Fitzwilliam Museum November 2018

We had a fabulous time at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. As well as visiting and finding out about all things ancient Egyptian, we also had a chance to investigate one of the art galleries. We investigated some Dutch art through sharing 'The Story of Jan'.

During the ancient Egyptian sessions, the museum staff complimented us on our excellent behaviour and broad knowledge of the subject.

Here are a few photos of our day.

World Book Day Homework Year 4

Task 1
1) Listen to two of the stories on the World Book Day website.
2) Write down which two texts you listened to.
3) Which of these texts would you want to read more of and why?

http://www.worldbookday.com/world-of-stories/

Task 2
Using the sheet provided (or by creating your own), draw a comic strip to re-tell a classic tale in a comic format. You can choose any tale of your choice. (Shakespeare, fables, myths, bible stories etc.) Make them exciting by using interesting, colourful pictures and speech bubbles.

Spellings:

Please learn the spellings using the ‘Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check’ sheet.

The spelling pattern this week is:  ‘sion’ suffix pattern.

(Word list has been sent home in the homework book)

Please write five sentences. Each one must contain a different word from the spelling list. Try and make them interesting and include different sentence types.

Maths Week

In Year 4, the children used their Maths lessons to solve a week-long problem about designing a funfair. They used their knowledge of area to plot out a funfair and then had to work out how much it would cost by calculating money. After that, they had to work out how much it would cost per day at their funfair and therefore how much they would need to charge their customers to get in!

W/C 15/1/18

The first couple of weeks of the spring term seem to have flown by and we have already got a lot of learning under our belts.


In our English work we have been using classic stories and poems (such as Alice in Wonderland and The Owl and the Pussycat) as inspiration to help us to write playscripts.

 In science we have started to investigate the properties of solids and liquids.

 

 

 

Just a reminder that Mr Sinclair has replaced Mr Clark and will now be taking our P.E. lessons. These sessions will take place every Friday instead of the previously timetabled Thursdays!

 

Ancient Egyptians at the Fitzwilliam Museum

We had a successful trip to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge this week. It helped round the term off nicely and the class really did the school proud with the way they behaved and approached their learning.


We saw some amazing artefacts and plenty of mummified remains to get excited about. The class can tell you the different animals that were preserved in bandages and on display.


Here a few photos to give you a flavour of the time we spent in the Ancient Egyptian galleries.

Science Week

We have had a week full of science investigations and exploration. The week kicked off with an exciting assembly led by Mrs. Hardie who performed a range of 'wow!' experiments at the front of the hall. Year 4 have carried out some tree classification, an egg experiment and then a materials investigation to find which one made the best tea bag. We are finishing the week by making rockets.


Thank you to all the children who had a go at the science activities at home.

W/C October 2nd 2017

Our learning in Year 4 continues apace this term. We have had a particularly interesting week, with French day on Monday (where the children mixed with different year groups to carry out a range of fun French activities) and preparation for the Church Flower Festival. We used our knowledge of Greek myths to tell a journey/ quest story which we illustrated using Aboriginal dot paintings which consisted of symbols chosen to represent the different parts of the tale.

This will be my last blog post for Year 4 and Sandridge School. As you all know by now, I will be moving on to another school in September. I have really enjoyed this school and the people in it, and it is going to be difficult for me to say goodbye. I hope to see people around, however, and be able to say hi.


Next week your children will be bringing lots of things home with them. They will be sending you their books from Year 3 that we have been keeping safe in the Year 4 cupboard. They will also be cleaning out their trays and lockers and bringing home their PE kits. I certainly hope there are no swimming kits left in here, but if so we will find them and send them home (assuming they aren't able to get up and run off under their own power).


They will also need to bring in all of the school property that they have at home, namely their library books. These MUST be in by Monday. We will be taking inventory on Monday and assessing replacement costs for lost books.


We've been doing a lot of end of year assessments in class this week. The children have been taking practise SATs tests for the last few weeks and we have been going over the responses together. It has been useful for them to get used to taking the types of tests that governments and higher institutions give out regularly, and to give them a taste of life in Year 6.


We have also done assessing in the major areas of maths that we've covered this year. We did an assessment test in place value, fractions and multiplication/division. Next week we will finish with geometry, statistics and addition/subtraction. These assessments will go to Miss Pratchett to help her plan for next year.


We are finishing up our topic on the Romans, our Science on habitats and food chains, and our RE on Hindu stories and moral lessons. We have an end-of-year party planned for our half-day on Friday, so if anyone has any U rated DVD films to loan for the day, it would be much obliged.


I hope to see you all during the next week to say goodbye and to celebrate the successful end of another school year.


Best wishes to all,


Mr Thompson

Of course, the big and most tragic news this week is that Years 3 and 4 have lost their swimming lesson privileges. Despite the work that has been done to encourage good and productive behaviour, there are still too many children in both years who seem to think of outings as an excuse to play around and be disruptive and rude. Most of them could not even line up in a straight line. There were a very small number of well-behaved, attentive children, but too few to warrant another trip on a coach to a public facility. There was only one lesson remaining anyway, but it was a fun lesson that would have involved a lot of play and floats, so it is a shame that those years have not been able to prove themselves.


On a more positive note regarding behaviour, I think that many of the children are beginning to mature and improve. In class, many of them are learning to ignore distractions and take greater pride in their work. I hope this positive step continues next year with their new teacher.


But there are still three weeks left as Class 4, and we still have plenty of work to do.


This week the children really got into the idea of telling and solving riddles. We worked this week on creating effective riddles around animals, figuring out which aspects of a given animal were easier to guess and which were harder. We then worked on putting the harder clues first and the easier ones at the end. And then we figured out how to talk about body parts without actually naming them. So "eyes" might be described as "orbs" or "emerald pools." The children were encouraged to use similes (the lion is like a big brown toilet brush) and metaphors (the cheetah is a streak of fire across the savannah). Next week we will finish up the unit on riddles and hopefully every child will have a few riddles of their own to show off to friends and family.


We've done problem solving in class all week, and flexing our mental muscles that work systematically. We've had a few different maths challenges with more than one right answer, and the challenge has been to fight most or all of them. Most of the children have risen to the challenge and figured out how to work it out.


With all of the music assemblies and Sports Day (where I got to see and talk to many of you), we didn't manage to spend enough time on science, history or RE this week, so we will make up for that next week.


As mentioned in the last blog, we have finished with new spelling words and we will now be testing the children on their long-term memory and usage of the words they have already had. As this is a test of spelling retention, it is not something that needs to be studied. The children will have tests on those words over the next few weeks, but they are nothing to worry about as they are being given so that we can see how much emphasis will need to be spent on those words in the coming school year.


Finally, I have spent the last few weekends writing up the end-of-year reports on each child. They are currently being reviewed and commented upon by the Head Teacher, and will be ready to go out to you soon.


Have a good weekend.

I was impressed by the children in many ways this week. First of all, they did brilliantly well making bar charts and coming up with good questions for each other based on them. Today they did a wonderful problem solving lesson that will prepare them for algebra. Second of all, they have really taken to our new English Topic on riddles. We read the famous scene from The Hobbit where Bilbo and Gollum have a riddle contest, and the children did very well guessing the answers to the riddles before the characters did. It also gave me a chance to practise my Gollum impression. Since Monday I've had several children come up to me with riddles they've looked up or riddles they've made up. Some of them are very clever.


We spent some time discussing Boudicca's rebellion and her sad fate in History this week, and looking at how she has been portrayed in art over the centuries. The children then had a go at what she looks like themselves. Many of them even drew her on a noble steed.


We tried to beat the heat as we learned a few times this week, going outside to search for micro-habitats on the school grounds. Today we spent a much cooler afternoon catching mini-beasts to draw pictures of.


We have been listening to Hindu stories in RE, and learning about all of the gods of Hinduism. We are exploring the moral tales of different religions, and the many ways that they are similar in their lessons or messages.


As I can't remember whether or not I have already mentioned this, I will share it now (again?). We have one week of regular spellings left, which will be next week. After that, we will be doing review tests on the words they've learned throughout the school year to see how well they have retained their information. As far as I'm aware, the other homework will continue until the end of term, but I will confirm that when I can.


So, this week's words serve the function of having the children practise many often-missed words as well as their apostrophes. Here is the list:


can’t (cannot)
shouldn’t (should not)
they’d (they would)
she’s (she is)
you’ve (you have)
girl’s (belonging to a girl)
children’s (belonging to children)
Thomas’s (belonging to Thomas)
friends’(belonging to more than one friend)
women’s (belonging to more than one woman)
Each word demonstrates a different use of the apostrophe, so the most effective way to practise is by putting them into sentences. We will be doing that in class, of course, but if you want to practise early, that would be a helpful way to do help them learn.


Have a good weekend.

This week we finished up our English topic on non-chronological reports. I was generally happy with the hard work they did. The spent a great deal of time looking up information on different animals and reporting on their diet, description, habitats and other interesting information. In addition to honing their note-taking skills, they did a lot of self-editing, filling in gaps in their knowledge, and then wrote a final draft in extended writing yesterday. I am looking forward to reading their reports in greater detail over the weekend.


We've started our topic on Habitats and Food Chains in science, and spent some time in the sun this week looking for mini-beasts on the school grounds. Each child was able to find several micro-environments (cracks in the walls, spaces between flag stones, branches of trees, etc.) and even found some of the animals living there. The topic will require more work out in the English sunshine so let's hope the weather continues to cooperate.


In History, we've been investigating Boudicca's Rebellion, a moment in history made all the more interesting because Boudicca sacked the Roman city of Verulamium (St Albans) and was ultimately defeated just north of here on Watling Street. The children have been weighing the good and bad aspects of Roman rule and today they wrote a rallying cry to the Iceni warriors before going into battle with the legionaries.


In RE we are looking now at Hinduism and some of the stories and teachings from some of their holy texts. Wednesday we looked at Ganesha, the Elephant-Headed god of luck and protection, and explored a bit what it meant to be lucky.


We are about to go into a lot of data handling in maths, which will involve lots of charts and graphs. This is an interesting part of the maths curriculum because some children who are very quick and accurate at arithmetic can become confused by graphs and charts, and some children who are less adept with arithmetic suddenly find they can read charts confidently.


Next week will be a normal week, with no school events or other interferences to the schedule, other than a brief music assembly on Thursday morning. There will be homework and spelling words as usual. I am happy to see the list of children forgetting or neglecting their homework is decreasing over time. Most children are taking it seriously and doing well at it.


Here are next week's spelling words:

subsist

subside


subordinate

superimpose

supervise

autograph

automobile

autobiography

patiently

knowingly

We are looking at the prefixes sub- and auto- and the suffix -ly.


Have a great weekend.

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!

Before I get into anything else, the Year 4 field trip has managed to sneak up on me somehow. I still need five parent helpers who would be available from about 9 am to around 3:30pm on Wednesday, 7th of June. Please check your diaries and if you are able to go, please let me know ASAP. Thank you.


With one more week left in this half-term, we are finishing up several topics. We are nearing the conclusion of our science topic on electricity, and will move after the half term onto animals and habitats. In RE we are about to finish up Sacred Books and Texts and will move on to Sacred stories and ideas.


We're having a really good time writing non-chronological reports about the school. Everyone knows something about it, so there isn't much to look up. We've also had some guest speakers in to explain some of the specialties of the school, including Mrs Teakle, Mr Sherwood and Mrs Brewis to explain various clubs and safety procedures.


The children are doing so well that I am going to arrange to have them type their reports up on a computer and add some digital images that a few of them will take. I think they will make great pieces of work for them to show off and to illustrate to them how far they've come as writers.


On to homework: this class has, for whatever reason, always got more children on the list for Homework Club--the Thursday-at-lunch-time club supervised by the head teacher, than any other class. In many cases this is because the children have just not bothered to do the work at home. Others have done the work but left it at home. It may seem harsh that we treat those children as if they haven't done the work at all, but we are trying to prepare them for secondary school and the hard deadlines of day-to-day life. If you would like to gently remind the children to check their bags on Thursday mornings for an orange book, I'm sure it would help shorten that weekly list.


Here are the spelling words for the coming week:


experiment
promise
although
continue
purpose
antimatter
antifreeze
antibiotic
antibody

 anti-climax

As you can see, we are finishing up our list of frequently-missed words and moving back into prefixes and suffixes, this week's being 'anti-', which is Greek for 'against' or 'opposed to.'

Have a good weekend.

This week we finished our unit on traditional tales in English, which culminated in writing a vivid description of a Roman god. The children came up with some wonderful similes, including "Mars was as muscular as three Renaldos and a Messi." As a non-football fan, I'll have to take that one on faith as being true.


We have two weeks left in our science topic on electricity and circuits. We will begin to explore what a circuit is and how and why electricity works the way it does. We'll be introducing everyone to electrons and other parts of the atom.


We've begun looking at why Rome decided to invade Britain, and how many times it took to finally succeed. In the next week we'll look at the invasion under Emperor Claudius and what that meant for British people.


We've been looking at sacred books in RE, and we've finished the bible and have moved on to the Guru Granth Sahib of the Sikh faith. We'll look at Hindu books just before the half term.


Here are the spelling words for next week:


probably


suppose


appear


business


complete


experience


possess


surprise


arrive


consider


Have a good weekend!

Week three of the summer term. They seem to be going so fast! We're now halfway through our science topic on electricity. The children have just finished looking up safety rules for using electricity and making up colourful posters for handling electrical items, some of which have been displayed on the Science wall. Coming up next week we'll be working with batteries, light bulbs and various wires to complete a circuit and explore more of how electricity works and what it even is.


In history we've started looking at the conflict between the Celts and the Romans, and at why the Romans were able to take over so much of the known world at the time. Part of that involved having the children make their own Celtic shield. Next we'll be looking at Roman soldiers and what made it so difficult for them to be defeated.


In RE we've looked at the sacred text of the Christians and will soon be looking at the Guru Granth Sahib of the Sikhs. In a couple of weeks we'll look at Hindu sacred texts as well.


We will be finishing up our topic on traditional tales in English next week. We spent time looking at several myths, legends and just-so stories and have now had a try at rewriting the Romulus and Remus story and at writing our own just-so story. Next week we'll finish up by looking at some of the famous heroes of mythology and creating a story around the hero.


Next week is SATs week, of course, which will affect the Year 4 class in the following ways: The Hall will be out of commission for much of the week, and that will limit access to things like the toilet. I will be warning everyone Monday morning about the limited access to the facilities, but you might want to remind your children at home that they will need to be extra vigilant about using the toilet during their breaks, even if it isn't urgent yet.


On to homework: Our second week seems to have gone well, even with the shift in days. It is a shame to see so many of the class in the Homework Club at lunchtime, and I hope that the new routine at home will set in and we will have far fewer unfinished pages.


Here are next week's spelling words:

enough

fruit

island

ordinary

position

strange

answer

circle 

exercise


Have a great weekend.

Our first full week back (and now we have another short one coming up--not that I'm complaining) and we've had our first try at the new homework scheme. As a recap of last week, there will now be a maths and English activity in the homework every Monday along with the weekly spelling words. The children will have three nights to work on those activities. I will also give them time during the average day to practise their spellings. On Thursday morning, first thing, I will collect all homework books and if someone does not have one or has not completed everything, I will record that data and they will attend the "Homework Club" in Year 3 with the head teacher during lunch. Please understand that a large aspect of the point of homework is to get the children used to hard deadlines and being responsible for their work, so if they have done the work at home but forgotten to bring it in, we will still have them attend Homework Club. Hopefully it will get them to start remembering their work. We are just over two years away from Secondary School, after all.


I have also learned a bit from the first go at homework and will try to make sure that the instructions for each part of it are clear in terms of expectations and accurate. One of the maths activities turned out to have a mistake in it that I didn't notice until I made up the answer sheets. So if I can have the answer sheets made up before I hand out the homework, I can clarify/correct any misconceptions early. At least, that's the theory. We'll see what happens in practise.


As next week is short, homework will go out on Tuesday and we'll have it due on Friday, so Homework Club will be Friday lunchtime. That way there will still be the same three nights to work on everything.


Since we're on the subject, here are next week's spelling words, still from the list of top misspelled words:

minute

opposite

pressure

remember

straight

through

address

build

certain

disappear

I think that's about it for major news. I laid out the structure of the half-term last week, so please see that if there are any questions. Also please remember to have PE kits and swimsuits on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Several children have been forgetting them quite regularly and this is not acceptable. They are missing out on an important aspect of their education, and potentially getting their uniforms soiled.

Thank you for your understanding through the first week of the homework. Hopefully we have most of the kinks ironed out now, but there's always something new to gum up the works, isn't there?

Have a happy and healthy holiday weekend!

Welcome back, everyone, from what I hope was a fun and relaxing break. We're pushing through to the end, which is only 13 weeks away now!


We are starting a new English topic around traditional tales and mythology, which will tie nicely into the geography topic of Spring term, which was India, as well as our history topic this term, which will be the Roman Invasion of Britain. Along the way we will hear traditional stories from Africa, North America, and Asia, and study some important myths along the way.


After that we'll read and write some reports, which will match up partially with our science topic of Animal Habitats and Food Chains in the second half of the term. We will be writing up a report on an animal in its native habitat at the end of the unit.


In science we will be studying electricity and circuits. We will spend the entire first half term on this topic, which will tie in with magnetism, electrical power production and culminate in constructing complex circuits with switches.


Our topic in History, as mentioned above, in the Romans, and for that I have already booked our Summer field trip. We will be spending the day at Verulam Park. In the morning we will have a self-guided tour of the Verulamium Museum and then an artefact-handling lesson, followed by lunch. In the afternoon we will be taking tours of the Roman city, theatre and hypocaust in around the park. The trip should take all day and I will need some parent volunteers. The day will be Wednesday 7th of June, which is some way off so there is no urgency to my request. But if you could have a look at your diary and see if you might be free to help manage a small group of 6 or 7 children during the day, I would appreciate it.


Our art and design technology will have Indian and Roman themes, for the most part, and will be scattered amongst the other topics. We will be making some art reminiscent of traditional Indian designs as well as making Roman mosaics and possibly some sculpture.


As you already know, our PE time will be taken up with swimming every Tuesday afternoon and Invasion Games with Mr Clarke on Thursdays. Please remember to have swimsuits, towels and caps for anyone with long hair for Tuesday, and the normal PE kit every Thursday. Several children have been forgetting their kits habitually, which means they miss out on PE or end up running around in their uniforms, which is not good either way.


As was discussed in the weekly newsletter, there have been changes to the homework policy, so there will be no large project due this term. Instead, the children will receive a maths task and an English task each week, which will tie into the week's work in some way. These will be given out each Monday along with the Spellings and will be due in on that Thursday. To help streamline this process and keep parents informed, all tests will be taken in the Homework books from now on (the orange book). Obviously, if children forget to bring their Homework books in, they will have to do the test in a different book and parents might not see the results. Please try to help your child remember to bring the Homework book in every morning just as we work to make sure the books go home every night.


As we are just starting this, we may have kinks to work out and may change things around. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to email or call the office, or catch me after school.


As this will be week one of the new homework policy, we'll start with the coming week's words. We start up where we left off last term, working on the 200 most frequently used words. Here's this week's selection:


thought
women
actually
breathe
century
difficult
eighth
forwards
guide
history


Have a good weekend.

Before I go into anything else, I have to say what a wonderful couple of days the class has had with managing its behaviour on Thursday and Friday. With only a couple of exceptions, everyone focussed, followed directions and worked well together. As a result, we managed to have a lot of fun in our lessons and got a lot done. Really looking forward to the same thing next week, and that it wasn't just a "one-off."


Of course, the biggest news is that projects are due on Monday, as that is the day we will start giving the presentations and assessing them. I have already had a couple of them turned in and have had a few children breathlessly tell me about their A2 posters or their colourful brochures. I am really looking forward to seeing what creativity they have put into it.


We have started a new English topic on narrative poetry and the class really got into the idea of memorising a poem. We studied the "Willow Pattern" by Tony Mitton and rewrote our own version of it on Thursday. I've had a few children even shine by showing me their ability to self-edit and redraft their pieces.


In science we studied pitch and echolocation, which was a great way to explore how sound travels through air and water. The children generated a lot of their own questions and did their own investigating. Next week we will perform a test that they have designed themselves.


We're nearing the end of our gym course in PE, and still have so many children to sign off on abilities so that we can hand out skill award badges. I hope we can get to them all, but we were delayed early on by behaviour problems and we now only have two lessons to go.


We've also been studying Easter in RE and how important it is the people of a Christian faith. It has spawned a lot of questions that I hope to be able to address in the next couple of weeks.


As with last week, here is next week's promised spelling list so that you don't have to go hunting around in backpacks and crumpled piles of paper:

various

weight

accidentally

bicycle

caught


describe


earth


favourite


group


heart


Have a great weekend!