Cardinals (Year 4)

Welcome to Year 4

 

Our class is called Cardinals and we are taught by Miss Giddens. 

 

Mrs Walters teaches Cardinals on Thursdays. 

We are supported by Mrs Ison.

 

Key dates:

We have PE on Mondays.

We have library book change on Mondays.

We have swimming on Fridays.

Spring Term

Week 9-10

Science / PSHE -we planned and made our own smoothies and discussed how they could be made healthier, linking to our PSHE topic of Healthy Me.

Music -we used our bodies to move in the correct style to represent different notes and rest values.

English -we analysed a painting by Winslow Homer called 'The Gulf Stream' and we made inferences about the character in the painting. We will be using these inferences to write a narrative about the painting.

Maths -we applied our knowledge fractions to compare the properties of shapes.

Week 7-8

Maths -we started our topic on fractions. We had our own fraction domino and fitted them together to make a circle! At home: ask your child what fractions are equivalent.

PSHE -we had a class discussion on what it means to be confident! We then wrote on our gingerbread men why we are confident in ourselves. Then, we wrote about why our class mates should be confident in themselves.

Music -we started notating on 'Dave the stave' using our knowledge of odd and even numbers to help us to position notes on a scale. We wrote our own melodies and performed them using either the piano, xylophone or guitar.

Week 5-6

Science -we made leaflets on the digestive system to showcase our knowledge. Take a walk into our classroom to take a closer look!

Maths -we used decisions trees to work out our partners mystery shape. We had to use our vast knowledge of shape to work out which questions would be valuable to ask.

Topic -we had a special visit from Mrs Shah and Mrs Bermi who made us some traditional Indian food to try. We used adjective bundles to describe the taste of the food and wrote about which dish we would like to try again and why.

Week 3-4

English -we used a picture drawn by a peer as the stimulus for a setting description. We then compared it with the thoughts of the person who made the picture and compared descriptive vocabulary.

Maths- we have been using base ten to illustrate place value in decimal numbers.

Science- we used our knowledge of the digestive system to act out the process. Each group had a narrator. We practised on the field and then showed the class our work.

ICT- we concluded our topic of using the Scratch programme to make our own educational games. We used coding and algorithms to make the games have a consequence for wrong answers and a reward for right answers.

Week 1 -2

Maths- this week we worked on relating fractions to decimals. We improved our understanding of place value of decimals and use numbers up to 2 decimal places and a cherry model to illustrate this. 

At home: Ask your child the decimal equivalents of: 1/2, 1/4 and 3/4.

 

Science- we started our new topic of 'The Digestive System.'We tried to eat a piece of apple just with our front incisor teeth, although this was very tricky, to understand why our teeth have different functions. We then related this to how we can keep our teeth healthy and made 7 top tips.

 

PE- we started our new sport of Netball for this term's focus. We learnt about the different ways to pass the ball and the tactical reasons why they might be used.

Music- we learned about the physical position of notes and used rope on the floor to move our bodies to represent the notes our peers were playing on the xylophones. 

Autumn Term

Week 14-15

Maths- we completed some work on Perimeter of shapes. We used straws to illustrate the width and height dimensions and used brackets in our calculations.

Art- we did some work based on our geography topic of Europe and famous landmarks. We used Vincent van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' piece as inspiration.

Science- we finished our Electricity  topic by making switches for our circuits. We used split pins and a paperclip to do this. 

Week 12-13

English- we started our new topic, based around the John Lewis Christmas advert. We analysed the character of Edgar the dragon and mapped him emotions across the advert.

 

Maths- this week we worked on converting units, including mass, capacity and time. We made loop cards to test our partners knowledge.

Science- this week we investigated which materials are conductors and insulators of electricity.

Music- we started to add in instruments to our class Christmas concert song. We played 4 notes in a pattern (F, D, G and C).

 

Week 10-11

Literacy- this week we wrote our own report all about St Albans as a class. On 'No Pens Day' we used Talk4Writing techniques to practice our report. 

Maths- this week we have been working on multiplying by 10, 100 and 1,000 and dividing by 10, 100 and 1,000. We created some rules to help us complete questions. You could ask your children what these rules are to consolidate their knowledge.

Metacognition- we made shapes on our Bica, we found this quite tricky but showed our resilient attitudes.

Week 8-9

Maths- we started our topic of multiplying and dividing by 10 and 100. We created a human place value chart to illustrate the number moving columns. 

Literacy- we started our topic of Reports and used a Venn diagram to compare two different reports.

Geography- we started our new topic all about Europe, linked to our history topic of the Vikings. We used balloons to label the continents of the world.

Metacognition- this week we learnt cross stitch. This was tricky at first, but we persevered, showed our resilient attitude and the results were amazing. 

Week 5-6

Topic- we made our own Viking long houses using straw, wood and sponge. We included people and animals, in Viking times their animals lived in their houses. 

English- we started our topic of riddles and analysed the riddles in The Hobbit by J.R.Tolkien to identify the features which are commonly found in riddles. We then planned and wrote our own riddles.

Maths- we had to choose which of the four operations was needed to solve word problems.

PE-we finished our topic of hockey with a match. Our main focus was getting into space to avoid the opposition and help our team to pass accurately and ultimately score.

Metacognition- we started our skill of sewing which is a new skill for many pupils. We learnt how to thread a needle, tie a knot and do running stitch on Bica. 

RE- we worked in small groups and used the iPads to research Hindu deities. 

Week 4-5

English- we started our new topic of instructions. We used our partners instructions to make their perfect jam sandwich and then evaluated how their instructions could be improved.

 

Maths- we focused on multiplication and division this week and used the inverse operation to change the operation in number sentences.

 

Science- this week in Science, Cardinals had a very exciting visitor, Dr Angela from the Hertfordshire Amphibian and Reptile Group. She bought her pet Apricot snake to show us which is native to Peru and we all had a stroke. We all found an animal on a scavenger hunt around the classroom and made a food web to show the 'Cycle of Life.' We also made 'adder crowns' using potatoes and leaves to display the texture of snake skin.

 

 

Music- this week in Music we focused on 5 notes (C, B, D, E, F) and using xylophones and glockenspiels we rehearsed a variety of patterns involving these notes.

 

Week 3

Science- we went on an invertebrate hunt around the forest school area. We found slugs, snails, spiders and woodlice. We looked closely at the invertebrate's appearance using magnifying glasses and classified the invertebrate type. 

Music- we used xylophones and the piano to construct and identified one bar melodies using written music notation. 

 

Week 2

English- we continued our work on Mythical Tales, reading the Tale of Beowulf, which showed Mythical creatures from a different perspective. We made predictions on what the creature looked like from the text.

 

Maths- we introduced the term of 'regrouping' to allow us to re-balance calculations and make them easier for us to solve.

 

Science- we used a Carroll Diagram to classify living things. 

 

Computing- we started Computing by re-visiting E-Safety and reminding the children how they can stay safe online, using SMART. We also started our new topic called 'Educational Games' where we collated a list of what algorithms are commonly used for and features which make educational games effective. 

 

Week 1

 

English- we started our new topic based on Mythical Tales.

We read the books 'Can you catch a Mermaid?' and 'The Seal Children.' We also used story-mapping as a technique to write the introduction of the text in picture form. 

 

Maths- our weekly objective was Place Value and using different mediums to represent 4-digit numbers. 

 

Science- the topic of living things very much excited Year 4 and we started the topic off by deconstructing a lily. 

Topic- Mrs Walters introduced us to the Vikings and we took an aeroplane to Norway to investigate what it was like to live as a Viking.