about New Delhi in India, looking at maps and the human and physical features that can be found there, and then started to compare this to our local area. We will continue with this over the next few weeks.
In Religious Education, the children have learned all about the Christian Bible! They produced some fantastic posters with facts about the Bible, and were amazed to find out that the Bible had been translated into 3,283 languages in 167 countries. We learned about the different places where Bibles can be found, and some children were excited to find Bibles in their local bookshops!
Finally, in Design and Technology the children have looked at biscuits a lot more closely, studying their packaging and appearance, discussing their target audiences, and of course, tasting some! The children also had the opportunity to bake biscuits themselves, and taste them, and we will be thinking of ways that we can adapt the recipe and improve it over the next few weeks. How exciting!
The children in Year 4 all took part in a lacrosse tournament recently, and played a range of matches against other schools. They did very well and really enjoyed the morning, and we were all impressed with their maturity, skill and sportsmanship.
The children also completed the Multiplication Tables Check, which is a statutory test administered to all Year 4 children across the country to test their fluency and accuracy with times tables. Our Year 4 group did brilliantly and reached the target we had set for them, and we were so proud to see the children’s individual progress. It is fantastic to see all the hard work and effort they have put in, pay off! These results will be shared with parents in the children’s end-of-year reports.
What a fantastic half term, well done, Year 4!