Friday 30th January 2026

Year 4 have had a brilliantly creative week, building their prototype earthquake-proof buildings. Over the past few weeks, they have learnt how engineers use, base isolators, cross bracing, strong yet flexible metals and weights to counteract the effect of an earthquake on the building.  They utilised all of their knowledge to design and then build their structures this week using only spaghetti and marshmallows! When they came to test them, the children placed them on a bed of jelly to act as an unstable factor and shook tables first gently and then with more vigour to act as the earthquake force.  The children timed whether their structures could stay up for periods of 30 seconds and brilliantly - they did! What engineers we have developed in this class!

In English, we have again used our ingenious imaginations to design first a Homework completor machine and then a machine of our choice to complete jobs that ordinarily we would love them to be able to do.  Money doublers, packed lunch box unpackers and washers and even a playmaker machine were invented to name but a few.  The children first designed them, used preposition and noun phrases to describe them and then wrote their own technical explanation texts to explain how they work. 

In maths, we have moved on to some super learning about length and perimeter and the children have begun to work out the lengths of given shapes with their new-found knowledge.

   

Friday 23rd January 2026

We have continued to work hard and we have also had lots of fun this week.

In English, we have started looking at explanation texts. We have considered which conjunctions we can use to help us with our writing. We have written imaginative explanations which have included 'how a television works', only we have made up our own versions, most of which have involved magic!

During our maths lesson, we have shown lots of resilience as we have learnt how to divide 2 and 3-digit numbers. This is where our times tables knowledge has come in extremely useful. We have used counters and pictures to help us as we move to using more formal methods.

As part of our science topic on changes of state, we carried out investigations which involved melting chocolate (white and milk chocolate). We used our measuring skills and observational skills. We found out that white chocolate melts more easily than milk chocolate. 

     

    

Friday 16th January 2026

It's been a super week of learning for our Year 4, with all of the children publishing their Winter poems, which now sit proudly on display outside of our classroom.  They put so much effort into considering personification, alliteration and noun phrases to create images, that any reader cannot fail to feel part of the scene themselves.

They have also become performance poets this week, using memory frames to help learn poems by heart and then performing them to a whole school audience on Friday!

In Geography, the children learnt about how different mountain types were formed by visiting different bases around the classroom and taking part in scientific and geographical experiments to see first hand what the movement of tectonic plates could create.  

 

Friday 9th January 2026

Happy New Year! Many thanks for your very kind and generous gifts at the end of the Autumn Term.

We have started our new topics which include Solids, liquids and gases in Science and Mountains and Volcanoes in Geography. We have already had some interesting discussions, including 'What would happen if water didn't freeze?'

In English, we have collected phrases and words to use in our own winter poems. We have drafted poems with 4 verses which we will edit and improve to display in the corridor outside our classroom.

In maths, we have continued with multiplication. This has included finding factor pairs for numbers. We have also multiplied numbers by 10 and 100, using place value charts to show how the digits move to the left by 1 or 2 places.

 

   

Friday 19th December 2025

This week, we have enjoyed lots of festive activities: watching the nativity dress rehearsal performed by KS1, making decorations, completing Christmas maths puzzles and of course attending the Pantomime at the theatre!

We have also written instructions, detailing how to sew a Christmas decoration. The teaching assistants worked with groups of children as they completed their wooden baubles, sewing different patterns.

We have had a fantastic Autumn term in Year 4 and wish everyone an enjoyable festive time with family over the next couple of weeks. We look forward to seeing you all in 2026!

Friday 12th December 2025

This week, the children have been getting into the festive spirit with some awesome maths games and challenges.  They particularly enjoyed being super sleuths, working out the answers to multiplication questions to crack Christmas codes.

In English, we played barrier games to begin our new unit on instructional writing.  The children had to give each other oral instructions to direct their partner in a range of art activities to build given pictures.  Needless to say, we had quite a few variations on the originals and we realised that we had to be very precise with our language, break our instructions up into smaller, more manageable steps and use a range of imperative verbs, fronted adverbials and prepositions to help our partner make the desired outcome.  We have realised that writing our instructions down may actually help our partners too.

The children have continued to use their programming skills to code a turtle to move around the screen.  They used angles, distances and number of repetitions to produce their very own design for some Christmas wrapping paper and were able to share their designs with their classmates and teachers on the big screen, casting their images to the interactive whiteboard.  Well done Year 4.

Friday 5th December 2025

This week has seen our Year 4 children publishing their very own books! The children have edited their work and practised their handwriting skills before finalising their ideas and committing them to paper.  They have considered what images best suit the sections of their stories and devised titles and front covers to match the moral.  They have truly focussed on their sessions this week and produced some wonderful outcomes because of this.  

In maths, the children have continued to apply their increasing multiplication and division knowledge to support them in team games and in finding area. Perhaps most excitingly of all, they have learnt the process of design and created their casing for their bedroom lamps, ready for the circuitry to be placed in next week, utilising their very own home-made switches.  

To finalise the week, Years 3 and 4 enjoyed a music and arts day whereby they listened to the music Grasswalk, created for a video game.  The children had to decipher what characters they thought might appear in the game, before considering the setting and writing about it and finally producing their own piece of gaming music using Garage band, comprising of different layers.  They later created their own plants for the music, considering what kind of garden or plants might live in a world with this soundtrack.  Phew! What a week!

Friday 28th November 2025

This week, the children have been busy bees, writing their stories to match the fable, ‘It is better to share than to be greedy and selfish’. They have been concentrating on how to punctuate dialogue and learning all the rules for how to write this into their stories. Next week, will see the children publishing these in their very own books, and we eagerly look forward to them sharing their outcomes with you.
In maths, the children have been consolidating their multiplication and division learning through playing games, and it has been fantastic to see them looking at relationships between the tables and applying their knowledge in a different way.
In computing, they wrote simple programming codes to get the turtle to move around the screen e.g.
Repeat 4 [ FD 100 RT90]. The children then explored using different angles, distances and number of
repetitions to produce some very interesting designs which can be seen in this week’s photos.
The children also took a trip across the hall on Tuesday to visit siblings and friends in our Year 6 classroom, who taught them how to navigate around our new computing programme, Digimaps as part of our geography learning on European countries. We studied land usage, physical and human geography and even began to map out distances to our favourite destinations and landmarks, ready for planning a holiday to Europe in a few weeks’ time.

Friday 21st November 2025

This week has seen our Year 4 children begin planning and writing their very own fable and cautionary tale, based upon what they believe our class text, War and Peas by Michael Foreman, taught them.  Most have decided that, ‘it is better to share, than to be greedy’.  The children have taken this moral and the structure of the original story and mapped out a plan of their own based upon a time when someone has needed something, someone else had it but wouldn’t share and that person learning a lesson through something going wrong for them.  We have learnt the rules for punctuating speech ready for our story writing and we can’t wait to read the finished results as the children’s plans have been hugely original!

In maths, we have continued our learning on multiplication and division, learning rules for dividing by 0 and 1 and how to multiply 3 numbers together.  We are looking forward to applying our learning through games and challenges set for us next week.

In Science and DT, the children have continued to build series and parallel circuits, and learnt the symbols for electrical circuits, drawing them in their books, ready for designing and making our lamps in a couple of weeks’ time. We look forward to you seeing our final results on here before the Christmas break. 

Friday 14th November 2025

What were the odds… socks?, that two of our children turned up to school, wearing the same odd socks on Monday to begin our learning on Anti-bullying week. The children have engaged and contributed brilliantly to conversations and debates this week during our lessons and been respectful and supportive of one another both in and out of class.

To begin our learning on electricity and battery-operated circuits in Science and DT, the children were presented with a range of electrical components this week and given a brief to make a bulb light up. With minimal input, the children were able to make a series circuit and the bulb lit, before being tasked to add a series breaker to see what would happen to the bulb. The lesson was filled with awe and wonder and we look forward to seeing what the children can create moving forward with this knowledge.

In maths, the children have continued to learn about multiplication and division facts, focussing on the 7 times table and how knowing the 5 and 2 times table could help make working out 7 times table questions easier. We used our knowledge of the week having 7 days to answer lots of word problems and have really begun to show their deepening knowledge of tables more readily.
In English, the children have produced some beautiful descriptive pieces, based on creative images they have produced in class. The children used cut out food pictures to create their own land, based on our current book, War and Peas by Michael Foreman, whereby a portly looking king lives in a world made of plenty. They used their growing knowledge of conjunctions to create super descriptions and again when they designed a garden of remembrance on the 11th November, deciding about symbolic flowers and trees to create a space to reflect and remember. Their writing was so moving, that upon reading their writing, both Mrs Stewart and Mrs Walker congratulated the children with very special gold stickers!

     

 

Friday 7th November 2025

The children have settled back into the new half-term beautifully and have set about working on their new personal goals.
In English, we have begun a unit of work on fables and cautionary tales, whereby we have read, compared and learnt about the life lessons each of the stories try to teach us. The children have done a super job creating features posters, matching morals and even practised reading fables fluently and with prosody, text marking their stories to know where to put in intonation, expression and dramatic pauses.

In maths, the children have utilised their times table knowledge and looked at the relationship between the three and six times tables, before studying their nines. They have played games and problem solved and have committed themselves to practising on https://www.timestables.co.uk/ 

We have begun to use atlases to study Europe as a continent, learnt about the evolution of light before beginning to design our own battery-operated light later this term and taken part in a symbol quiz in RE. There has been lots of laughter and plenty of learning. We are so happy to have you back Year 4!

                  

 

                                                                 

 

Thursday 23rd  October 2025

This week, we have been describing area and using different strategies to find the area of shapes. We have used Post-It notes and we have counted squares. We have also compared the area of different shapes.

In English, we have completed our reports about the Heraean Games. We have split the report into paragraphs, used a range of punctuation and also considered the connecting words we've used.

In Art, we have painted our Greek pots using the designs we drew earlier in the term. We have used a range of colours, including silver and gold!

   

 

Friday 17th October 2025

We have been researching the Herean games in English which is linked to our topic. We have looked at how to make notes, using key words and bullet points. In our spellings, we have been discussing homophones such as piece and peace.

In maths, we have completed our unit on addition and subtraction. We have explored a range of strategies and also discussed how to use the inverse operation to check our answers. We are beginning to realise the importance of showing our working clearly.

This week, year 4 have been able to spend some time with the rabbits which has been very exciting. We will ensure everyone who hasn't yet met the rabbits will have the opportunity to do so as soon as possible. On Friday last week, some of us also visited the school allotment. Overthe rest of the term, we will all have the opportunity to help with the digging.

      

Friday 10th October 2025

During our English lessons, we have completed our news reports and written them up using the layout of a newspaper. We have all been working really hard without handwriting. We are practising our joining and letter formation, keeping our writing on the line and ensuring our letters are consistent in size.

In maths, we have subtracted this week. We have used exchanging to subtract 4 digit numbers. Some of us have had some extra practise and we are now much more confident with this.

In history this week, we enjoyed learning about the Greek gods. We enjoyed being able to choose which god to focus on, taking responsibility for our learning.

 

 

Friday 3rd October 2025

This week, we have been writing newspaper reports about the Corinthian Girl. We have included the 5 Ws in our introduction and have written headlines which have an impact on the reader. We have also written quotations from spectators, using inverted commas.

In maths, we have started addition using 4-digit numbers. So far, we have discussed the importance of having the digits in the correct place value columns.  We have solved simple problems, using the CUBES method (circle the numbers, underline the question, box the keywords, evaluate the problem and then solve it).

During PE this week, we practised our football dribbling skills and played small sided games.

Friday 26th September 2025

In year 4 this week, we have been rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000 in maths. We have used number lines to help us. We have leant that if a number is in the middle of 2 multiples of 10, 100 or 1000, we round it up.

During our English lessons, we have considered how the Corinthian girl felt as a slave. We have written diary entries, using features such as the first person, feelings and adverbials of time.

During Art this week, we experimented making pots out of clay and tried a number of techniques. We have designed pots in the style of those found in Ancient Greece and we will be aiming to make these later in the term.

Friday 19th September 2025

 This week we have been continuing to read Corinthian girl. We have written sentences using coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. We have also discussed what might happen next in the story.

In maths, we have continued our work on place value. We have placed numbers up to 10, 000 on number lines. These have included number lines with different intervals which can be a challenge. We have also played a game where we tried to beat our partner to 10, 000 by gaining points from rolling a die.

In our Science lesson this week, we conducted a sound walk around the school. We listed the materials that sound travels through to reach our ears and scored the sounds for volume. One of our loudest sounds was Mr Kitchen playing the trumpet!

Friday 12th September 2025

Welcome back! We have been so impressed with how the children have approached their work and particularly how they help each other to organise and tidy the classroom too.

This week in maths, we have been exploring place value up to 10, 000, and we have represented different numbers using counters. We have also solved problems and some of us have written our own problems for the teachers to solve!

In English, we have started to read Corinthian Girl, a book which is linked to our topic. We have summarised the start of the story, and we have written interviews for the main character.

On Thursday, we had a trumpet lesson with Mr Kitchen, and we discussed some of the vocabulary linked to our Science topic of Sound.