This week we welcomed back our classes with smiles and optimism – it’s been wonderful to get back into our routines again!
We are focusing on the PACE approach to help the transition back into school: physical health, academic progress, community making and emotional wellbeing.
We started off the week with a review of our golden agreements, school values and discussed how we can show these in the classroom and around school:
Golden agreements:
- Be kind, helpful and gentle: think of others.
- Be respectful: listen and act respectfully, use good manners.
- Be honest and responsible: think before you act, tell the truth.
- Be safe: care for people and property.
- Be courageous. Learn Brilliantly! Be surprised by what you can achieve!
School Values:
- Respect
- Trust
- Courage
- Empathy
- Gratitude
The children then found on their tables personal letters for them from their teachers, which inspired us to write out own letters to our future selves all about our home learning experience and what our hopes for year 4 are. These letters have gone into our class time capsules – to be opened and reflected on in July.
In English, we were inspired by this picture of a library with books that come to life…
We built our word bank of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs and practiced the grammar we’d learned over home learning (speech, pronouns, apostrophes for possession) by writing sentences linked with this image. Finally, we created story maps and wrote our very own narratives based on the imaginary events in this library.
In maths, we revisited our problem solving skills and played a range of games to utilize our skills of the four operations and we had several PSHE lessons where we spoke about the range of emotions and feelings we have and how to develop our resilience. We finished off our week by exploring and discussing our reading habits and considering these two questions:
- What does reading for pleasure mean to you?
- What does it mean to be a reader?
We created our own reading rivers along with year 4, and all are being displayed along our learning street for all to see and celebrate!
Reading for pleasure
In the next few weeks, we are encouraging children to read for pleasure at home.
Miss Natale’s book recommendations Natural World
The British Library has a great resource where you can find themed book recommendations and activities. We hope you enjoy exploring this: https://www.bl.uk/childrens-books/themes
Next week:
- Writing Journal: The stimulus images for the week will be seasons. Our writing focus will be descriptive language (adjectives and adverbs).
- English: Poetry and story writing inspired by Rain Before Rainbows by Smriti Halls and David Litchfield.
- Maths: symmetry and types of angles.
- Guided Reading: we are going to be reading a BEANO comic.
- PSHE – Mental Health and Wellbeing: Continuing to explore our emotions and feelings. Our scheme of work is inspired by lessons produced by Beano & Young Minds.
- Next week is Neurodiversity Celebration Week and we will be doing a session around this.
Key information for Year 4:
- Amazon: PE on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
- Nile: PE on Mondays and Wednesdays.
- Thames: PE on Wednesdays and Fridays.
- Children must bring in a PE kit for PE lessons. One session is outside so it is important they have appropriate clothing.
- Children in KS2 may bring in a healthy snack that contains no nuts.