Year 3

There has been much excitement this week about a lazy pet that has been delivered to the classrooms. It turns out that this pet is the slowest mammal in the world and that it can sleep for up to 20 hours because it gets such little energy from its food.  The children are making plans to produce a ‘how to look after sloths’ guide in English inspired by the text Sparky. They are using their knowledge of question, command and statement sentences to make their fact files an interesting and informative read.  Further enthusiasm has been shown when exploring rivers in geography and the skeleton in science.  The children worked together to create river models to explore how rivers build up energy from the source, flow from a height and are joined by other streams and how they meander across the land.  Some children became living skeletons whilst their friends labeled where they expected to find the main bones. Did you know that the femur (thigh) is the strongest and heaviest of all the bones?  The children have discovered how much fun can be had with stop play animation in computing.  They used drawings of stick people to capture images and create animations on the ipads.  Finally, in maths we have been looking at numbers up to 1,000.  Estimating numbers on a number line has required using our subtraction (to find the range) and division (to find the value of each interval) skills.  This has set us up to be able to order and compare numbers up to 1,000 and count in 50s in order to complete the place value topic.  This core understanding will underpin the next stage of addition and subtraction of 3 digit numbers.

                  

   

 

w/b 23.09.24

Spelling rule: Words with the long /ai/ sound spelt with ey (eg. they/prey)

Key words: survival, shelter, air, oxygen, food, water, source, waterfall, primary, secondary, tertiary colours

Maths facts: 10 and 100 more nor less

 

w/b 30.09.24

Spelling rule: Words with /ur/ sound spelt with ear (eg. earth, early, learn, heard)

Key words: ascending, descending, greater/less than, nutritional, classify, immune system, body, skeleton, vertebrate, invertebrate, spine, tributary , main channel, meander, erosion, floodplain, deltas, mouth 

Maths facts: 10 and 100 more nor less

 

Key dates:

30th September/1st October 2024 - Individual photo day 

2nd October -     Geography Field Trip

 

Year 4

We’ve had a brilliant couple of weeks in year 4, and there’s even more excitement around the corner with our geography fieldwork day on Wednesday, and our first school trip of the year to London Wetland Centre on Wednesday 9th October!

Along with the excitement outside the classroom, the children have been highly motivated, and working hard in class too. English has seen the culmination of the children’s setting description based on the story ‘What We’ll Build’ by Oliver Jeffers, and we have been really impressed by sensory description in their writing. We are now moving on to a new book, ‘The Barnabas Project’. The children were immersed in the opening to the story this week, and were thrilled to make their own ‘imperfect’ pets. We are building up to writing a character description at the end of this writing unit, whilst focusing on recapping and learning new grammar rules along the way. 

In maths, we have continued to explore place value - with Thursday's lesson on roman numerals (up to 100!) taking top spot for most popular maths lesson of the week. In science, we continue to dive into our understanding of states of matter. We contemplated the difference between solids, liquids and gas in the classroom, and considered how states of matter change with freezing, melting, evaporation and condensation. In geography, the children explored the different biomes you can find across the world, and compared and contrasted the climate, plant life and animal life within these biomes.

                

             

             

 

w/b 23.09.24

Spelling rule: Adding the prefix -im e.g. imperfect

Key words: particle, solid, liquid, gas, melting, freezing, evaporation, condensation, biome, tundra, aquatic, grassland

Maths facts: Number bonds to 100

 

w/b 30.09.24

Spelling rule: adding the prefix -il and -ir

Key words: precipitation, temperature, water cycle, tropical rainforest, coniferous forest, precipitation, humidity

Maths facts: Number bonds to 100

 

Key Messages:

• A reminder to record a short comment in your child’s reading record each day! Thank you.

 

Key Dates:

Wednesday 2nd - Geography fieldwork day

Wednesday 9th - Year 4 school trip to London Wetland Centre