Class Update: Week ending 10th February

We spent the early part of this week becoming proficient in using the short ‘bus stop’ method for division. Afterwards, we tackled a of range of questions worded in different ways to test understanding. Ending the week with tasks requiring us to apply our knowledge to problem solving which incorporated the skills, in which children chose the method of division they found most effective.

In topic we have been looking at geographical aspects of North America, this links to the shared book we have been reading in class, ‘When you reach me’.  This week the children have learnt about the differences between urban and rural settings, going on to write a letter to a friend from the perspective of our stories narrator. In the letters we described life living in New York and what they might find interesting or difficult if they were to visit.

Children have learnt how to use an embedded clause in their writing in order to add description in a different way. They have also done some work on writing in a play script format. We enjoyed our recent work creating reports about Rosa Parks and this week we have written an interview with the driver of the bus. 

http://www.theschoolrun.com/what-is-an-embedded-clause

Art Week in Year Four

In our topic time this week, Year Four have created self-portraits in the style of Andy Warhol. We discussed his approach and looked at a range of his work before starting to create our own prints.

Whilst regularly revising areas of arithmetic throughout the week, our maths lessons have also followed the theme of art week. We have studied symmetry and tessellations, creating continuing patterns.

For our English lessons this week we have looked at various pieces of art to inspire writing.  We have written a character description based on ‘the old guitarist’ by Picasso and have written poems after studying a painting by Lowry.

January Class Update

English: We have continued our work on chronological reports this week, moving on to produce newspaper articles. We read extracts from a biography of the life of Rosa Parks and then studied the features of a newspaper article. The class produced articles which gave an accurate portrayal of the story that made Rosa Parks famous and were able to do so by including all of the features of the text type.

Maths: We have developed our work on decimals to include some work with numbers which contain numbers to two decimal places. We applied our increasingly strong understanding of place value in order to multiply larger four digit numbers by single digit numbers.

Topic: We have studied the teeth of various animals and have sorted them according to the types of food they eat. We have compared herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. We have also learnt that humans have two sets of teeth during their lifetime and the implications this has from when we grow our adult teeth.