Welcome back for the home stretch of the academic year. We have only six short weeks to finish everything up, and then our children will be moving on to Year 5!


First, let me apologise for the lack of newsletter over the week-long holiday. I had a blog written and there was a problem sending it right after I finished, and then it was forgotten in the hustle and bustle of the week and I never tried to upload it again. By now it's completely irrelevant, of course.


Hopefully everyone went home with positive things to say about the field trip on Wednesday. We had a fortuitous reprieve in the otherwise rainy weather for the week. It was cool, sunny and moisture-free. And what else can one hope for on such a day?


We toured the museum from 10 to 11, and the children all had facts to find in each section. Especially interesting was the part where they could build their own Roman arch and the area with a tile that had a little dog print impressed into the clay.


We then spent another hour with a knowledgeable lady who gave us real Roman artefacts to look at and touch, and we spent the time going from station to station and trying to guess which artefacts matched up with modern household implements. Four of our children got to dress up in Roman and Celtic costumes as well.


The children then had about an hour to eat, another hour to play, use the toilet, and gather together, and then we went on a special tour of the Roman theatre and archaeological finds surrounding it. We were split into two groups for that and every child was given a role to play in the historical drama. Then it was time to head home. I think we tired a few of the children out. It was great to see actual Roman objects up close and see and hear about the history of our own backyard by knowledgeable staff.


I would like to send a special thanks out to my parent volunteers for helping to keep everyone safe and happy. Also, look for a special report from Jamal and Matty in the Newsletter as well as a blog on the school website.


We've just started our new Science topic on habitats, and will be exploring plant and animal homes, food sources and predators. We'll be looking at sacred stories of Hinduism in RE. In English, we've been practising taking notes from reliable sources and writing reports. We wrote rough drafts this week and will write the final drafts on Thursday. Then we'll switch to a unit on free verse poetry. And of course we are continuing to do the Romans in history. In Maths we'll be moving into a block of statistics and interpreting different types of charts.


Here are next week's spelling words. We are looking at the prefix inter- and the suffix -ation.

interact

interdependence

interfaith

international

interlink

integration

communication

debarkation

fixation

sensation

There will be homework as usual so don't let your child convince you that Mr Thompson didn't hand any out.

Have a good weekend!