Week commencing 1st December update

Above is a photo from our Powerdown Day where we managed to save 150 units of energy across the school.  We enjoyed learning with a blackboard, it was like going back in a time machine.

Parents, our apologies again for the cancellation of consultations this week.  We appreciate your understanding and support.

Homework has been added to homework books on Wednesday.  The maths homework is linked to the mental and written work we have been doing in class.  Can you find the most efficient method?  You all have a Bug Club book to read and produce a short book review of the book.  Abacus maths games have been assigned as an added challenge if you would like to do them...

The Celtic shields are progressing well for our museum pieces and our Christingles are all made for our service in Church on Friday.

28/11/14

This week we have seen some brilliant writing in our English lessons. We have been learning about creating mystery and suspense and have come up with some incredible descriptive phrases! We have also started to learn about parenthesis and ellipsis and how they can up help us to build tension. I am really looking forward to reading more next week! Keep it up!

In maths we have been learning about decimals and fractions. We have seen how we can convert fractions into decimals and how we can simplify fractions to their simplest form.

On Monday we continued our squash sessions, learning about the difference between front hand and back hand, we also learned about how to move when trying to make these shots.

On Wednesday we were very fortunate to have a visitor from the community who brought in lots of artifacts about her family and their involvement in both World Wars. Class 4 were fascinated by what they learned and made meticulous notes to use later in the term. They were a real asset to the school by showing fantastic behaviour and respect to Mrs. Beard throughout her talk. They also  asked fantastic questions, showing just how well they had been listening.

On Thursday we had an assembly in the church where again we were able to display our fantastic behaviour and the children have told me how much they enjoyed  visiting the church for an assembly.

Next week we will be looking at addition and subtraction in maths and thinking about how we can use mental methods to speed up our calculations. In English we will continue to work on our mystery and suspense writing. Building on our knowledge of parenthesis and the impact it can have on writing.

Next Friday we have our Christingle  service in the church and will be preparing for it on Thursday.

What Wonderful Writing!

Class 4, I just wanted to write and let you all know how impressed I was with all of your historical stories.
Excellent dialogue with correct inverted commas, great descriptions with adverbs and adjectives and some wonderful character studies. 
Thank you for entertaining me!

Squash, Debating, French and more

Please see our photos and videos below from recent lessons in Class 4.  We are enjoying our new squash lessons, French with Mme. Brown and debating in the outdoor classroom.  Well done to the team who persuaded Mrs. Brown and myself that the school day should be longer.  Year 5s don't forget the Sludge test next Thursday!

The Debating Room



Great argument Taaliya



The Sludge Test...to be continued

 

Week commencing- November 10th: Fractions, multiplication, writing dialogue and using IT in Science

 This week will be learning to how to add great dialogue in literacy to make our narrative writing more exciting to read and to learn more about characters.  Excellent stories need DAD:  Description (we looked at last week), Action (this week) and Dialogue (this week).  Don't forget those adjectives and adverbs we looked at last week and the rules for apostrophes; not for those plurals remember.
We will also be having our debate on Monday:  Should the school day be longer or shorter?  You have to be persuasive and follow the debating rules remember!!  Mrs. Brown and myself look forward to hearing your arguments- good luck!!

 Year 5 in Science we will be analysing our data using the computers and EXCEL.  Do our graphs show what we expected?  Did the time taken for the sugar to dissolve reduce as the temperature of the solvent increased?  Year 4 you will be looking further at soils and investigating effective filtration.

 On Monday we will be joining the whole school for our live assembly from the Tower of London to mark remembrance and the 100 year anniversary of World War 1.  Don't forget to wear your poppy with pride.  Mrs. Martin will be teaching you more about conflict in war times from the past and we will hopefully be displaying some of your Roman learning on the class timeline display.

In Maths we will continue to work on simplifying fractions and understanding how fractions work.  Later in the week we will be looking at how we can apply our mental maths and place value work in using the grid method of multiplication and short multiplication for Year 5s.



Remember to leave some comments about your learning on the blog!  Homework will be given out on Tuesday linked to our learning in the class.  How are the Bug Club books going?  Let me know through a comment on this post.  I will assign extra maths on abacus if you would like to do them but they are extra homework, you don't have to do them!

Week 8: Multiples, factors....emotive writing and saturation part 2

      Welcome back Class 4!  While Mr. Henderson is away I will be teaching you in the mornings and Year 5 Science.  Mrs. Martin will be teaching your theme afternoons and games. 

This week we will be learning more about multiples, factors and tests of divisibility.  Do you know how to check a number is divisible by 9?  Our Thinking Things Through work will be shape related.  We will be making an equilateral triangle from an A4 piece of paper and then making new shapes from these.

In literacy we will be watching a silent film-  The Piano where we will be studying emotion and how to add this into our writing.  Our grammar and spelling focus will be on -tion -sion, -ssion and -cian suffixes and the possessive apostrophe rules. 

Year 5 science we will be investigating the effect of temperature on solubility.  Can you remember any of the scientific words from our last lesson?  What is a viscous solution? 

Homework:  Abacus maths activities have been set linked to divisibility tests.  For literacy I would like you to write sentences using some key spelling words from this week.  This will be given out on Monday and due in on Friday please.  I will also be assigning some Bug Club books for you to enjoy at home.

I am looking forward to working with you all! 

 

Mr. Wainwright

  


Week 7: Assessments, Saturation in Science and more....



Investigating saturation

Another teaspoonful?

How much solute?

It has been lovely teaching in Class 4 this week.  Well done to all of you for your efforts with the half term maths assessment, don't forget how important your mental maths is!  Remember those rounding and adjusting methods for questions like +298.
I was impressed with your practical science skills today Year 5, can you remember what solute took more to reach saturation point?  Tomorrow we will be doing some mathematical art testing your measurement and shape knowledge and of course our regular Friday afternoons coding to design your own game to share with Class 1 or 2.
Have a great half term and well done to all of you who played in the football match and who entertained us all at JAS Club after school.  Great goal Thomas!

Mr. Wainwright

Activelearn Maths Homework Update

For those of you still struggling to access Activelearn here are a few common problems we have found.

1) Check you have an up to date browser, (Activelearn appears to work best in Google Chrome.)
2) Update your flash player.
3) Allow pop-ups for Activelearn, when you try to open the homework games a bar may appear at the top of your browser saying pop-ups blocked. If you allow pop-ups for Activelearn by right clicking on the bar it will allow the games to open.

10.10.14

We have had a very exciting week with the highlight being our trip to Colchester Castle on Tuesday (even if Mr. Henderson was too tall to get through some of the tunnels when we went under the castle into the foundations!). We were able to try on various outifts, learn about the long history of Colchester and have a go at chariot racing! We learned how to build a Roman archway and looked at building both a Celtic roundhouse and a Roman Villa.

Back in school we have made Celtic roundhouses with Mrs. Martin, starting our work on time and measures in maths and Myths and Legends in English. Both of which we will finish next week.

We know some of you have been having trouble using our ActiveLearn homework for maths, if you are still having problems ensure that you are running the latest version of your internet browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari), ActiveLearn appears to work best on Chrome.

3.10.14

We've been very busy this week in class 4. We've been finishing our work on non-chronological reports on 'The Stone Age' leading to some fabulous writing!
We've been looking at subtraction in maths and have created some brilliant problem solving in our 'Thinking Things Through' work.

Next week we will be looking at myths and legends in our writing and time in our maths work. We will be continuing our work on Rocks in Soils in our science in year groups.

On Tuesday the school will be visiting Colchester Castle which we are all very much looking forward to.

27.9.14

Last week we were once again very busy in class 4. We have been looking at decimal numbers in maths and we have been looking at non-chronological reports in English.

We have continued to learn how to play tag-rugby in games lessons and have been looking at conflict through dance in our PE sessions with Mrs. Martin.

We looked at the evidence for a Bronze Age mace. We discussed how we knew it was man made and what it might have been used for.

We have also been looking at Celtic knots in preparation for our DT project for later in the term.

In science Year 5 have been looking at the best soil for drainage and we made a Stone Age water filter.

Year 4 have again come together to continue their science work on 'Rocks and Soils' with Mrs. Dixon.

On Friday Year 5 had a taster day at Stanway School. They thoroughly enjoyed the day and came back to school very excited about the future.

PS in the coming week we will be looking at addition and subtraction methods in Maths and we will be finishing our work on non-chronological reports in English.

19.9.14

This week we have been very, very busy in Class 4!

On Tuesday we look at Cave paintings and crawled under our desks to simulate being in a cave to draw. On Wednesday Mr. Jones was kind enough to come in and show us some amazing Stone Age artifacts, while he was in Class 4 he was good enough to stay for the morning and share his experience as a journalist to help us with our work on newspaper reports.

Also on Wednesday our year 4 students joined in with our Oaks to Acorns programme, meeting with members of the community and discussing their lives and experiences.

Also this week we have ground our own flour to make Stone Age bread to a mixed reception, mostly good I'm glad to say!

On Friday a robot version of Mr. Wainwright worked with Class 4 to show how important clear instructions are for when we write programmes in computing.

Next week we will be looking at decimals and fractions in maths and in our writing we will be looking at writing non-chronological reports.

Year 4 Science

Year 4 came together this afternoon and learnt about reversible and irreversible changes.  They looked at butter, cheese, chocolate, candle wax, egg and a stone in cups floating in hot water.  The children made observations afterwards in cold water to see which materials were reversible.

Predictions were made and the overall conclusion was that: stone didn't change and all the others were reversible except for the egg.  Discussions about cheese were had related to cooking.  Great scientists at work!!

12/09/14

Hello and Welcome to Class 4.

We've had a brilliant week this week in our new class. On Monday Doctor Who's TARDIS crash landed at Fordham, bringing with it some very special visitors! 2 Stone age people surprised us all, they were dazed and confused and didn't recognise the things we take for granted today such as glass. They foraged for food and kept warm by the fire.

This year on a Wednesday we will be using our reading time to read with our friends in Class 2. We've also looked at our new, online, maths homework. Each week I will be setting the children a task to complete at home, there are 3 levels to complete. 

Next week we will be looking at place value and addition in Maths and we will be finishing our work on newspaper reports. Also this week year 4 will be taking part in our Oaks to Acorns with members of the local community. Year 4 will also be coming back together as a year group on Thursday afternoons with Mrs. Dixon for science lessons.

In games we will continue to learn rugby skills and this week we are going to look at cave paintings in our work on the Stone Age.

14/07/2014 - Homework

For those who forgot to take home or have lost their homework sheets from last Friday.

11/07/2014

This week we have been celebrating the World Cup,even hosting our own tournament. We split our classes up into teams and we have learned a huge amount about the different countries. The children of class 4 participated wonderfully with the younger children and made me very proud with the way in which they looked out for their young team mates.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we performed our school summer show, everyone who came to see it will agree that the children were truly fantastic and performed with a  maturity far beyond their age.

As it was the week of the summer show we have been studying play scripts in class 4. This work will be finished next week and our homework this week is related to this topic. It also led to a debate in class about which of our success criteria was the most important.

In maths we have studied line graphs and looked at scaling numbers down using fractions. Next week we will be revising the 4 operations (Addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.)

In PE we have started to look at some of the basic skills in rugby (without the tackling).

Have a great weekend,
Mr. H.

Friday 27th June 2014

This week has been incredibly full! We have been sitting our tests this week and the class now seem very happy that they are over!

The other big news this week was Sports Day! Congratulations to the yellow team for your victory. It was lovely to see so many children taking part with so much enthusiasm! We could see how much progress the children have made this term through the athletics lessons they have been having with Mrs. Martin.

We are also looking forward to the Consortium Sports Day next Wednesday where we are sure our school representatives will make us proud.

We have been rehearsing for our summer show and now have a dance that the class has put together. On Thursday we wrote a class poem based on Spike Milligan's 'On the Ning Nang Nong'. We have turned it into a display at the back of the classroom, adults please feel free to pop your head around the door at the end of the day to have a quick look!

Homework this week is as follows! (It is due in next Friday 4th July).

Have a great weekend,

Mr. H.

Friday 20th June 2014

Next Tuesday, weather permitting, we will be having sports day! The children are very excited and can't wait to compete! We have prepared a dance for our summer show and our work in class has been exceptional yet again!

Next week we will be having assessments on Monday and Tuesday. For the rest of the week we will be looking at Poetry in English and fractions, decimals and percentages in Maths.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you for all the birthday wishes I have received and a special thank you to Izzy and her family for my amazing cake! It was truly special!

I would also like to thank Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Sibley for decorating our classroom and apologise for accidently spoiling the surprise by walking in!

Our homework for next week has gone out today but just in case you missed it!

Have a lovely weekend.

Mr. H

Sports day

Just a quick mini-blog!

In readiness for next weeks sporting fun we would like to ask that if you have a spare minute please feel free to have a go at the events, especially the step, hop and jump. (A step then a hop followed by a two-footed jump).

Week beginning 16/06/2014

Hello, this week we will be looking at area and multiplication in maths and finishing our work on 'Older Literature' in English. The written work produced so far has been exceptional and all the staff have been astounded at how much Class 4 have raised their game when writing this week! (Keep it up!)

Congratulations and good luck to those selected for the Consortium sports.

With the weather being so nice lately we are striving to have our PE lessons outdoors on both Tuesday and Friday. I would like to take this opportunity to make sure that all children have suitable footwear to participate in PE whether we are inside or outdoors, cooperation in this would be greatly appreciated!

I am also attempting to upload an image of our updated 'Speed Tables' grid before we use it for the first time on Monday! Please feel free to have a go, you all know how this works!

Mr. H.

Hello

Hello and welcome to class 4,
This week we will be looking at multiplication and division in maths. In literacy we will be continuing our work on 'Older Literature' based on our reading of Treasure Island.

Our topic this term is Ancient Egypt, if you have any artifacts that you would like to share they would be most welcome.

Hopefully you have had a restful weekend in the sun,
Class 4

Welcome to Class 4s blog!  Look for our regular updates for homework, new learning and sharing some of the successes from our learning in class.

Mr. Henderson