Year 3

Have you ever wondered who invented drawing? The text ‘The First Drawing’ is our latest stimulus for writing a diary entry.  Imagine meeting a woolly mammoth for the first time and nobody believing you so you have to draw out the thoughts in your head. The children have been practising using conjunctions such as while, before and so and have discovered that sometimes you can put conjunctions at the start of the sentence to join ideas rather than just in the middle.

We went back to the Stone Age again in history to talk about the benefits of farming and the impact it had on how people lived.  We agreed that hunting and gathering, whilst fun and exciting, could also be very tiring and unreliable.  Living in communities and sturdier structures that could be protected was also useful.

In maths, there has been lots of exploring and practising of times tables building up to multiples of 8.  There are a few strategies that we can use to help us with those trickier facts such as doubling the 2 times tables, to make 4 times a number, and then doubling again to calculate 8 times.

Continuing our light topic in science, the children were asked to create shadow puppets to see how blocking light from a light source creates dark shapes on surfaces.

As the term draws to a close, we have asked the children to reflect on the impact their words can have on others and how we can elevate our friends with compliments.  We would like to compliment all the children of Year 3 on being such a fantastic cohort to teach.  We appreciate all the hard work, contributions and enthusiasm of everyone and wish you all a lovely and relaxing winter break.  We look forward to what Year 3 will bring in 2025!

   

   

                             

 

This week: 09.12.24

Spelling rule: Common exception words eg: favourite

Key words: 

Maths: equal groups, repeated addition, array, commutative, multiples, multiply, divide

English: time connectives, conjunctions, emotion, expanded noun phrase

Science: reflect, shadow, shade

History: farm, domesticated, nomadic, neolithic

Maths facts: counting in 8s

 

Next week: 16.12.24

Spelling rule: Words with short ‘i’ sound spelt ‘y’ eg: mystery, pyramid

Key words: 

Maths: equal groups, repeated addition, array, commutative, multiples, multiply, divide

English: time connectives, conjunctions, emotion, expanded noun phrase

Science: reflect, shadow, shade

History: primary source, infer, evidence, archeologist

Maths facts: counting in 8s

 

Key dates: 

Friday 13th December - Christmas Fair - 5 - 8pm

Tuesday 17th December - Sapphire Carol Concert

Tuesday 17th December - Sewing afternoon (please let teachers know if you can help)

Wednesday 18th December - Ruby & Emerald Carol Concert

Thursday 19th December - Christmas jumper day, Christmas lunch and movie

Monday 6th January 2025 - Term starts

 

Year 4

The build up to the Christmas holidays has been really busy and all the adults in Year 4 have been overly impressed with the children’s hard work and dedication right up to the very end of term. 

Our D.T topic was hugely popular among all the children in Year 4. After planning their pasta salads and practising using knives, peelers and graters, the children assembled their final pasta salad. We saw a variety of different seasonal pastas created, that all had their own unique spin. Thank you to all the parent volunteers who helped - we could not have done it without you!

Multiplying and dividing by 10 and 100 has been our maths topic the past week. The children have been using their knowledge of place value to help solve a variety of fluency and reasoning questions. We have also seen the children use counters to show how many place values the number will increase or decrease by.

Our new book, ‘Once Upon a Raindrop - The Story of Water’, has been a huge hit with the children. The story is based on the water cycle, which the children learnt earlier this year in science. We have seen the children act out the water cycle, draw pictures showing the water cycle and heard them having some great discussion about the scientific words in the book. In the final week, the children will be writing a narrative about their water droplet character and their journey through the water cycle. 

Lastly, we would like to wish all the families a very happy holiday and look forward to seeing the kids in the final week and in the New Year.

A final, festive message: as a treat for their amazing hard work in year 4, the children will watch a film: Horrible Histories the Movie - Rotten Romans. This links brilliantly to our history topic this term (Roman Britain), and is even set somewhere that will be familiar to the children (can they guess?!). Horrible Histories is available on CBBC. The film is a PG so if you would like to opt out of your child watching, please let us know here. Thank you!

     

                   

 

w/b 9.12.24

Spelling rule: Statutory spelling words

Key words: multiply, divide, placeholder, water vapour, conjunctions, adverbials of time, hibernate, assemble 

Maths facts: 9 times tables

 

w/b 16.12.24

Spelling rule: Autumn 2 spelling recap

Key words: array, patterns, multiplication, division, narrative, carol, clothing, worship.

Maths facts: 6 and 9 times tables

 

Key Messages: 

• Carol concert helpers - if you would like to help walk the children to the Church on Tuesday 17th please email the Year 4 inbox

• Children have been set times tables on TTRS - please can the children complete the multiplications they have been set

• Spelling revision practice: we will test the children every Monday

• Please can all reading records have 5 entries per week

 

Key Dates:

• Tuesday 17th December - Year 4 Carol Concert

• Thursday 19th December - Christmas jumper day and Christmas lunch

• First day of term - 6th January