Year 4

Welcome back to a new year and a new decade!

I hope that you all had a fabulous festive season spent with family and friends, and are refreshed and ready for the Spring term! Once again, we have a packed term ahead, full of exciting learning!

MATHS

We will continue our work on multiplication and division, focussing particularly on written methods for solving these problems. We will then move on to investigating area. The remainder of the term will be devoted to developing understanding of fractions and introducing decimals. In particular, we will be learning about fractions greater than 1, adding and subtracting fractions and fractions of an amount, while our decimal work will focus on finding tenths and hundredths, hundredths as decimals, dividing by ten and a hundred.

By the end of this term, you will need to be able to:

• Recall and use multiplication and division facts for multiplication tables up to 12 × 12
• Multiply and divide mentally, including: multiplying by 0 and 1; dividing by 1 and multiplying together three numbers
• Recognise and use factor pairs and commutativity in mental calculations
• Multiply two digit and three digit numbers by a one digit number using formal written layout
• Find the area of rectilinear shapes by counting squares
• Recognise and show families of common equivalent fractions
• Solve problems involving increasingly harder fractions to calculate quantities
• Add and subtract fractions with the same denominator
• Recognise and write decimal equivalents of any number of tenths or hundredths
• Count up and down in hundredths; recognise that hundredths arise when dividing an object by one hundred and dividing tenths by ten
• Find the effect of dividing a one or two digit number by 10 or 100, identifying the value of the digits in the answer as ones, tenths and hundredths
• Convert between different units of measure [for example, kilometre to metre]

Remember to keep practising your times tables; Times Tables Rockstars is a fabulous resource to use at home!

ENGLISH

This term we will be using Sabryna and the River Spirit both in our Reading Journals and as inspiration for written work. We will also use Once Upon a Raindrop, a lovely poem which tells the story of water, as a link between our enquiry question and our work on poetry. This term, we be doing a wide range of written work, with a particular emphasis on improving grammar and spelling. Our work will focus on writing narrative, poetry, explanations and folk tales.

English lessons take place every day, building up to an Extended Write - a chance to spend a full lesson creating a top quality piece of writing. One lesson a week is dedicated to our Reading Journal work and EGPS is threaded through all lessons. We also complete Fast Learning sessions, practising handwriting and spellings, three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

ENQUIRY

Our enquiry driver for the Spring I half term is Where does our water come from? We will answer this question by focussing on rivers, trying to understand not only how they work, but how they are used by humans, pollution and water treatment and the effects of flooding.

Each lesson has a specific, focussed question which will help answer our overarching enquiry:

• How does water get into a river?
• Where are the rivers?
• What are the features of a river?
• How do rivers work?
• How do we use rivers?
• Can a river power my Nintendo Switch?
• What is polluting the rivers?
• Can we hold back the flood?

SCIENCE

This term, we will be considering the states of matter - trying to understand how the world (and universe!) around us is put together at an atomic level, using practical investigations, observations and desk-based learning to find out all we can about solids, liquids and gases.

The themes we will cover are:

• solids, liquids and gases (thinking about what matter actually is and how things can be in different states - e.g. steam, liquid water or ice)
• investigating gases (learning about Joseph Priestley, whether gases weigh anything and the gases in the air we breathe)
• heating and cooling (learning about how a solid can change to a liquid or a gas and back)
• wonderful water (finding out about evaporation and condensation)
• the water cycle

We have been learning about the types and functions of teeth, finding out that different teeth are useful for eating different sorts of food. We learned that archaeologists can tell what sort of diet a person ate in ancient Egypt by looking at their teeth and that some Egyptian mummies show signs of tooth decay.

In this investigation, we are looking at the reasons teeth decay. We are using eggs to represent teeth and have submerged them in different liquids to see what effect each has on them. We have made predictions and will be recording our results before making a conclusion.

We are undertaking an investigation to demonstrate and explain why the river Nile is so important. To do this, we have sowed some lettuce seeds (representing crops grown in Egypt!) in four different environments, to see how they grow.

These environments are: 

• desert sand with no water
• desert sand with water
• Nile sediment with no water
• Nile sediment with water

We also have a control group of seeds, which have no sand, sediment or water. We have made predictions and will record our results over time!

MATHS

We will begin the Summer Term by continuing our work on decimals, looking at ordering decimals, making whole numbers and comparing and rounding decimals. We will follow this with some work on money, before delving into statistics. Finally, we will be expanding our knowledge of geometry, focussing on the properties of shape and position and direction.

By the end of the term, you will need to be able to:

• Solve money problems including decimals to two decimal places
• Interpret and present data, including on bar charts and time graphs
• Solve problems using information presented in bar charts, pictograms, tables and other graphs
• Plot points and draw sides to create a given polygon
• Compare and classify geometric shapes
• Identify lines of symmetry in 2D shapes in different orientations
• Describe positions on a 2D grid and movements between positions as translations 

It is also very important that you are fluent in all times tables; our Fast Learning sessions are designed to support this, but please do your best to keep practising at home: aim to become a Times Table Rockstar Rock Hero!

We have adopted a Mastery approach to our learning, seeking to explain and reason as well as problem-solving. Maths lessons take place every day, and each lesson begins with a 'Ten in ten' task: ten questions covering various areas of mathematics, to be answered in ten minutes. We also have Fast Learning sessions on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

ENGLISH

This term we will be using a range of topic-related non fiction texts in our Reading Journals. We will also be doing a wide range of written work, with an emphasis on improving grammar and spelling. Our work will focus on writing explanations, diary entries, newspaper reports and poetry and in the second half term we will be using Ted Hughes' The Iron Man as inspiration for our writing.

English lessons take place every day, with one session a week being an Extended Write - a chance to spend a full lesson creating a top quality piece of writing. We also complete Fast Learning sessions, practising handwriting and spellings, three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

TOPIC

Our topic this term is titled Walk like an Egyptian! and has the guiding question “How did the Egyptians impact the world?”. Egypt is a fascinating country, with a rich past and we will be looking at both modern and ancient Egypt, as well as considering its geography and culture. 

We will answer our guiding question by considering a focussed question in detail each week:

• Where is Egypt?
• Why is the Nile important?
• Where do Egyptians live?
• Why is it so hot here?
• Who was King Tut?
• How did Egyptians live?
• What was a mummy?
• How can we read ancient Egyptian?
• What do Egyptians eat?
• What is Egyptomania?
• Can I make my own Egypt-inspired art?

Our showpiece outcome at the end of summer will be a presentation of Egyptian-inspired art in an art gallery, to which parents, grandparents and extended family will be invited!

SCIENCE

This term, we will be linking our scientific enquiry with our Egypt topic work, considering ancient Egyptian technology, diet and mummification as well as developing our understanding of the human body.

The themes we will cover are:

• ancient irrigation, looking at the shaduf
• investigating how seeds grow in a desert environment, compared to the fertile soil along the Nile
• Egyptian water clocks and sundials
• types and functions of teeth
• a tooth decay enquiry
• considering the effects of diet on teeth
• understanding our digestive system
• learning about what ancient poo can tell us
• the process of mummification
• investigating how different materials respond to mummification

PE

PE sessions will take place on Friday afternoons, initially taking place indoors, but as the weather improves we will be using the field as far as possible. This term, we will be working on athletic skills, including running, throwing and catching then applying those skills by learning to play cricket. Our annual Sports Day will be a great opportunity to show off what we have learned!

Please remember to bring school PE kit, consisting of a white t-shirt and black shorts, a tracksuit for outdoor sessions and suitable footwear. Earrings and watches should be left at home and please ensure that a water bottle is brought to school.

What a fantastic performance! The culmination of weeks of rehearsals and months of investigating the answer to our guiding question, "Which is better: Stage or screen?", the Year 3 and 4 Spring performance was an amazing success! From the dress rehearsal to the final show, every one of you did a fabulous job and truly impressed the pupils, staff and your parents and grandparents.

Congratulations to every single one of you - it's only a shame that we can't take the show on the road and become a touring production! 

YEAR 3 and 4 AZTEC MUSEUM

Our Topic work for the Autumn term was about the world of the Aztecs. We spent the term learning about all aspects of Aztec life and finally presented our learning to our parents (and the rest of the school!) in a fantastic museum, full of artefacts that we created. 

Please have a look at the galleries below, showing how we created the artefacts and the museum itself.

For our Autumn Good to be Green treat we spent the afternoon making giant bubbles!

Our mixture used the following recipe:

1 cup of washing up liquid

1 cup of cornflour

6 cups of water

1 tablespoon of glycerine

1 tablespoon of baking powder

Mix the cornflour into the water, then carefully add the other ingredients. Leave the mixture for an hour or so, giving it an occasional stir. Remember to make bubble hoops using wool and two drinking straws!