Welcome to Year Four

Teacher: Mr J Bennett

Teaching Assistant: Mr C Marsh

Welcome to Year 4

Hello everyone! A warm welcome to our Year Four class page. We hope you had a wonderful May half term break and are ready for another exciting half term of learning. Our topic this half term is the Maya Civilisation, where we look at the ancient civilisation's history and how their people lived. 

Our PE day this half term is on a Monday.

Please revisit this page to find regular updates, useful websites and to explore what we have been learning about in class. 

Our Learning

As part of our Geography fieldwork, Year 4 visited Doncaster City Centre to look at building use and make sketches in order to compare with New York in our Geography topic of USA

As part of our Sound topic, we have been investigating different materials and how much they absorb sound, as well as how we can change the volume and pitch of a sound and the impact distance has on a sound.

In RSE, Year 4 have been looking at how to Keep Safe. As part of our learning, we looked at the importance of first aid and acted out different scenarios. 

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, Year 4 created a positivity journal with things they were proud of as well as inspirational quotes.

To celebrate the Coronation, we learnt about what the ceremony involves before creating invitations for the event.

In Geography, Year 4 have been studying the Amazon as our topic. We have started this topic by looking at the human and physical geography of South America, before locating the world's rainforests and looking at the different layers within the rainforest. 

For Aspirations week, we looked at what we would like to be when we are older. Year 4 created adverts for jobs using persuasive language which we have been focusing on in Literacy. To end the week we were joined by Leon Baptiste, a Commonwealth Gold Medalist sprinter who put us through our paces in a fitness session. 

In RSE we have been looking at personal relationships and part of that is what to do if we are being bullied and what it feels like to be bullied. We used drama to act out potential scenarios before discussing what the people being bullied should do.

As part of our RE topic, Year 4 have debated whether Jesus was right to say we should love our enemies. The class split into two and came back together at the end to present their findings. 

As part of our iAnimate topic we have been looking at creating animations. Firstly through flip books and then using apps on the computers. 

Year 4 split into six different groups each representing someone who had an interest in whether deforestation should be stopped or not We had people arguing for deforestation from McDonalds, builders and miners. And we had people arguing against deforestation from climate activists, environmentalists and the traditional owners of the land.  

For our multi-faith week, Year 4 looked at the Islam and the Qur'an. We looked at what the book means to Muslims and also how they use a subha to remember the 99 names for Alllah.

In Spanish, children have been looking at the story of Goldilocks. We listened to the story before concentrating on the key words. From this we ordered the key parts of the stories in Spanish and applied this to create our own storyboards. 

As part of our topic, Year 4 used role play to imagine what it would be like to be part of a new community and what we could do to help these people. 

Father Henry came in to visit our Year 4, 5 and 6 children with a relic from St Bernadette. He explained what the relic was and why they are important. He then answered any questions that children had about their faith. 

Thank you to Ann from CAFOD who came in to talk to us about Catholic Social Teaching. We looked at different values and thought about how we could show these in our lives. We also looked at some of the work that CAFOD does in different countries around the world following in the word of Jesus.

For enterprise week, Year 4 have been designing and making Christmas bouqets.

In computing, Year 4 have been using iProgram to investigate how programming works. 

Year 4 explored the Gospel story of Jesus healing Jairus’ daughter. The story was repeated in various ways, and through times of discussion, imaginative reflection and creative response, the children learnt that they are created by God out of love and for love: they were designed for this purpose, which should inform how they live. The class created storyboards to show the sequencing of the story of Jairus' daughter.

Important Information:

Homework- Homework will be given out each Friday and is due in the following Friday. Homework will usually consist of spellings, timetables practice, and either a SPaG , reading comprehension or a Maths worksheet.

PE- PE is on a Thursday. All children must have the correct school PE kit of white t-shirt and black shorts. (Track suits may be worn as the weather turns colder). Please ensure that all children have trainers to enable them to fully participate. 

Times tables- In Year 4 children are expected to know all their times tables with the introduction of the final 6, 7, 9 and 12 times tables. Please be logging into TTRockstars regularly to improve accuracy and confidence in your times tables. This will be checked daily in class. 

Reading- Children will have the opportunity to take a school reading book home and also have access to reading for pleasure books both in the classroom and in the school library. We challenge each child to aim to read their school book at home every evening. Please bring your book to school daily, along with your signed reading record (by an adult), to show you have read at home. We will hand out dojos each week for those children who are reading daily. 

If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to contact us at school or arrange a meeting,

Thank you 

Mr Bennett and Miss Laughton