What have Y3/4 been up to?
Summer Term 1
Week 4
This week we have been looking at features of a newspaper report, practicing how to punctuate reported speech to help us with our learning next week. We have been reporting the incidents that occurred in James and the Giant peach, thinking about how the characters in the story would have reacted over seeing a giant peach bouncing and rolling through the town! In maths we have been learning about fractions and decimals, applying our knowledge of addition and subtraction to these areas of our learning. In history this week, we looked at some Anglo-Saxon artefacts and considered what they teach us about their life. We looked at a new style of music this week, exploring funk music and learning to sing 'The Octopus Slide'. We continued to practice our batting skills in PE, learning two different attacking techniques using a cricket bat.
Week 3
This week has been lots of fun as all the Year 3/4 children went on their trips to the Shropshire Hills Centre! Here, we took part in a range of activities where we learnt all about the Anglo Saxons. We went around the museum which took us through different periods of time in History. We learnt how to cook broad bean cakes, how to make twine, how to decorate clay, how to write Kenning Poems as well as learning how to play 2 different games from the Anglo-Saxon era. In the afternoon, we went on a walk around the hills looking for the perfect spot to build a village where we could live. We learnt lots about the land and the plants that grew there, finding out about which plants made good food, which land was best for farming and why being close to a river is not a good place to settle. We all really enjoyed our trip this week and had so much fun!
Week 2
This week we continued to work with measurements in maths, looking at how to add and subtract amounts using different measurements. We have read up to chapter 10 of James and the Giant Peach this week and have been introduced to some new characters, exploring how their feelings have changed so far in the story. In writing, we have been continuing to learn skills to help us write a diary entry in the role of our chosen insect, learning how to write in the first person, how to include thoughts and feelings into our writing, as well as expanded noun phrases to add detail and description. This week we have been using the recorders in music to play an accompaniment to a song we practiced singing last week. We have been exploring the music styles of electronic dance music and looked at some music by a famous band called Daft Punk. Many of us really enjoyed this style of music! In Science, we have been learning about how the ear works and what all of the different parts of the ear are called. We also took our first trip into our new forest school where we explored the woodland area and used mud to create tree faces! We got very muddy but had so much fun doing this. We can't wait for our next trip into the forest school area.
Week 1
This week we began our Summer Term with a bug hunt around out school forest area. We were looking for different types of bugs and where they lived. We have spent time this week researching some of the bugs we found, writing a diary in the role of one of the bugs. We have been exploring measuring in maths and have started reading our new class story 'James and the Giant Peach', making predictions on what we think the book is going to be about. We have started practicing catching skills in PE as we have began our Cricket unit. We will be learning all of the skills we need to enable us to play a game of Kwick Cricket at the end of our unit. We have looked at an Artist named David Hockney to begin our art unit, exploring his work and sharing our thoughts and feelings towards his pieces of art. Our theme this half term is going to be the Anglo-Saxons so we began our History unit looking at who they were and where they came from.
Spring Term 2
Week 5
This week has been a busy one! We hope you enjoyed our performance, we certainly had a lot of fun performing to you as our audience! The children in Year 4 completed their final swimming lesson and received their certificates to show the progress they have made! We are very proud of the children and how hard they have worked on their swimming techniques and confidence in the water. We also celebrated Dojo Reward Afternoon on Wednesday and the children enjoyed a range of activities including a trip to the park, playing on the wall bars, watching a movie, colouring, playing board games and playing football! In writing, we had a poetry week where the children wrote their own narrative poems based on the story of Hansel and Gretel! Some of the children had a go at rhyming their poems whilst others focused more on the rhythm and structure of their verses. We were blown away by some of the poetry created by the children this week!
Week 4
The children have been learning all about fractions this week in maths along with practicing their times tables! In writing, the children finished their persuasive letters to the local residents of Dothill, asking them to stop littering and start making a change to help our local environment. Their letters were full of persuasive writing features, facts and statistics. In RE the children have been learning about the Muslim religion, looking at and exploring mosques. The children learnt all about healthy friendships in PSHE, talking about why it is important to have healthy relationships with our friends and what to look out for in an unhealthy friendship. We have been working very hard on our performance again this week and we can't wait for you to see it next week! In addition to this, some of the children in Year 3/4 were chosen to take part in a basketball workshop where they were taught techniques and skills alongside rules to play a game of basketball. We were very lucky to have this opportunity and the children had a lot of fun!
Week 3
What a fun week we have had! The children in Year 3/4 have been practicing their performance and making lots of props for the stage that has been put up! They have been rehearsing lines and practicing songs too. This week has also consisted of lots of flour and water as the children have been making their very own pasta! The children worked in small groups to make their pasta from scratch using only 2 ingredients. They then cooked their pasta and tasted it, evaluating what they thought of the pasta they had made compared to the pasta that is bought from the shop. In writing this week, the children began to plan and write their own persuasive letter. We are going to be writing to the local residents of Dothill to ask them to stop littering. In maths, the children have been learning about fractions, comparing and ordering them. In PSHE this week, the children have learnt all about alcohol, understanding why it is not healthy to consume alcohol and the damage it can cause to our bodies. We also had world book day and international women's day this week! For world book day we shared our morning read with our parent's who were invited into school to read with us. We spent some time throughout the day talking about our favourite books and drawing the front cover for them. On the 8th march, we took part in the Let Girls Play - Biggest ever football session event where the girls in school were given the opportunity to take part in a mini football match or football training session with some of the adults in school. We had so much fun!
Week 2
This week we have been learning about fractions in Year 4 and we have concluded our measuring unit in Year 3. We have been making predictions and asking questions about our class book 'One Plastic Bag' in reading this week and were given the change to draw a picture of what we thought the town would have looked like if the plastic bags had continued to be discarded. In writing this week, we have been researching facts about litter and pollution, gathering reasons and evidence to encourage people to stop littering. At the start of the week, we went on a walk around our playground and couldn't believe the amount of litter that had blown in over night! We have decided it is important for us to write to the residents of our local area to ask them to stop littering! Some of us then stayed outside and used the litter pickers to pick up all the rubbish. We are continuing to learn about how we can keep ourselves healthy in PSHE and learnt a little bit about the dangers of smoking this week. We also found that cigarettes are a large contribution to litter and are very dangerous to animals as they often mistake them for food!
We had lots of fun tasting pasta this week and evaluating the taste of gluten free pasta, green (spinach) pasta, whole wheat (brown) pasta and white pasta. Not many of us were a fan of the green pasta and we definitely preferred the pasta with flour in it as the gluten free pasta had a very different texture! Whilst we have been tasting pasta, we have also been practicing for our performance, learning new songs, dances and making props! We can't wait to perform to you all in just a few weeks.
The Year 4 children were amazing at swimming this week. Some children moved up a group, some children perfected their breathing in the water whilst others learnt how to float and kick their legs! The children represented our school very well again this week and should be very proud of themselves.
Week 1
What a wonderful first week back! The children have been super stars during a very busy week. We have started our rehearsals for our spring performance and our tribe of Wizards have been working hard learning lines, songs and dances for the first few scenes of our play. We've been busy making props, scenery and wizard hats to get us excited for the roles we are going to be playing. The Year 4 children had their first swimming trip this week and all of the children did amazing in the pool! We had some very soggy, tired children return to school with huge smiles on their faces, telling everyone about their swimming lessons.
In maths this week, Year 4 have finished their length and perimeter unit and have moved on to learning about fractions! Year 3 have continued their learning in measuring and have been practicing converting between lengths as well as adding and subtracting them to solve some problems. We have started a new book in reading called 'One Plastic Bag', a true story about a woman that made a difference to our planet! This story has inspired us to learn about plastic bag pollution in the world and find out what we can do to help! We began our English this week, writing a story in the role of a plastic bag which we had lots of fun with! There were some very creative adventures that these bags went on. Once we had thought about the journey of a plastic bag, we found out that most of them end up in the ocean. We researched facts about plastic pollution and created our own persuasive posters to encourage people to stop using plastic bags and reuse, reduce, recycle instead!
This week the Year 3 children began their gymnastic unit and learnt how to do a variety of jumps including pike jumps, straddle jumps and cat leaps. The children worked hard to perfect and control their landings. In Design and Technology we are going to be learning all about pasta! We began our unit this week by researching the history of pasta, exploring different types of pasta and learning what ingredients are used to make pasta. We created information posters to share our findings. Did you know, it is thought that pasta actually originated in China, not Italy? In PSHE this week, we began our learning by thinking about how we can ensure our friendships are healthy as we are learning about 'Healthy Me' this half term.
Spring Term 1
Week 5
Tuesday 6th February was internet safety day so we spent the day learning about how technology has changed over time and ways we can stay safe on the internet! We had lots of fun looking at technology from when our teachers were younger and learning about our digital footprint.
We completed our Outdoor Adventurous Activities unit by working as a team to create control points, put them on our playground and mark them on a map for other children to find. We had lots of fun completing this activity and were all very successful with our orienteering today (even if it was a little windy!) We concluded our French unit by learning how to say our address, and the address of places in our local town of Wellington, having a conversation in French with our peers to find out where we live! The children have also worked very hard this week to compose and write their own piece of music inspired by 'Frere Jacques', rehearsing, playing and performing it on the recorder using the notes G, A and B. In science, we concluded our evaporation experiment, learning that the water in the warm place evaporated quickly. We then learnt more about evaporation as part of the water cycle and found out some interesting facts!
Our science was the inspiration for our writing lessons this week as we all wrote some explanation texts on how the water cycle works. We finished the last chapter of our story 'Journey to Jo'Burg' and were pleased to find it had a happy ending! We have also been continuing to explore measuring lengths and perimeter in maths.
Week 4
This week the children utilised their knowledge from Geography and French lessons to make comparisons of human and natural features in our local town of Wellington. We took a walk down to the town and explored our local area, ending our visit in the local library where we were given the opportunity to explore the books and speak to the librarian. We have continued to investigate changes in states of matter, focusing on evaporation this week. We have set up a class experiment to see whether temperature affects the speed of evaporation. This learning has supported us in our writing this week as we have been looking at explanation texts linked to our science topic and the water cycle. In PE, the children followed maps to navigate the playground where they had to find control points located in different areas. They practiced working as a team to see who was able to find all 10 markers using the map accurately. We had lots of fun this lesson and learnt how to orientate our maps correctly.
In maths, Year 3 and Year 4 have both started a new unit this week. The classes have been measuring lengths using rulers, exploring the different units of measure that can be used and how to record them. Year 4 have also started to explore and calculate perimeter. In reading, we made some predictions about what we think is going to happen to the baby in our story 'Journey to Jo'burg' and we talked about how different the hospital in the story is to our hospitals that we are able to visit. This provoked some deep discussions in the classroom and we talked about how the characters might be feeling during different parts of their journey.
Week 3
In maths, the Year 3 and Year 4 children continued to practice dividing larger numbers using an expanded written method and bus stop method. All children are developing their confidence with using these methods and are beginning to use their multiplication facts to help them work calculations out at greater speed. In reading and writing, we have continued to read our class story 'Journey to Jo'burg'. We used this as our stimulus for writing, creating our own characters to go on a journey. We had some fun orally telling our story, describing the places they visited along the way!
In Geography we explored the town we are twinned with in France, Châtenay-Malabry, looking at the physical features and human features that can be found there. We went on a journey around the town using google maps and compared it to where we live. In French this week, we learnt to count in tens up to 100. We made links between the numbers we already knew and practiced saying our numbers in French. In PE this week we did an orienteering activity in the hall. We had to find and locate sports stars and plot them accurately on a map. We learnt how to orientate the map and read the key to help us identify specific places within the hall. We even had the opportunity to explore the wall bars which we all really enjoyed! This has linked in well with our Jigsaw topic where we have been learning how to deal with disappointment and overcome barriers in our learning. Our PE unit this week has really helped us to work as a team and identify some of the challenges we face when working alongside others.
Science has given us the opportunity to explore melting and freezing points this week. We worked in small groups to carry out an investigation to find out what temperature chocolate solidified at. We had to read thermometers and monitor the melted chocolate to see how long it took to solidify and at what temperature this happened at. We then recorded our data in a table before transferring our results onto a line graph.
Week 1 & 2
Our new topic this half term is 'Bonjour Mon Amie' which is French for 'Hello my friend'. We have spent time over the past 2 weeks learning the names of some French Cities and looking at what things can be found in those cities. We have used maps in our Geography lessons to locate the cities and regions of France, learning about the 7 continents around the world.
We are reading Journey to Jo'burg this half term and have done some research into the apartheid law. The story so far has been about 2 young children that have started their journey to find their mother who is working in Johannesburg. We decided to write our own story about a journey our lego people could go on to start off our topic. We had so much fun taking our lego people out onto the playground and planning their adventure! We encountered lava filled volcanoes, giant rain drops and broken bridges. This week in PE, we built our own obstacle courses to navigate in a group, changing them to make them more challenging for the other teams to complete. We've had a great start to the term learning about other countries and exploring the idea of going on a journey.
In maths this week, year 3 and year 4 have been learning how to multiply and divide larger numbers. We have partitioning in year 3 and column multiplication and bus stop method in year 4. In science, we began our topic of states of matter and set up an experiment to explore and measure the mass of gas. This was lots of fun!
Autumn 1
This half term our topic is 'Nature All Around Us'.
We started the year looking at the picture book 'Belonging' by Jeannie Baker. This was all about a girl growing up watching her town through her window 're-greening'. We are also writing information leaflets about the Dothill Nature Reserve, working alongside volunteers from the 'Friends of Dothill Nature Reserve'.
Our geography unit is learning compass and map skills, so we are going to plan and carry out a field trip to Apley Woods.
In science, we continue the nature theme learning about classification of living things.
In PE this half term, we are learning the skills of tag rugby. We will be learning ball handling skills as well as teamwork and tactics.
