What an amazing world book week!

To kick of world book week,we had an intro assembly led by Mr Mansell.In this assembly he announced that a special visitor called Terry that is a famous poet who had  come in on Wednesday morning,he even wrote the opening song for the Olympic Games in 2012 and even has his own book called IT WASN’T ME MISS!

 In this assembly Terry was very FUNNY and kept telling us about his eggshell blonde hairstyle he made all  of us laugh and smile.He also gave us lots of great advice and tips for are class poem and our own. Terry even showed us his ideas book!

On Thursday we got to dress up as are favourite book character,and most of us came as Harry Potter characters.On that same day we had a book swap where you got to exchange the book you had brought in from home for another book. We even had a teacher swap,where we had a different teacher come into our class room and read us a story!We had a a book called THE WIZARD IN MY SHED read to us in 4CK! We had lots of fun on world book week!

By Lola and Paloma

16.2.23

What a long half term!

The children have worked so hard over the last seven weeks, and we are very proud of all of them! This week we have been working with the Dogs Trust for two days. We had an assembly with Years 1, 3 and 4, where the children were taught about what the Dogs Trust is, what they do and how they help dogs across the country. The day after, we had a workshop as a class to learn about how to behave around unfamiliar dogs. This helped improve children's confidence when we have Bessie come to visit us! In English, we published our diary entries from the perspective of Ernest Shackleton. The children's presentation and attention to detail was outstanding. They are now on display in the Year 4 corridor!

Finally, have a wonderful, restful half term and we cannot wait to see you on Monday 27th February!

10.2.23

Week 6 has been an extremely busy week in Year 4. It has been Children’s mental health week, and the children in Year 4 were lucky enough to have three different visitors during the week. We had a visit from Jeremy Rampling, who is a consultant psychiatrist; a talk from Kayla Daniels regarding nutrition and the best foods for the brain; our final workshop was with Kirsty Lister who discussed different strategies and techniques about how the children can create calm in their minds. Finally, as it was Safer Internet day on Tuesday, the children took part in an assembly that was hosted by our Year 6 digital leaders. The children learnt about what fake news is, what it looks like and how to avoid it.

3.2.23

Happy February!

Another incredibly busy week in Year 4, and the children have been working as hard as ever. Our class text for this half term is Shackleton's Journey. This is a book which follows the explorer, Ernest Shackleton as he attempts to cross the Antarctic. In English, we have started on our new unit, which will ultimately lead to the children writing a diary entry from the perspective of Ernest and different points in his journey. In maths, we have been continuing our work on fractions and decimals. This week, we had a focus on decimals, and the children did brilliantly to see the relationships between the two and then moved on to comparing and ordering decimals. We have been so impressed with the understanding and the attitude to learning of all of Year 4. Finally, we conducted a chocolatey experiment in science, as the children needed to help Mr Grana decide which type of chocolate would be the best option for taking to the beach on a summers day. After testing three different types, the children concluded that dark chocolate would be best due to its high cocoa level.

27.1.23

4 weeks down! The children in Year 4 have been channelling their inner David Attenborough by creating a documentary script that could be played over a video of penguins in the Antarctic. This was a culmination of two weeks work, which included the children learning about possessive apostrophes, using complex and compound sentences and using a thesaurus to find synonyms that made their work more interesting. The final pieces were outstanding and clearly showed that all children could confidently use the key skills that they had been taught.

It was time for another science experiment this week! This week's big question: How does the surface area of water affect its rate of evaporation. For this experiment, the children selected 4 different containers, with differing diameters. We then poured 100ml of water into each one and placed all 4 containers next to the window. Over the next week, we will be making daily observations about the amount of water in each container and plot our findings onto a graph. 

Finally, the children had a fantastic singing lesson with our incredibly talented singing teacher, Mrs Purser. She has begun teaching the children a variety of songs that are linked to our Big Freeze topic. Even after one lesson, the improvement was incredible. During Spring 2, we will be performing these songs to all of our adults - look out for more information soon! :-)

20.1.23

Another busy week in Year 4! This week, we welcomed adults into school for our Spring Come and Learn event. The theme of this was maths. This was a fantastic event and allowed the adults to see just how well the children are doing in all areas of maths this year. There was even a children vs adults times tables competition, which was a resounding win for the pupils of Coten End! In other areas of our curriculum, we have been having a wonderful time during computing lessons. Our focus for this half term is to create a presentation using Google Slides. In pairs, the children have chosen an Antarctic animal of their choice, researched it and have begun putting a slide show together to share with the rest of the class - watch this space! Finally, in Science, we presented the children with their big question for the week: Where does the ice in my drink go when it disappears? The children observed a block of ice in cups and made observations every 5 minutes. They were then able to apply their knowledge of states of matter, and how these can change, to deduce that the ice changes state from a solid to a liquid - through evaporation - but the process could be reversed by freezing the water afterwards.

13.1.23

       This week Year 4 have been working extremely hard to complete mid-year assessments. The children completed three maths papers and a reading test. We were all incredibly proud of how well they worked and the scores that they were able to achieve. As part of our latest learning journey in English, the children have been consolidating their knowledge of plural possession. We are building up to writing a news report about Antarctic penguins. The children learned the difference between singular and plural nouns, and were able to apply this understanding into their writing. This included rewriting a short passage, which they had to locate the errors and add apostrophes into the correct place in the sentence to show plural possession. 

        In RE and PSHE, we have been discussing dreams and ambitions. The children had to think about some short and long term goals, and how they would achieve them. In their books, they drew a ladder and included - at each rung - what they would need to do and how they would do it. It was great to hear so many wonderful dreams for the future, and we look forward to seeing the changemakers of tomorrow!

6.1.23

         Happy New Year! Although we were only back in school for three days, the children in Year 4 have been incredibly busy. In PE, the children are now doing gymnastics. Every week they will be completing a personal best challenge at the start of the lesson, which they will hopefully see an improvement in every lesson. This half term's personal best is to hold a balance for 60 seconds - our children found the balance extremely challenging. See if you can get your adults at home to have a go!

          In Maths, we started learning about fractions. We learned about what they are, how to calculate a fraction of an amount and understanding about equivalent fractions. The children used a mixture of concrete and pictorial resources to give them a more clear representation of fractions being an equal part of a whole.

          Excitingly, we started our new Theme topic (The Big Freeze). This particular topic has a geographical focus, and the children spent the first week learning about biomes. Biomes are a large region of Earth that have a certain climate and certain types of living things living there. The children learned about the major biomes: tundra, rainforest, deserts, savanna and taiga forest. They then placed the biomes correctly on a world map, and were even able to consider the animals that live there and how they are adapted to the particular conditions.

This week in year 4, we have enjoyed lots of festive activities!

We enjoyed eating our Christmas dinners all together in the hall, listening to Christmas songs and pulling crackers! We all got into the festive spirit watching the Nativity at the Rep theatre in Birmingham! We all had an amazing time and enjoyed the songs. Also, year 4 had a fabulous time at their Christmas party, playing party games, dancing and enjoying party food too!

In Maths, we continued learning about area and worked out the area of rectilinear shapes by counting squares. We applied our understanding to reasoning and problem solving too.

In Science and History, we did some assessments to see how much we had learned in our topics.

In Art we painted our Greek pots in a gold background and we painted geometric patterns really carefully onto them in black paint. Afterwards we evaluated our pots, considering the parts that we made well and which parts could be improved.

We hope you have a lovely festive break! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!