The children have settled really well into Year 4 and we have been so pleased with the enthusiasm that they have demonstrated towards their learning. We are really proud of the children and we are looking forward to seeing this continue and flourish over the year!
In History this half term, we have been focussing on the Romans. The children have enjoyed taking a look at some different Roman artefacts to decipher what they may have been used for. They have examined and compared what life was like before and after the Romans invaded Britain. They produced some wonderful work on this and loved adding their creative touches to their fact files! More recently, the children have imagined what it would have been like during Queen Boudicca’s revolt. They looked at the battles through the eyes of a number of different people including the Roman Governor, a Roman Slave and a Celtic farmer.
In Maths, we have briefly recapped on the children’s previous knowledge of Place Value from Year 3 and then continued with Year 4 Place Value using a range of equipment such as Base 10, counters and place value charts to support understanding. We have also recently completed our topic on Addition and Subtraction and it was great to see how confident the children were with using the column method already. Our most recent topic is Perimeter and Area. Despite the poor weather, we were able to get outside and measure the perimeter of 2D shapes on the playground. The children were most inventive and used a range of classroom resources (and themselves!) to estimate the perimeter!
During our writing sessions, we have focussed on Fantasy stories followed by Newspaper Reports. The children have demonstrated knowledge of past tense, fronted adverbials and expanded noun phrases. We have been particularly impressed with the ideas the children generated for the Roman Gladiator fight newspaper report. Their mock gladiator fights on the playground supported them in producing some very atmospheric newspaper reports! The children have loved combining our History and English topic together.
In Science, our topic has been States of Matter, the children have been very enthusiastic about the experiments and particularly enjoyed melting different solids (even if it did make some of them hungry). They have enjoyed demonstrating their understanding of how solids, liquids and gasses move and how they can change state when heated or cooled.
For Spanish, we have been focussing on learning our numbers to 31 and the days of the week. The children have enjoyed practicing their Spanish numbers through games such as dominoes and bingo! More recently, we have looked at the story of Cenicienta (Cinderella) and the children did a great job of translating brand new vocabulary into English.
This half term in Whole Class Reading, we have been reading ‘Romans on the Rampage’ by Jeremy Strong. The children have thoroughly enjoyed Jeremy Strong’s humour throughout the book so far! Their favourite activity has been designing their own invention like the inventor in the story (Maddasbananus). When answering the questions based on the book, the children have been using the VIPERS (Vocabulary, Infer, Predict, Explain, Retrieve and Summarise) skills to support them.
In PE this half term the children have been working on their gymnastic skills, in particular, rotations, balances and supported balances. The supported balances have been particularly impressive, as they have had to put a lot of trust in their partner in order to be successful. It has been great to see their teamwork in the classes! They have also enjoyed challenging themselves in the Real PE sessions to find new and different ways to travel from one point to another. They have practiced footwork skills such as hopscotch, skipping, side stepping and hopping!