Summer 1

In English, we will be looking at the classic text Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. This is such a beautiful text about unlikely friendships.

In Maths, we will be continuing with decimals, then moving on to money and time.

In History, we will be looking at the amazing Anglo-Saxons and the vicious Vikings!

In Science, we will be looking at living things and their habitats.

In RE, we are thinking about when Jesus left and this impact of Pentecost.

Forest School is on Mondays (please remember to bring a change of shoes and clothing that covers your legs) PE is on Tuesdays (we will be doing tennis outside!)

Reading Records need to be handed in on a Monday.

If you have any questions, queries or worries, please don't hesitate to speak to me. I am available on the playground from around 8:30 am every morning.

Autumn 2, Week 1

A great first week back for Kangaroos! 

In PE this week, Kangaroos had their first hockey session, we focused on our dribbling technique and our positioning with our hockey stick! 

We had a noisy Science lesson, experimenting with instruments and sound. We used tuning forks to be able to see how sound moves. Lot's of fun learning!

Kangaroos created some really fascinating art work this week, creating their very own optical illusions! 

Our first Golden Award in Autumn 2 went to Kaiden for his super motivation and efforts in the first week back! :-)

AUTUMN 2:

In English, we will be looking at The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis to get us into the winter mood!

In Maths, we will be starting this term by looking at area and perimeter then moving on to multiplication and division.

In Geography, we will be looking at climate and weather across the world.

In Science, we will be looking at sound and sound waves - it is going to get noisy!

In RE, we are thinking about what does it mean to be a Hindu in Britain today? 

Our PE day will still be Thursdays. Please have your child come into school wearing their PE kit on this day. 

Kangaroos will be swimming on a Tuesday.

Reading Records need to be handed in on a Monday.

Autumn 1, Week 6

Here are some photos from this weeks Forest School. Some brilliant initiative shown by the children in the forest this week, including using feathers as writing tools!

In Science, we did an exciting experiment to help us understand the final stage of the digestive system and how our body turns food into waste. A super way to visualise what happens inside our bodies to enhance our understanding. 

This week in DT we created our very own fonts and lettering that we could possibly use in our moving story books. Some amazing, extremely creative outcomes from Kangaroos. 

Finally for this week, we learnt about Christian Aid in RE. We learnt all about who they are, what they campaign for and who they may give aid to for various different reasons. We went on to think how the actions of Christian Aid relate to Jesus' teachings before creating our own display posters showing everything we had learnt. 

Autumn 1, Week 5 

We started this week with an exciting visit from Poet, Matt Windle for national poetry week! We were incredibly lucky for Matt to perform some of his poems to us, give us some advice on how we can write and perform poems as well as teaching us how to beat box. A really great and inspiring visit, thank you Matt!

In History this week, we looked at 4 different Ancient Greek philosophers and considered how their work influences our thinking today. We magpied lots of facts about Socrates, Aristotle, Archimedes and Plato before creating our fact files in pairs. They look absolutely amazing and are full of knowledge, well done Kangaroos!

Here are some photos from our art lesson, this week we used our polystyrene stamps that we had made last week to make patterns with paint. We thought about different ways we could make patterns, thinking about rotating our stamps or the direction that we moved across the paper. They look really effective.

We continued with our orienteering in PE, working in groups we attempted to use a map with a key to collect numbers and calculate the correct answer that matched the map we were using. Although really challenging to begin with, Kangaroos all persevered and worked together to progress through the task. 

This week, we finally got chance to make the most of our reading corner and do some quiet, independent reading. The perfect spot for some relaxing reading at the end of the day.

In DT, we started thinking about fonts and when we may use different ones. We then went on to experiment with colouring and decorating type, thinking about techniques like shading, using pattern and colour as well as adding illustrations. Kangaroos did an amazing job showing their creativity! 

Here are the Year 4 Kangaroo cross country runners from the tournament on Friday! They all did brilliantly and should be extremely proud of themselves :-)

Autumn 1, Week 4

Another great week for Kangaroos.

We have a had an extremely busy week. Firstly, in English we wrote up our first hot write of Year 4 which wrapped together everything we had been looking at over the past 4 weeks. All the children worked EXTREMELY hard and should all be very proud of themselves for the effort they put into their work - I hope everyone at home enjoyed looking at them too. :-)

We had our first Christian Value 'Community' award this week, which was awarded to Aya Tajer. Aya won this award following nominations from her classmates.  She shows all the qualities of a good friend, she is always encouraging and consistently looks out for others. She always ensures everybody feels included, which is appreciated by many children in the class. The class have described her as loving, they say she is always there to cheer them up if they need it and she always shares whatever she may have. Well done Aya! :-)

Lots of fun was had again in Forest School, here are some photo's from Tuesday afternoon.

On Tuesday, we had a win in our first sports fixture of the school year! Our Year 4 Boys football team went and won their first tournament, returning with not only huge smiles on their faces but also an enormous trophy! Well done boys, a great achievement. 

Here are some photos from our DT lesson on Thursday. This week we started exploring mechanisms for our moving story books, we created concertinas and pop out mechanisms. After making both mechanisms, we evaluated the effectiveness and ease of making them. Some amazing, creative outcomes to help inform our future decisions in upcoming lessons. 

Finally, on Friday we had our RE lesson where we looked at the parable, 'The Good Samaritan'. We picked it apart and took from it what we thought it meant to be a good neighbour. In small groups, the children were then set the challenge to create freeze frames to retell the story. 

Autumn 1, Week 3

Lots of fun and hard work has been done this week in Kangaroos class. We have planned our very first draft write of our own versions of the story 'The Wolves in the Walls' in English and continued with place value in Maths having progressed rounding to the nearest thousand. 

In Science, we learnt all about teeth: we had a good look at our own teeth, compared them to a partners and then discussed the changes our teeth go through as we grow up. We were able to recognise the incisors, canines and molars in both our top and bottom rows of teeth and state what the different functions for each are.

We had an art lesson using the clay stamps we had made last week, printing with paint, we created our very own repeated patterns. While they didn't all come out exactly how they were planned, we could assess what we liked and how we could improve our stamps in the future! 

In PE we had our first cross country lesson, the children all did amazing and showed brilliant sportsmanship with their encouragement of everyone around them. We learnt about the importance to pace ourselves and the impact that has on our running.

We had our first Computing lesson this week. The children were all given their very own google emails and managed to logon to the school system and then explore what emails look like. 

Autumn 1, Week 2: 

Kangaroos have had another busy week. We have carried on with our place value unit in Maths, and dived deeper into our text 'The Wolves in the Walls' in English.

In Science, we extended our knowledge of food chains. We can now not only recognise the producers, prey and predators; but also the 3 different stages of consumers - primary, secondary and tertiary. We did a group task where we matched all our new vocabulary up to the correct definitions. 

We had our first DT lesson of the term, looking at moving story books! We looked at a range of different books and learnt about all the different mechanisms that could have been used to make them, including - linkages, levers and pivots. We were especially impressed with the Peter Pan book, it was fascinating! We were able to discuss each of the books and evaluate what we liked or didn't like personally and which mechanisms worked best. 

It was a wet and soggy afternoon on Tuesday for Forest School but we still went out and had a great time exploring the outdoors. We even got to make our very own bow and arrows. Embracing nature, whatever the conditions; is what it's all about. :-)

Autumn 1, Week 1:

Kangaroos had a busy first week back, with lots of learning and getting introduced to life in Year 4!

In Maths, we started with some place value and rounding to the nearest 10 and 100. We used rekenreks to help us visualise our rounding which was a huge success! 

In this weeks' English, we started learning new strategies to add to our writers toolkits after analysing our new text. 'The

Wolves in the Walls'. 

We also had our first Outdoor Adventure lesson in PE, we discussed what orienteering was and went on to use diagrams with keys to help us create 'silly faces' out of cones, beanbags and quoits. Some great team work was shown! :-)

We had lots of fun in Music, we were introduced to ABBA and started learning our song for the unit, 'Mamma Mia'.

Our art lesson this week looked at mark making using charcoal. We looked at all the different marks we could make and then thought about matching our marks to represent different words.

Kangaroos 2021

Hello Kangaroos!

I am so excited for the start of this year and to meet you all! We have so many exciting things planned already and I can't wait for us all to get started.

Please remember that Year 4 learning starts at 8:45 am and finishes at 3:25 pm.

AUTUMN 1:

In English, we will be looking at The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman which is a brilliant book that I am sure you will love as much as I do. Throughout the year, we will also be looking at a collection of poems by Michael Rosen, starting off with Don't Put Mustard in the Custard.

In Maths, we will be starting the year thinking about place value, and I'll add more detail about that as we go through the unit so you can support your Kangaroos learning at home.

In History, we will be looking at Ancient Greece and their way of life. A topic which I cannot wait to delve in deeper with you all.

In Science, we will be starting off with the Animals including Humans topic; looking at the digestive system and our teeth (we already have some great experiments lined up for you!)

In RE, we are thinking about what kind of world Jesus would want.

Our PE day will be Thursdays. Please have your child come into school wearing their PE kit on this day. PE will start on Thursday 9th September. 

Kangaroos won't be swimming for this first half term, instead we will be entering our forest school every Tuesday afternoon! I can't wait to start exploring with you all. 

Reading Records need to be handed in on a Friday, and will be returned on a Monday. Reading scheme books will only be changed on a Monday.

Mrs Hobbs is our Kangaroos TA and will be with us in class everyday.

If you have any questions, queries or worries, please don't hesitate to speak to me. I am available on the playground from 8:40 am every morning.

Thanks, and see you all on Monday 6th September!

Miss Briggs :-)