Tudors and Classic Fiction

This has been a fantastic week in Class 4 which began with the painting of our Tudor houses. The children enjoyed getting very messy and creative. I hope they went home having more paint on their boxes than themselves. Today we started to put on the detail for the outside of the house and will be moving onto making the roofs Monday.

In maths we have continued with multiplication and looked at square and cube numbers. Next week we will move into division.

We have started our English topic of classic fiction and started a mini author study of Charles Dickens. We looked at three different novels which he wrote and questioned how his life impacted on his ideas for the stories and characters. 

Year 4 have been focusing on how sound travels and whether sound travels through solid objects. We conducted an experiment to find out from how far away we could hear a pin drop as it hits a table. 

Friendship week

We have had a fantastically varied week in which we have done plenty of great work and friendship activities. We have finished our recounts by completing a warm write which will be followed up by a hot write on Monday. We will therefore be beginning our new text type focus of classic fiction which will be closely linked to Victorians and A Christmas Carol.

In maths we have been focusing a lot on multiplication with the children showing great progress in written methods and problem solving. We will be continuing with more complex multiplication next week and begin linking it to division.

Theme has not occurred to often this week do to out fantastic work for friendship week; however, we will be picking this back up next week as we begin making Tudor houses.

Friendship week has been a lovely opportunity for the children to really get to know each other better and think about how we can make sure everybody has a fantastic experience of school. We started the week with a circle time session in which we talked about friendship and how we could help each other at break and lunch. We also played around with an activity whereby the children thought about what the qualities of a good friend are. The children may be able to explain the terrible body language in some of the pictures...

 The children also had thee opportunity to study a book called Enemy Pie from which they produced a set of instructions on how to make a friendship pie. Finally, on Friday the children split into groups throughout the school to plan what they would like to see in their school playground, field ad friendship garden....

A Matter of Sound and materials

All adults involved with the class agree that this week has been fantastic in demonstrating the progress of the children since September. English has been steeped in writing this week as the children have looked to finish their recounts and include all the devices from the success criteria. We will continue writing and practicing devices next week before the warm write.

Multiplication and division in maths is now in full swing as the children have been learning about factors, multiples and multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000. We have also started a times table scheme every Wednesday to improve upon this area. Any amount of practise at home with times tables would be very worthwhile.

Theme has been focused on the Tudors as we have looked at Tudor monarchs and Henry VIII and his wives. In the coming weeks we will be looking at a Tudor murder mystery and how/where the Tudors lived.

The children have started new science topics as the year 5s have began learning about materials and the year 4s have began their work on sound....

Notices:
- We will be beginning a new D&T project soon and will need some cardboard boxes. If you have any spare cardboard boxes at home up to a shoe box size they would be greatly appreciated. The more the merrier!

Crime and Punishment

The children have settled back in to school very well from half term and have all commented on what a lovely break they had. Despite this week being a day shorter than usual, we have packed in a lot of activities and learning. Our maths focus on multiplication and division has begun and the children showed some good knowledge during the cold task. I have no doubt that they will be able to improve upon their scores by the end of the unit. 

Recounts are now our chosen text type in English and this week we have been getting used to the devices and structure involved. The children have been working on a crime board to display their day at Chelmsford Police Museum and Records Office...

Our first theme lesson of the term was taught today as the children were introduced to the topic of the Tudors and we mapped out the Monarchs. However, the majority of learning in theme this week occurred on our trip...

The children all had a fantastic day a did a brilliant job of positively representing our school.

Notices:- New spellings have been given out to the children.
- Maths homework has also been given out.
-Creative homework will be given out in a couple of weeks.