Year 4 Team 2022-2023:

O'Keeffe Class Teacher: Miss Lamont

Picasso Class Teacher: Mrs Hooper

Setting Teacher: Miss Landau

Welcome to Year 4!

Welcome to our Year 4 class page! We hope you have had a wonderful break and are looking forward to beginning the new school term in Year 4.

This term, our PE day will be a Wednesday. Please make sure appropriate PE kit is in school every day. 

We are using 'Go Read' to log the children's reading books. The children have been shown where to go to change their reading books independently and we will encourage them to change their books as soon as they have finished reading them. The children will also receive a library book to read alongside their shelf book. Library books are changed once a week. 

We are so excited for all of the learning opportunities we will get to share with the children this year. Below is some information on the learning we will be carrying out this half term. 

In English, we will be exploring discussion texts, focusing on the book 'Peter Pan in Scarlet'. Later in the half term, we will be focusing on writing riddles.

In Maths, we will be exploring place value and the four operations. Please see fluency facts for year 4 below. Please encourage your child to keep practising these, along with the rest of their times tables. Children should continue to practise their times tables in their home times tables books and on Times Tables Rock Stars. In Science, we will be looking at Sound. In History, we will start our learning on Early Britain, and learn all about Stone Age. In Geography, we will be looking at Eastern England.

Please refer back to our class pages each week to see what the children have been getting up to in school!

Monday 20th March 2023

It has been an exciting week of baking! On Monday, the year 4 children made some Italian bread. They had the opportunity to either observe or participate in the measuring of the different ingredients and discussions were had about the purpose of the different ingredients within the bread. They then went on to mix, roll and shape some risen dough ready for baking. On Tuesday, they either grated, chopped or sliced a range of vegetarians ingredients which they put into their bread. We hope they enjoyed eating it!

Monday 13th March 2023

This week the children went on an 'emotions journey' through the Alice and Wonderland story. They inferred how Alice felt at different points in the story and then they completed an emotions graph to show her changing emotions. This supported them to write postcards home from Alice to family members.

Monday 6th March 2023
During Spring term, children in year 4 have been lucky to have some opportunities to do activities with an artist called Jenny. These activities have been to support with their use of vocabulary and also to support them with developing their imaginations. This week, Jenny set up a very exciting Mad Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland. The children had just spent the week writing their own version of this chapter and on Friday it was a lovely opportunity for the children to share their knowledge of speech by becoming the characters and acting out what they might say! We look forward to more learning opportunities with Jenny over the next few weeks.

Monday 27th February 2023

This week we've been enjoying learning the pronunciation of new words in French. We started our new topic learning about different foods that we may eat and drink for breakfast. We practised saying aloud all the phrases and in our next French lesson we will have a go at putting them into a sentence to show what we eat for breakfast.

Monday 20th February 2023

This week year for had a lovely school trip to the Celtic Harmony Camp to experience life living in an Iron Age village. They had the opportunity to experience how the Iron Age people would trade goods, make bread, and make clothes and bracelets. This trip has prepared our year 4 historians for summer term where their history learning will travel through the Iron Age.

Monday 6th February 2023

This week we had two very exciting cross curricular days linked with Times Tables Rock Stars! 

The children loved coming in dressed as rock stars and making their own times tables games on the Friday. They had to make sure it would be appropriate for a KS1 child to play and enjoyed trying out each other's games and giving feedback. It was lovely to see some children feeling confident to battle against some of the teachers in the hall.

Monday 30th January 2023

In Science this term, the children have been learning about living things. This week, they went on a hunt outside to find invertebrates such as: spiders, woodlice, snails, slugs and worms. They identified different types as well as the habitats they found them in. 

Monday 23rd January 2023

In maths this week, the children have been representing and plotting integers on a number line. When given different ranges of numbers, they were able to plot the half way points, quarter points and estimate where other numbers would be on that number line. To support their learning, they used border roll to fold and find the different points.

Monday 16th January 2023

In music this term, we have been learning to sing in unison with increasing confidence when it comes to maintaining pitch. We sang Three Little Birds in pairs with another child. We had to careful listen to our partner and match their pitch throughout all of the song.

Monday 9th January 2023

In Geography this week, the children began their topic which focuses on the Alps. They researched the location of the Alps, the countries they cover and the closest seas. At the end of the lesson, the children used ‘Peak Visor’ to transport themselves to the Alps and find additional information such as: the elevation of different mountains, the weather in each country and what the Alps look like on a map.

Monday 12th December 2023

Over the week in maths, the children have been learning all about 2d shapes. We named a range of shapes compared the shapes based on their properties. The children presented their knowledge on Google Classroom using Google slides.

Monday 5th December 2023

In this week's DT lesson, we were finishing off our Christmas table decorations. We sewed on a base which would allow our products to fit the specification and stand on their own. There was a lot of success with this and some lovely learning outcomes.

Monday 28th November 2023

During English this week, we had the opportunity to evaluate each other's learning. We looked for strengths with their writing. We looked at where they had relevant details and where they ensured they had grammatical accuracy. We also provided areas for improvement.

Monday 21st November 2022

During religious education this half term, the children have been learning about Hinduism. This week, they focused on Diwali and the beautiful patterns created as part of the celebration. They made their own Rangoli patterns using rice and food colouring. 

Monday 14th November 2022

This week in Mrs Hooper's English group we were summarising information by taking notes. Children were taking notes on sabre-toothed cats from a range of different sources. They watched a video, read texts and used the iPads to find the relevant information.

Monday 7th November 2022

We had a really exciting visitor this week! Bea, a microbiologist, visited Round Diamond to introduce our exciting new topic, the human digestive system. We carried out different enquires to explore the length of the intestines, to help understand how our teeth breakdown the food, and then how it continues to breakdown in the stomach. A very fun day was had by all!

Monday 31st October 2022

In history, we explored a primary source. It was a Stone Age headdress. The children deduced what they thought this artefact would be used for and made their own to reenact its purpose. Some children thought it would be used as camouflage when hunting whilst others thought it might have been used in ceremonies or rituals.

Monday 17th October 2022

This week we had a very exciting couple of cross curricular days where we learnt all about space! The children carried out a range of activities including making top trump cards, used pastels to create a piece of art of the solar system which had a 3d effect and they also had a chance to go into a planetarium. 

Week commencing Monday 10th October 2022

In Science this week, the children applied their knowledge of sound by creating pan pipes. They carefully measured their paper straws to ensure each pan pipe was shorter than the one next to it and then used cellotape to wrap them together. When they had finished, they explored and practised playing the instrument to see how the length of each pan pipe changed the pitch.

Week commencing Monday 3rd October 2022

In maths this week, children started the week by exploring various multiplication strategies which would aid them when we move onto grid method. They reviewed the strategies considering whether they were time efficient, age appropriate and whether they would ensure accuracy or whether they were too complex. The children enjoyed reflecting on the effectiveness of these strategies.

Week commencing Monday 26th September 2022

In year 4's music learning we have been enjoying the song Step Back Baby. The children have created their own performances to accompany the song. They have had to be aware of their audience, incorporate facial expressions and collaboratively sing.

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Week commencing: 19.09.22

On Thursdays, Year 4 are now extremely lucky to receive British Sign Language teaching in the classroom. This week, they learnt the alphabet, some common phrases including “good afternoon”  “my name is” and “how are you” as well as the signs for a range of emotions.  Miss Lamont and Mrs Hooper feel so proud of the children, the respect they have shown the visitors and their determination to learn BSL. Well done! 

Week commencing: 12.09.22

This week in English, the children retold the story of Peter Pan through drama. To begin with they recorded down the key events from the story using story telling language. They created a range of freeze frames for these key events. They used their knowledge of the characters and the relationship between the characters to use the appropriate facial expression and body language.

Week commencing: 06.09.22

To begin our geography topic this term ‘Eastern England’ the children used the atlas’s to explore the United Kingdom and more specifically, the regions in England. They were challenged to work together to find as many cities in the different regions as they could, which they did successfully. Well done on an excellent first week back, Year 4! 

2021-2022

Week commencing: 11.07.22

In English this week, we are learning about poetry. We are looking closely at the poem ‘Life Doesn’t Frighten Me’ by Maya Angelou. We have all thoroughly enjoyed exploring the text so far. We learnt about how to perform a poem and followed some top tips from Michael Rosen. Below are some clips and pictures from our performances. Enjoy! :) 

Week Commencing 4th July 2022

Year 4 were delighted to perform at the music festival. We performed the song 'Count on Me' as a year group trying out vocal harmonies. We also performed alongside the Year 5 and 6 children singing 'Eye of the Tiger, The Ugly Duckling and 'Don't Worry, Be Happy'. We hope the audience enjoyed the festival as much as we did!

Week commencing: 27.06.22

This week we took part in cross-curricular days with the theme of Animals. We researched a range of animals such as hamsters, guinea pigs, ferrets and scorpions. We completed an assortment of activities with the focus of our chosen animal. For example, animal origami and designing an animal enclosure. We also were given the opportunity to take part in an animal experience. We were able to pet and hold some really interesting animals. Below are some pictures from our animal experience. 

Week beginning: 20.06.22

This week in maths, we have been learning about fractions. We have found fractions of quantities, fractions of amounts of money and fractions of measures. To deepen our understanding, we took part in a problem solving activity where we had to discuss and give reasons. We were given an assortment of cards with either a fraction on it or a representation of a fraction. We had to group the cards in different ways making sure to explain our reasoning using our understanding. We used vocabulary such as equivalent, numerators and denominators. 

Week beginning: 13.06.22

In English, we have been exploring the text ‘The Island’. In the story, the islanders want the stranger to leave the island. We discussed our viewpoints and opinions on whether or not the stranger should stay on the island. We then split our class into two groups: for the stranger remaining on the island and against. Each group were given time to prepare their arguments and counter arguments. They had to infer reasons from the text as well as use evidence from the text in their debate. When the debate began, everyone put forward excellent arguments and showed fantastic energised learning! Well done at completing a great debate year 4! 

Week Commencing 6th June 2022 

The children in Year 4 went for a walk in the local area and were encouraged to take in their surroundings (not being told they were going to draw a map). When they returned to the classroom, they sketched a map of their route. They will then go for a walk again to compare their sketch with the route so that they can edit and improve their maps.

Week commencing: 23rd May 2022

This week we celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. We completed a wide range of activities to help us celebrate. We created our own portrait of the Queen and created our own posters of key events that happened in England and around the world from our assigned decade of 1993-2002. We were also tasked with creating a special gift for the Queen. So we decided to choreograph our own changing of the guard routine. We had a great time learning the commands and trying to replicate the movements of the Queen’s guards. Enjoy watching below! :) 

Week commencing 16th May 2022

This week in maths we have been learning about integer scaling. We have been looking at different amounts and scaling the amounts up or down. For example, scaling up the ingredients necessary for a recipe or scaling down the size of a baby tree frog from its parent. We have had to use multiplication and division skills to support this learning. We have completed some challenging scaling problems that we really enjoyed! 

Week Commencing Monday 9th May

In Year 4, we have been looking at using Excel to help us manage data. We looked at how to format cells in different ways with colours and boarders. We used our cross-curricular knowledge from Maths to help us find cells using coordinates. We even played a class game of ‘Battleships’. 

W/C Monday 2nd May 2022

This week the children looked at historical early Britain artifacts and sources, discussing if the sources were primary and secondary and what they could deduce about the time period. 

W/C Monday 25th April 2022

This week for our Science learning we did a child-led investigation on 'What material and/or substance will reduce an ice-cube melting the best.' The children experimented with wrapping the ice in foil, a white cloth, and submerged the ice in cold water, salt and put the ice-cube on a metal tray. We weighed the ice cube before and after for 10 minutes to see the results in weight, the children all did beautiful learning and are excited to share their results with their grown-up!

Week Monday 18th April 2022

This week in RSHE we discussed healthy lifestyle choices and how we can look after our mental and physical wellbeing. 

Week beginning 28th March 2022

This week, we finished our DT project. Take a look at the video below to find out which skills and vocabulary we learned along the way in making our soup. 

Week beginning 21st March 2022

This week in Science, we have been looking at food chains. We were able to label the living things using vocabulary such as: producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, predator and prey. 

Week beginning 14.03.22

In our history lesson this week, we looked at different secondary sources to make comparisons between the Ancient Egyptian and Early Britain religions. We found out that both groups of people believed in the afterlife and were buried with their valuable possessions, 

Week beginning 7th March 2022

In our class assembly this Thursday, we continued our learning on life skills by looking at British Sign Language. We built on our prior knowledge of the letters and learnt how to sign the days of the week. We also learned how to sign words and phrases such as: 'today', 'yesterday', 'tomorrow', 'last week' and 'weekend'. Watch the video below to see what we have been learning. 

Week beginning 28th February 2022

This week, we practised using compasses in Geography. We then used the 8 compass points to describe the position of countries in Europe in relation to each other. 

w/c Monday 21st February 2022

This week, we took part in 'Wellbeing Wednesday' where we did activities relating to the NHS 5 steps to wellbeing: connecting with others, being physically active, learning new skills, giving to others and practising mindfulness. 

We thought about what values we look for in friends, took part in some Winter Olympics-inspired sports activities, used Chrome Music Lab to compose our own music and practised some guided meditation. We also bought in donations for the local food bank to help those less fortunate than ourselves. 

w/c Monday 7th February 2022

This half term, we have been learning about cave paintings in our art lessons. We have developed our drawing skills, learning how to create texture with a range of pencils and pastels. We learnt how people in the Stone Age added pigments to their drawings and used charcoal to add shadows and tones. 

w/c Monday 7th February 

This week in English, we have been reading the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ by Lewis Carroll. We analysed the poetic devices in the poem and then planned and wrote our own versions. On Friday, we performed our poems with actions and clear voices to the rest of the class. 

w/c Monday 31st January 2022

In computing this week, we have been making our own quizzes on Scratch. We have experimented with changing the sprite, changing the colour of the sprite depending on correct or incorrect answers and practised debugging our algorithms when things haven’t gone as expected. 

w/c 24th January 2022

In Science this week, we went outside onto the playground to do an invertebrate hunt. We were very careful to treat the environment with respect and looked closely to see if we could find anything. We saw a range of invertebrates such as spiders, snails, ants and caterpillars. 

w/c 17th January 2022

In English, we have been writing setting descriptions based on our book 'Cloud Tea Monkeys'. We worked together to edit and improve our learning, making sure our vocabulary choices were ambitious and that our writing was grammatically accurate. 

w/c 10th January 2022

In maths this week, we have been learning about Roman numerals. We learnt how to write numbers with up to 4 digits.

Have a go at this game to revise what you learnt. 

ABCya! | Learn Roman Numerals • ABCya! 

w/c 3rd January 2022

Cross Curricular Days

On Thursday and Friday, our Spring Term learning commenced with our termly cross-curricular days. This time, they focused on life skills. In Year 4, we took part in a range of practical activities to enhance our learning in this area:

First aid - we learnt how to contact the emergency services for a range of scenarios. Some of us also looked at the recovery position.

Gardening - we learnt about the advantages of growing our own vegetables and successful planted our own seeds - we are looking forward to watching them grow!

Recycling - we looked for symbols on a range of containers and learnt how to sort our rubbish at home.

Making drinks - we learnt how to make tea, coffee and squash and wrote our own clear instructions.

Tying shoe laces - we made our own cardboard shoes to practise threading and tying our laces.

Table manners - we learnt how to correctly hold a knife and fork and how to act politely when at the table enjoying a meal.

w/c 15th November 2021

This half term, we have changed from Art to D&T lessons. Our focus this half term is sewing skills and we will be using these to make our own Christmas decorations.

To begin this topic, we practised our running, back and over stitches which we will use in our final product.

We had some excellent sewers in both classes!

w/c 8th November 2021

In our RE lessons this term, we have been learning about ways of worship in Hinduism, Christianity and Sikhism. Last week we explored key festivals, so this week we looked at Diwali in more detail and learned all about rangoli. We looked at what rangoli patterns are, why they are used and what they can be made from. The children then used coloured rice to create their own patterns.

w/c 1st November 2021

This week, we had 2 cross curricular days which focused on learning about Parliament.

We practised writing a letter to our local MP on an issue that was important to us, watched a Youth Parliament debate, chose a debate topic for our class debate, made campaign posters and ballot slips, learned about the 4 main political parties and voted for our favourite party, wrote our debate speeches and then held our class debates and votes!

w/c 18th October 2021

We have just started our new RHSE topic of "A World Without Judgement". In our previous lesson, we spoke about how different groups of people are judged, how we are judged positively and negatively and how we can judge others too. This week, we were proud to be able to share with a group of Year 5 children how we ensure that everyone has equal opportunities to learn at Round Diamond. Ansh collected the children from their classrooms and took them to see how he accesses his learning and some resources we have used on our most recent displays! The Year 5 children then returned to their classes and spoke about what they had learned from Ansh.

w/c 11th October 2021

This week in History, we imagined we were Stone Age children! We used our new knowledge from the past few weeks on what people in the Stone Age ate, how they hunted and what they wore to write a diary entry describing a day in the life of a Stone Age child. 

w/c 4th October 2021

In our Computing lessons so far this term, we have learned about staying safe online and the differences between networks and devices. This week, we learned about the differences between the Internet and the World Wide Web! The children created tables on Google Classroom to present their new knowledge.

w/c 27th September 2021

This term in Science we have been learning about sound. In this week's lesson we made our own panpipes out of straws and played them, practising with making high and low pitches. We noticed that the shorter straws made higher pitch sounds than the longer straws!

w/c 20th September 2021

This week in our English learning we discussed the effectiveness of vocabulary. We explored new adjectives like malevolent and vindictive, and in groups, ranked these in order of their effectiveness when describing Captain Hook.

As a class, we agreed that malevolent was one of the most effective words as it isn't used a lot so helps to show a lot of emotion. Some children thought that mean and unkind were the least effective words as they are not as powerful, and the children have been using them for a few years now.

The Year 4 teachers are looking forward to seeing some of this new vocabulary in the children's learning soon!

w/c 13th September 2021

We started learning about sound by exploring how we hear. We learned all about the different parts of the ear, what the purpose of each part is and finally, how we actually hear the sound - by little, tiny hairs sending signals to the brain that we are hearing a sound! Both classes then presented their understanding of the process to the rest of their class, including information we had gathered the previous week.

w/c 6th September 2021

In Art this half term we will be painting our own landscapes. To begin this topic, we spent this week's Art lesson exploring a range of brushes. We chose appropriate brushes to create different strokes and varied textures!

w/c 30th August 2021

This week, the Year 4 teachers welcomed all the children back to school. The children learned about their class artists (Georgia O'Keeffe and Pablo Picasso) as well as writing about their summer holidays, practising spelling and playing times tables games to engage everyone in this year's learning.

We are looking forward to sharing more Year 4 learning with you soon!

2020-2021

Teaching Team 

Mrs Herbert (Picasso class)

Miss Blundell (O'Keeffe class) with Miss McLintock (student teacher)

Mrs Herbert ( Target group teacher)

Mrs Mason ( Teaching Assistant)

Class information

Year four PE lessons will be on Thursday afternoons.

Home learning

Home learning tasks (spellings, my maths and maths fluency) will be set on a Friday. We encourage children to read daily and this can be recorded in their reading records. 

Year 3/4 Statutory Spellings: 

In the link below, you will find the National Curriculum Year 3/4 Statutory Spelling List  document. On page 16 of the document, you will find the Year 3/4 spelling list. The previous pages of the documents also explain the spellings rules that we teach in our weekly spelling practise. Each week, alongside a spelling rule, we send home two statutory spellings from the list to keep children practising them regularly.

Children are assessed on all the words from the list each term, throughout the years. The document also contains the Year 5/6 Statutory Spelling List and rules which children will move onto next year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239784/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf 

05.07.21

In our maths learning this week, we have been building our confidence with time. In Miss Blundell's class we did one of her favourite time activities, MUSICAL CLOCKS! We danced around the room to the music and then when it stopped we had to read the time off an analogue clock. Year 4 also explored 12- and 24-hour conversion later on in the week and they should be really proud of themselves, as this is challenging learning.

28.01.21

We hope everyone has recovered after the excitement of the school sleepover. We wanted to say a little message to thank the children for some of the lovely manners we saw when we were handing out food and drinks, and the general appreciation from some children for the experience. 

It was definitely an early night for the teachers on Saturday!

21.07.21

In this lesson, we made pulleys. We use string, a little plastic pot, a magnet and a paperclip. We attached the pulley to the chair and attempted to pull the paperclip up with the magnet attached to the bottom of the pot. This skill will be useful to help us when we go start our DT project of making a ski lift.

14.06.21

Cross Curricular Days for PE!

We have had some fun days this week linking our lessons to PE. On Monday, we practised some first aid and we learnt and tried bandaging each other. We then went onto explore the history of the Ancient Olympics. In the afternoon, we did our learning outside. There was various different food and drink packaging around the playground and we went on a scavengers hunt to find food with certain contents. Some of the things we had to find included:

• A product that contains no fats
• A food high in sugar
• A food containing around 10g of protein per 100g
• A food that has an amber salt label

07.06.21

We started our new D&T unit this week where we are developing skills to move towards creating a ski lift. This week we looked at various pulleys and how they work. We learnt some important vocabulary including axle, wheel, force and motor. We then explained the process ourselves so that we are reading to make our own pulleys in our next D&T lesson.

24.06.21

This week we enjoyed a lovely art morning. Firstly, we did a contrasting sketch of the Stonehenge. On one part of the page we used charcoal and the other half we used sketching pencils and colouring pencils. Our focus was to create the appropriate textures on the stone structure and also to use tones to show where the light hits the stone from the sun.

We then evaluated our previously made Stonehenge structures. We considered the strength of our design and the areas that needed improvement. We thought about the skills we could use next time to achieve better results.

17.05.21

In maths, we have been spending some time building our confidence with our times tables. Miss Brooks group practised with games such as pairs, around the world and finding patterns on a 100 square. We started to feel more confident with our 3 and 4 times tables.

During out art learning journey, we have explored the different textures of materials you would find at the Stonehenge.  We used sketches (we had drawn in a previous lesson) to collaboratively create a model of this structure. We used various tools to mould our clay and show the different textures. We had to consider how we could ensure our structure would remain stable.

During our art learning, we created scaled up versions of our Stonehenge sketches. We used our learning from maths to make the measures of a sketches ten times bigger. We then used chalk to sketch them out on the playground.

19.04.21

This week in science we began our new unit on states of matter. We sorted different materials into either solids, liquids or gasses. We then considered what properties they would have if they were in these groups. We discussed the particle formation of these materials and demonstrated how the particles would look in groups.