Happy New Year! We were delighted to welcome everyone back to school for the spring term this week. We hope that you all had a restful break and are feeling refreshed and excited for the term ahead. We are looking forward to another exciting term in Year 4 and have lots to look forward to in the coming weeks.
We have started off the new year at school with book week! We have been reading and learning about the story of The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Anderson. We have explored the story through reading, drama, debate and writing.
In Year 4, we started the week by doing some active storytelling to learn about the story of The Steadfast Tin Soldier. The teachers told the story while the children acted it out as tin soldiers, ballerinas and nutcrackers. After this introduction to the story, we then read a different version of it and explored the vocabulary used. To build the children’s comprehension skills, they then created quizzes about it for their friends to check their understanding of the tale. In the different versions of the story, there are different endings. The children created their own ending of the story in a drama session where they imagined and acted out a conversation between the ballerina and the nutcracker at the end of the story.
The children then used their ideas from the drama to create comic strips of the endings. Here are some examples below:
Using their comic strips, the children wrote an alternate ending to the story of The Steadfast Tin Soldier and made a book for their writing. They then made a book for their ending in the shape of the child’s room in the story. Here are some of our finished versions:
Throughout this week, we have been reading other stories by Hans Christian Anderson and comparing them. Thinking about those books and other stories we know, we created story webs to show the connecting themes between them.
The children have been learning debating skills and have taken part in class debates about the story of The Steadfast Tin Soldier. They were challenged to see the debate from both sides and had to think of reasons to agree or disagree with a statement even if they personally did or did not agree with it.
Next week:
We will start our Spring timetable next week.
We are really looking forward to getting started with our topic about inventions.
In English, we will be learning about instructions and working on ensuring we have included all the important, specific information and language for our reader. In Maths, we will be learning about multiplication and division with a focus on arrays.
We are really excited about being signed up to Times Tables Rock Stars. The children have got their log in details for this and a letter has been sent home with further information. We will have a focus on learning and practising the times tables in school and Times Tables Rock Stars will be a part of this. Please support your child at home to use the website and practise the multiplication and division facts.
In Guided Reading, we will be starting our new book: A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket. Here is a link to Chapter 1 here:
We will be thinking about and discussing the following questions:
- Ch 1 (prediction): What do you predict is going to happen in the book from the information you have read so far? Use the text to support your view.
- Ch 1 (prediction): What do you predict Mr Poe has come to say to the children? Use the text to support your answer.
- Ch 1 (inference): How do you think the Baudelaire children are feeling at this moment? Use the text to support your view.
Each class will have two PE sessions from next week and for the rest of the term. All the Year 4 classes will be having a PE session on Tuesdays this term with visiting cricket coaches.
Here is the new timetable for PE:
Tuesday – Nile, Amazon and Thames (Cricket)
Thursday – Nile, Amazon
Friday – Thames
Please make sure your children have their PE kit in school.
Have a great weekend!