Focus Week - Year 4
The children in Year 4 have already been very busy this half term, and it’s only the second week back!
In English, we have focused on the story of Alice in Wonderland. The children were very excited to walk into their classrooms on the first day to find a variety of objects from the story, such as hearts, playing cards and a pocket watch, displayed around the classroom. We have read parts of the story together as a class as well as watched some clips from the animated film. The children have enjoyed writing letters to Alice advising her on whether she should eat the cake in the story or not, writing character descriptions and creating their own characters for Wonderland. They have finished off this topic by writing their own chapters for the story, which also featured their newly created characters. Their chapters were very imaginative and so exciting to read!
In Maths we have started learning about decimals. The children have linked this with last half term’s learning about fractions as we started by looking at tenths and then learning that one tenth is equal to 0.1. This formed the foundation for the rest of the children’s learning. They have learned how to count in decimals, how to convert fractions into decimals and how to divide 2-digit numbers by 10 and 100 where the answers are decimals.
In Religious Education the children will be learning about different celebrations and commitment ceremonies this half term. As part of this unit, the children have already looked at how the different clothing that people wear can show the world around them what they believe or tell the world something important about them, e.g. a kilt can show that a person is Scottish, a hijab can show that someone is a Muslim or a Beavers uniform can show that a child is part of a Beavers troupe.
Our Science topic this half term is Electricity. The children have started off this unit by discussing the different appliances in the world around us that use electricity, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using mains electricity and batteries to power appliances. The children have also started building their own electric circuits using bulbs, batteries and wires, and have experimented with connecting them in different ways, ensuring that the electricity is conducted through the circuit. They have also learned how to draw circuits using the correct symbols. This is such an exciting topic and the children have really enjoyed it so far!
In History, our focus question is “How Have Children’s Lives Changed?” We have already learned more about the lives of Tudor and Victorian children, with a focus on the jobs they had to do. They were shocked to learn that the children had to start working as young as 5 or 6 years old and that they did jobs that we find quite unusual, like bird scaring or gong farming.
This half term has already been filled with lots of excitement for the children such as a Drama workshop where they acted out being deep sea divers and sea creatures in the ocean, as well as World Book Day! The children all loved coming to school dressed up as their favourite book characters, and enjoyed a variety of fun activities throughout the day. They took part in the costume parade, drew their favourite scenes from a book, took part in an online book quiz, read with their Year 1 Reading Buddies and shared their work with the rest of the school during an assembly. What a brilliant day!
We can't wait to see what the rest of this half term will bring!
