Year 4 Bee Class
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Mrs Pruden Friday 20th May
Homelearning
Spellings - Spelling lists are on Edshed to practise 3 times please (or more if they need to!)
Maths - I have set a Monster Multiplication challenge on Purple Mash to complete. Now we have finished our unit on Money and started time, please do use IXL to refresh your memory on either of these topics. I am encouraging pupils to wear a watch, if they have them - preferably if it has a clock face (analogue) rather than digital, so they become familiar with the skill of telling the time. Please note that we can not accept watches that beep on the hour or make other regular noises as this distracts us from our learning (usually there are instructions on how to turn these off).
Optional - Next week, we are having a very special week celebrating the Queen's Jubilee, your child will have brought home a bunting template, please can they decorate this in red, white & blue patterns or drawings that are in-keeping with the Queen's Jubilee - it will then be used on Thursday afternoon when we celebrate this historical event as a whole school.
*** On Thursday 26th May there is a KS2 cross country event - so please can your child wear PE kit on this day, as well as bring in a red/white/blue outfit to wear for the Jubilee celebrations we are doing as a whole school on Thursday afternoon (see separate email from Mrs Graham).
We look forward to celebrating with you on Thursday afternoon with a whole school picnic.
A taste of our learning:
A taste of our learning
In Science we have started our unit on electricity, but before we started we had a quick recap on our previous unit on sound and the children wanted me to share a video we watched that was sound vs music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs
You will have seen on SEESAW we have recorded the 'Totally independent' song we were going to perform in our assembly. Although we aren't going to do that assembly anymore (it seems that whenever we planned to do it, COVID struck!) we thought you'd like to share the positivity and independence we have in BEE class!
This week we have taken part in #wecan week, where everyday we have done an activity to help us be positive about ourselves: mindfulness colouring/what foods we enjoy etc
We have really enjoyed 'Take one picture' week:
The highlight of our week was to visit Winchester Cathedral on Thursday, to enrich our understanding about Anglo Saxons. After a tour of the Cathedral we had two workshop sessions, firstly making Anglo-Saxon style broaches, decorating letters, inspired by the Winchester bible and translating Anglo Saxon language, followed by learning about Queen Emma through Art work.
A reminder that some children are playing inappropriate games inspired by Internet/video trends, please ensure you are monitoring what your children have access to online.
Although this has been a bit of a different week, Year 4 have remained their resilient and smiley selves! We have enjoyed our English lessons based on the book 'How To Train Your Dragon', learning how to multiply 3 digit by 1 digit numbers and finding out about BigFoot adventures in Guided Reading. We have also completed a mini art project using watercolours to create our own versions and interpretations of the four different seasons. We are really proud of Year 4! Well done for a fantastic week.
DT we had great fun on Monday afternoon tasting lots of different breads, some we enjoyed more than others - flatbread and focaccia were firm favourites, whereas Rye bread got a thumbs down from most!
In English we have used our class reader, 'The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe' to remind us about word classes (nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives and adverbs), then we used this large list of word to write a description of Lucy's entrance into the wardrobe.
Huge congratulations to all those who completed the Langrish Reading challenge 2021: Oscar, Sid, Lyra, Harry,Charlotte, Wiktor, Yasmin and Albie, 25 housepoints to each of them!
On Monday we enjoyed watching the infant's Nativity.
On Wednesday we enjoyed our Christmas party and our Christmas lunch:
Knowledge Organisers
At the bottom of this page, alongside the half-termly overview of learning, you will now find a copy of our knowledge organisers. These have been designed to help capture the key knowledge covered in each major topic taught and may be used as a tool for reference during the topic or as a revision aid when looking back and embedding prior learning. Rather than sending home paper copies, we have published them here to allow any year group to have easy access, whether working in the ICT suite or at home. Please take a look and let us know what you think; these are a new initiative, which is still evolving and we are always interested to hear your feedback.
In PE we have been playing dodgeball:
We had a great time at our School Christmas Fair - raising a huge £121.24 as a class - well done Bees. Thank you all for your support, it really was a team effort!
What a start to the week - playing in the snow, sadly there wasn't quite enough for a full-size snowman!
In Art , we have finished our unit looking at insects and we made insects out of air-drying clay:
We completed our fun-run with brilliant scores - I was very impressed with the high levels of perseverance - well done ! There will be a chance for those who missed the run this week, to run nearer the end of term.
As a class we have decided to send Christmas cards to pupils if we wish to, however, in light of being more eco-friendly, we could also just send one card to the class as a whole, it will be a personal decision.
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In English, we are coming the end of our King Kong unit and are preparing to write Newspaper articles about the death of King Kong. Inorder to prepare for using quotations, we role played the different characters, whilst being 'interviewed' by journalists:
We have really enjoyed Anti-bullying week - see our Nutshell this week for what we got up to!
On Wednesday afternoon we went on an invertebrate hunt - our learning question was 'Where can we find invertebrates at Langrish?', so first we had to remind ourselves what invertebrates are and predict where we found them. What was a surprise was seeing so many crane-flies in the bathrooms!
As part of our morning wake and shake we have been taking part in the Hampshire virtual games challenge and seeing how many skips we can do in 60 seconds - it has been a great way to warm up:
In PE we have been 'dancing' using extreme sports as motivation:
We really enjoyed our swimming lesson on Friday afternoon.
In Science we have started our unit on classification of animals and reminding ourselves of words like - invertebrates, reptiles, skeleton etc... We have had a go at classifying several animals. Optional homelearning to follow next week!
In English we are using the text 'King Kong' to help with our understanding of word classes, how an author builds tension, use apostrophes for contractions and what punctuation to use for speech. Have you read any other books by Anthony Browne? Our Blooms focus for reading is to identify learning behaviours from our book characters:
In Maths we are measuring the perimeter of shapes and reminding ourselves how to calculate perimeters when we can't measure. We have started week 2 of 'Barvember' where each day there is a new set of challenges that we have to draw a bar model to answer, for example:
Welcome back to a busy half-term. At the bottom of this webpage there is the half-term curriculum letter detailing this term's themes, PE days and important dates.
On Wednesday we had a very lively drama session with Harriet, from Perform.
In PE we focused on looking up when we have the ball in Hockey, keeping it under control.
In Music we have started our Djembi drumming unit, learning about using different hands, different sounds from the drum and listening when the drums are being played.
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As we come to the end of a very busy half term we have reflected on how much we have learnt. This has been academic, social and learning attitudes. We refer daily to our 'successful learner' board in the classroom - often recognising more attributes and adding them as we go (none of the values are about getting things correct - rather about effort and positive attitude) :
In art we have been learning about British artists and this week was the turn of learning
about Howard Hodgkin and to try his style of 'cut-ups'. It allowed us to put on our art aprons and get the paints out too!
In PE we have all enjoyed playing Dodgeball, both inside the hall and outside on the playground. We have learnt to play by the British Dodgeball rules and are looking forward to a competitive game in the new year.
A huge thank you for all the Harvest produce you kindly donated, Mrs Mason, who kindly collected the donations and took them to the Petersfield food bank not only said, "A huge thank you" to Langrish, but also the food bank team were "blown away" by the donations when she delivered them. Thank you!
We have started our unit on addition and subtraction - our maths working wall is helping us remember how to prevent the most common errors - looking for the sign +, - or what the language means (great than, less than, subtract etc...), to carry the 1 or exchange, just being a few 'top tips'.
In English, we are enjoying reading George's marvellous medicine, using the writing opportunities to remember commas in a list, alliteration, expanded noun phrases, apostrophes for omission and possession, as well as wonderful language and next week direct speech...
In computing, we have been using code to write our initials:
On Monday we had Rabbi Zvi visit us. We remembered his stories from when we met him in Year 3 and this week he told us more about 'Sukkot'. He really brought the celebrations to life for us:
In our World Faith and Philosophy day on Thursday we found out about 'Sukkot' and the importance of this to the Jewish community. To further enrich our learning and answer any questions, we are looking forward to having Rabbi Zvi into Year 4 on Monday (do note down any more questions to ask him if you haven't yet). We role-played a grumpy neighbour complaining about a Sukkat being built .....
(great acting girls!)
In PSHE we are learning the difference between being passive, aggressive and assertive. This is part of encouraging Year 4 to be more independent. They have made some colourful posters to remind themselves:
Now the weather is more changeable, please ensure your child has a waterproof coat in every day for playtimes and is wearing enough layers to keep them warm enough whilst the windows have to remain in line with Government guidance for keeping us safe
In PE we have been making the most of the lovely weather and learnt/practised our Cricket skills:
In music we have been using instruments to play along to Mamma Mia:
We have had a brilliant start to Year 4, I have so impressed by their keenness to learn and participate. As promised here is a 'taste of our learning'...
Science - we have started our topic on digestion and had a very amusing afternoon labelling where we though different parts of the digestive system were. Luckily 'learning from our mistakes' is one of our successful learner attributes!
Maths - we have started to learn about 4 digit numbers, where they go on a number line and how to round numbers up or down, counting in 1000s etc.
English - we have started our 'lighthouse' unit where we are writing descriptive settings using expanded noun phrases and prepositions, we are revisiting all the word classes we learnt in Year 3.
In PE we have made the most of the lovely warm, dry weather to practise our cricket skills.
Congratulations to our new class ambassadors, we will be celebrating them in our whole school assembly next week.
Welcome to Year 4 - Bee class! 
It was so lovely to see so many of you at 'Meet the teacher'. For those of you who couldn't attend, here is an outline of what we discussed:
What to bring to school:
Pencil case (sensible size - no suitcases!) with sharp pencils, writing pen (if you have a pen licence), rubber, ruler, selection of colouring pencils, red pen, highlighter and a glue stick.
School bag - not too large
Waterproof coat
Art apron (we will inform you when you need to bring these in)
Reading record
Water bottle
Welly boots - we will let you know when they are needed (see class webpage for updates)
What to wear:
School uniform and on PE days (Mondays & Thursdays) PE kit - wear tracksuit trousers over shorts, no jewellery, hair tied up etc. The government has advised that have a good ventilation system in the classroom - this means windows open - please make sure your child is wearing warm clothes, especially if, like me, they feel the cold!
What to expect from Year 4
Introduction to the Year 4 team: Mrs Pruden (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday), Mrs Rawlings (Fridays), Mrs Gomes (Learning support - every morning) and ELSA at lunchtimes.
Class web-page will be changed every week and give homelearning, photos of activities in school, updates on dates e.g. Swimming in November for 6 weeks (swimming costume, hat, towel etc). There are also useful links to websites and letters e.g. curriculum newsletter for each half term
Your child should read for 20-30 minutes per day at home - they can record their books in the reading records - but individual page numbers do NOT need to be recorded (this is different from Year 3), we suggest using a bookmark to 'save the page'. For 'free readers': once a book is completed a 'Blooms' question should be answered in the 'comments' box. Please check this has been done on a weekly basis. The same high standards are expected e.g use a pen or pencil, words should be spelt correctly and capitals for names and new sentences. Children on book bands: record each book & add quick comment e.g. did you enjoy it - they will probably be reading a book every few days and answering a Blooms question is impractical.
Times tables test - formal Government assessments in June (we will practise in school but as part of homelearning please use Purple Mash to help get used to the speed and format)
Rights respecting behaviour policy - if you get a reflection sheet, please go through it carefully with your child - they aren't a punishment but a chance to reflect on poor behaviour choices and an opportunity to know what to do next time. These sheets need to be signed by you and returned to school. (Our behaviour policy is on our website)
Intervention updates - we will try and catch you at pick-up or phone you if your child will be joining an intervention. Some of the children will be given extra-homelearning to 'fill the gaps' in their knowledge. We do interventions to identify concerns early and they will change over the year.
E-safety and social media updates - please see website for more details. Our aim is to prevent exposure to upsetting events; we will use 'trusted' websites. Remember social media rules e.g. Whatsapp need to be 16 years + (You might not think it will happen to your child, but regularly in Year 6 we are asked to help resolve an issue as child has posted something, which has upset another child - and it can NEVER been unseen!). Let them be children and enjoy time with you, at home (not with their class!)
Class representatives will have a chance to be nominated/voted
Reading challenge - new for Autumn 2021 - copy at bottom of page/already in Reading records
How else can you support your child?
Arriving in good time for the start of the day (8.25 school doors open)
Ensure your child knows what the lunch options are and help them decide, so they come to school knowing (we say home sandwiches, meat or vegetarian, as the options) If you've lost a copy then do look on Hampshire catering website
Allow them to get a good night's sleep - no TV/Screens for an hour before bed. A good 'bedtime routine', including reading (sometimes with you, sometimes you read to them, try an audio book, shared reading etc), in a quiet space e.g. in their room. Limit screen time.
Keep them healthy - balanced diet, good hygiene, exercise
Take an interest in their learning - e.g. what new words have you learnt today?
Focus on the positives - it's easy for all of us to only see negative things, but if we focus on the good things - then we will see more good/positive things. e.g. 'What was the best part about today?'
Use Seesaw - your child will choose work to share with you, work they are proud of, but no expectation of how many times etc is set. (keep seesaw family but delete seesaw class). Please keep an eye on this web-page for updates.
Useful Websites:
Try out your yoga moves:
There are lots of way to feel calmer.
Don’t forget the usual websites if you want to use them:
