8th March 2019

WOW have we been busy since we came back from half term?!

In English, we have been taking part in the Hampshire Information Book Award. We have been looking at a variety of different non-fiction books and creating short burst pieces of writing based on these - we look forward to showing you some of these in our class assembly on the 22nd March!

In Maths, we've been continuing with our fraction work and challenging ourselves to respresent fractions and solve problems in different ways. Our confidence has increased massively with handling and working with fractions and we've increased our fluency and reasoning skills through this!

In Guided Reading, we've started to read and unpick Beowulf. We've found the vocabulary really tricky but have improved our dictionary skills and created a class word bank of some exciting new vocabulary.

In Science, we've started to think about the environment at school and how fortunate we are to have so many opportunities for different habitats! We "received a letter" informing us that some of the school grounds were going to "be used for a new housing estate" and we discussed whether this would be a positive or a negative thing to happen.

We LOVED World Book Day this week! Miss Jeffries and Mrs Thambipillai were late to school with a series of unfortunate events happening to them in the morning and turned up with the most bizarre collection of items. Before they would tell us what happened to them, we had to create our own story to try and figure out what happened to them and how they managed to collect these bizarre items.  We also read '13 Storey Treehouse' and designed our own magical room for Year 4's '48 Storey Treehouse' - keep a look out for our treehouse display coming soon in school!

We've had such a wonderful couple of weeks and can't wait to keep you updated on the rest of our term!

31.1.19

Wow - we have had such a busy couple of weeks since coming back to school! We had an amazing class assembly (a big thank you to everyone that came along!) and really enjoyed showcasing everything we did in the Autumn term to the adults that came!

In maths, we have been getting to grips with written methods of multiplication and division. We enjoyed using diennes and multi-link to help us solve some trickier problems, and even got to pretend to be a teacher and teach each other how to do it!

In English, we have been studying Kate Wakeling's poem anthology - Moon Juice. We have enjoyed rehearsing and performing her poems but also learning about all the different poetic techniques she uses which has helped us write our own poems.

In Science, we have been looking at the digestive system as well as teeth. We enjoyed taking part in a practical experiment to see what exactly happens to our food once we swallow it, even if some bits were a bit messy and disgusting (check out our slideshow of pictures!) We were also really lucky to have Anna from ORCA come in and give us a workshop all about whales (check out our slideshow of pictures). We learnt loads of interesting information! Did you know that the sperm whale is the loudest, noisiest and biggest animal in the world? They also regularly get into fights with giant squids!

In Geography, we have been learning about Fairtrade; what that means and who it benefits. To enhance our learning, we went on a trip to Jude's Ice Cream Factory where we learnt about how ice cream is made. We will be using our Fairtrade learning to design our own ice cream and pitching the idea 'Dragon's Den' style to Jude when she comes to visit us at school next week!

29th November 2018

In English this week we have been researching Spartacus, the Roman gladiator, in preparation for writing his biography this week. We have learnt lots of interesting information, especially realising that gladiators were slaves and had to fight humans and wild animals!

In Maths this week, we have been learning how to multiply and divide by 6. You may have noticed that this is the main focus for us on TimesTables Rockstars! We've enjoyed applying the skills we've improved on through TTRS.

We also had an amazing time at Fishbourne Roman Palace on Wednesday. We were able to go to an amazing workshop where we learned all about King Togidubnus who is believed to have lived at Fishbourne Palace. We also enjoyed dressing up as slaves and having a go at typical Roman activities, like writing on a wax tablet, spinning wool and making mosaics with real stones found at Fishbourne by archaeologists. We also got to have a look at real mosaics archaeologists found at the site. Mrs Wilkinson was so amazed by them, she dropped her paper booklet on to one and it had to be retrieved by museum staff! We loved learning lots of new information about the Roman lifestyle, especially the particularly disgusting aspects... Did you know that Romans brushed their teeth with a mixture of honey and crushed up oyster shell? Or that women used crushed up dead flies as eyeliner and mascara? Don't forget to check out the slideshow of pictures from our visit!

We have had a great time battling (and winning) against Herons on Times Tables Rock Stars, although perhaps Mrs Thambipillai and Miss Jeffries were the most competitive!

16th November 2018

We've had another great week in Chaffinch class!

In Maths we've been metres to kilometres. We are really confident with this so we moved on to solving problems involving km and m. We've also really enjoyed learning all about roman numerals!

In English we have been reading the story 'Escape from Pompeii' and writing diary entries from the main character's perspective. We've had to write in chronological order and include lots of description with a variety of sentence starters.

In History we have been learning all about Boudicca and how the Romans treated British tribes when they invaded in 43AD. We are really interested about the lifestyle British tribes had and how their lives differ to our own. We have LOVED learning about Boudicca, especially deciding if we would have joined her army or not when she decided to revolt against the Romans. We have enjoyed articulately explaining our reasons and sharing our opinions and beliefs about whether what Boudicca did was right and why she is still so important, almost 2000 years later.

In Science we have been getting messy with experiments to decide if objects were solids, liquids or gases. Have a look at our slideshow to see what we got up to!

8th November 2018

We've had a great week this week in Chaffinches. 

In English we have started writing our innovated tale of The Ugly Duckling and although we've found it tricky sometimes to include direct speech correctly, we've persevered! We've really enjoyed using thesaurus to think of synonyms for words we use a lot to make our stories more interesting for the reader.

In Maths we've moved on to looking at perimeter. We were really excited to design our own house with whatever rooms we wanted in it and find the perimeters for each room. Some of our houses included cinemas, xbox rooms and even swimming pools!

In Guided Reading we're continuing to read Tilly and the Time Machine and we found Chapter 11 riveting as she found herself in Victorian London. We had a big class discussion about chimney sweeps and other similarities and differences between now and then.

We have had great fun in Art drawing and painting poppies using water colour paints. We really enjoyed exploring different brush strokes as well as how to use colour mixing to create different shades of red. We discussed the significance of the poppy and how it relates to the centenary anniversary of WW1.

In PE this half term we are looking at Gymnastics, specifically balances. We have really enjoyed exploring different counter balances and had to persevere to make sure we were able to perfect them safely. We've included some photos to show you our hard work.

1st November

We have had an amazing first week back at school!

In maths we have continued to master using column method for both addition and subtraction of 4 digit numbers with some exchanges. Although we sometimes found this quite difficult, we've persevered and are feeling really positive about it!

In English we have started to innovate the tale of Hans Christian Anderson's The Ugly Duckling. We've been really creative with our own characters and have enjoyed planning our stories. Some examples are: The Ugly Camel, The Ugly Goat, The Ugly Snow Leopard and even the Ugly Woodlouse. We can't wait to share these with you once we've written them!

In Art we've started looking at mosaics and created our first design for the mosaic we're going to make later in the term.

In Science our new topic is States of Matters and Mr Webber from Henry Beaufort Secondary School came in to do an experiment with us! He brought in some really exciting equipment and demonstrated the process of evaporation before we did our own experiments with an ice cube! We've put some photos up of Mr Webber's visit for you to have a look through.

5th October 2018

This week Year 4 had our last swimming lesson and lots of us earned our KS2 swimming certificate!

In Maths we have started exploring negative numbers and we're now really confident with counting back from 0. We have also spent some time on Timestables Rockstars so that we are more confident with using this at home. 

In English we're really enjoying acting as journalists and writing newspaper articles about the train robbery in Ruckus. 

This term in Art we've been studying a variety of European artists. This week we were studying Coco Chanel and we learnt that her first store was a hat shop so we had a go at making our own hats out of paper and then showed them off in our own fashion show!

27th September 2018

Chaffinches have had a really exciting start to Year 4!

In English we have been focusing on the film 'Ruckus'. Through this, we have written character profiles for the main characters and used this to create Wanted posters for the villainous brothers. We have also started to create a newspaper article to report the facts of the robbery and had a brilliant time interviewing a witness of the crime. 

During our science lessons we have been learning about sound. Through a practical experiment, we have learnt that sound travels through vibrations and can travel through solid objects, liquids and gases. 

We have been really enjoying our swimming lessons and our confidence is growing each week!