It has been another fantastic week in 4DA with plenty of things going on! 

Our writing unit is racing towards its finale next week as the children have continued to produce their portal stories. There has been some superb writing, describing the dangers of an underwater adventure and facing the wrath of an unhappy teacher upon their arrival back through the portal.. Our maths unit has continued to focus on fractions. We have been exploring equalising fractions, changing improper fractions to mixed numbers and started to look at adding 2 fractions together. 

Our science topic taught us a new skill this week as the children practiced their categorising skills. We used dichotomous keys to sort different sweets and will look to use this skill to categorise animals in future lessons. We have also taken a look at the ocean biome in detail during our geography lessons. We have explored the different layers of the ocean and watched some blue planet videos to traps the full scale of strange creature that lurk thousands of metres below sea level. Finally, during our routes and roots session, the children practiced their snapping. We of course mean taking pictures. 4DA used high-tech, waterproof cameras to practice some photography skills, which included close up photos, using different lighting, using different perspectives and ensuring that the picture is focused. 

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Another interesting week comes to an end in year 4 and it has been another cracker! 

The students of 4DA have dived in (literally) to another week of writing by producing some fantastic portal story shared writes. The class have been telling a tail of a young classmate who is transported into the ocean during a trip to the library. I have been incredibly impressed with the resourcefulness shown by all as they have produced some great work. In maths, we have continued to work on fractions. In particular, we have been learning how to convert fractions from mixed numbers to improper fractions and the visa versa. 

Our blue planet topic has continued to encapture the imaginations of the class as they have been exploring the different biomes of the world. We have also taken a greater look into what animals occupy these biomes and looked at ways to classify different vertebrate species. Finally, the children enjoyed comfy day on Thursday. World booked provided bed-time like experience for the day as we all wore pyjamas and shared our favourite bedtime books with one another. 

Have a great weekend, everyone! 

It has been a great first week back in 4DA! 

We have started our new writing topic which is focusing on a portal story. The class worked fantastically together to learn the model text and come up with their own actions – based on a school trip to an aquarium that goes a little wrong. Our maths topic has focused on fractions this week. In particular, we have looked at fractions passed 1 whole and looked at counting up in fractions on a number line. 

Our new geography topic kick started this week with the children exploring what happens to plastic when they enter the ocean. We looked at how plastic decomposes into micro plastics and what that means to some of the wildlife that live in the oceans. We will be looking at ways to protect our oceans and animals in upcoming lessons. Finally, we had a very special treat on Friday afternoon as the children were the audience for year 5’s MacBeth performances, as they get ready to take their performances to the stage next week. It was good for the children to have a glimpse into next year! 

Have a good weekend, everyone!

There has been plenty going on in 4DA this week, including shared writes, art projects and school trips! 

I have been incredibly impressed with the shared writes this week. The children have worked hard towards creating a persuasive speech, motivating their Roman armies to go and invade the Celts. There has been many different writing techniques used to create powerful speeches! We have also been diving into our next art project – a Jean Michel Basquiat inspired drawing, based on the book “life doesn’t frighten me”. We have started to practice abstract figure drawing and create the backgrounds for our projects, which will be finished next week. 

On Monday, 4DA went to visit a local Gurdwara! They have a superb time hearing about the daily life of in the Sikh religion by people who run the gurdwara. They discussed the daily routines of the gurdwara, langar meals and the 5Ks. They were also lucky enough to see a member of the gurdwara read extracts from the Guru Granth Sahib and experience a small Langar offering before heading back to school. 

Have a good weekend everyone! 

It has been another busy week in 4DA with new skills being learnt, parents coming in for chats and poetry creating! 

The children have started a new topic in writing which will see them create a persuasive speech. They have been looking at persuasive techniques to use in their work to motivate and inspire people. They may end up persauding you to do something this weekend. In maths, we have continued to focus on multiplication and division, digging deeper into worded problems that require column multiplication and bus stop division. 

On Friday afternoon, the children turned into poets as they created a Kennings poems all about a fear of theirs. They explored the different combinations of 2-worded descriptive lines to create their kennings poems. This was proceeded by a class game of Pictionary where the children took it in turns to draw and guess some common fears. (A common fear amongst the class was not being told to practice their timestables or reading enough by you) 

PLEASE make sure that you have signed up for the trip next week on parent pay! Have a good weekend.

It has been another super week in 4DA as we dived into plenty of exciting learning and once again defended our TTRS trophy! 

Our writing topic has come to an end this week. The children of 4DA have planned and written a hot write.. How to build a Roman shield. They thought back to before Christmas and produced some fantastic sets of instructions which head into plenty of detail on how they made a Roman shield. Our maths topic has seen us tackle longer multiplication and division problems. They have been practicing the column method for long multiplication and practiced the bus stop method for division. It has been a tough learning road but we have been smashing it by the end of the week! 

Our climate change topic has taken a close look at carbon footprints. We have been exploring further the damages of greenhouse gases and have created individual pledges which the children will try and follow to help reduce their carbon footprint. This may be to use less water, turn the light off when they aren’t using it and to walk more places instead of taking the car! 

REMINDER – If you haven’t given permission for our school trip to the Gurdwara next week, your child will not be able to attend. Please do this over the weekend!

Another cracking week has come to an end in 4DA and what a week it has been!

The children have continued to produce some fantastic instructions in writing and have written their own in-depth set of instructions for how to make a tortilla pizza. if anyone is lost on what to have for dinner this weekend, you can ask your children to help! Our maths topic has focused further on multiplication. In particular, we have explored how to do long multiplication using the column method. We have been multiplying 2 digit numbers by 1 digit numbers and we look forward to moving onto even longer ones next week!

Geography took us on a trip to the coast as we looked more closely at the effects of climate change and global warming. The students looked closer at the rise in sea levels and why it is happening. We set up a class experiment which mimicked the effects of climate change and plotted our findings on a line graph throughout the day. We can all agree that global warming is a danger to a lot of people and something needs to happen to reduce our greenhouse gas admissions!

Finally, our science lesson also took a very practical approach this week as the children learnt how to and created their own circuits. They managed to create a full, connected circuit that lit up a light bulb and they explored what a conductor of electricity is!

Have a good weekend, everyone!

A very Happy New Year from 4DA! It has been good to get back into the swing of things this week as we kick started the new year with a bang!

The children dusted off their holiday heads by starting a new writing topic – instruction writing. We have already planned and started creating a set of instructions on how to create a homemade tortilla pizza (just like the ones that they made during arts fortnight before Christmas). They have tackled the writing with the new skill of S,M sentences which move the subordinating clause to the start of the sentence. Our maths lessons have focused on multiplication again. We have been exploring factor pairs and how to multiply and divide by 10/100.

As we leave the Romans behind us in 2025, 2026 sees us start out topic on climate change. For me, this is one of the most interesting topics of the year which has been proven by some of the fantastic conversations we’ve had around greenhouse gases and electricity already this week. We have introduced the term ‘global warming’ and looked into what is causing the earth’s temperature to rise and why. This will lead us on in future lessons to looking at the consequences of climate change and what we can do to help reduce our carbon footprint.

Have a good weekend everyone!

The penultimate week of the 2025 calendar has been a fun one.

Our writing topic has ignited with us completing a whole shared write this week. We have been working on creating a descriptive and spooky story opening that leads a main character to a dilapidated building, only to find something mysterious and strange lurking inside.. I look forward to the hot writes next week!

The class have also been taking a look at how the Romans impacted Britain and we explored what kind of things we see today that the Roman Empire introduced to the British shores. From straight roads to sanitation, we enjoyed an afternoon of learning about all of the things we can be thankful for from the Romans. Finally, we have been exploring farms. In particular, which farms ensure that their animals have a happy life. We have explored the differences between caged/barn chicken farms and free-range and organic farms and produced some wonderful posters promoting the consumption of free-range farm products.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

The first week back after our hugely successful arts fortnight has been another interesting one – that’s right, test week!

The children have been completing their tests in reading in and maths and have done a brilliant job! We have also introduced our final writing unit of 2025.. a spooky, snowy story opening.

Away from the hard work and tests, we had a very interesting work shop with Sam the Sound Man. He came in to the classroom all Tuesday morning and taught 4DA all about sound and how it works. His series of interactive and interesting experiments had the children engaged and enthused by the laws of sound. Feel free to quiz them on the different home-made instruments that can be made over the weekend!