Year 4

Welcome to Year 4 2019 - 2020

Teacher email: ldavies@northern.lancs.sch.uk 

Welcome to Year 4's Class Page! We are taught by Mr Davies and Mrs Breen. We have chosen our class values to be friendship, attitude, tolerance, determination, respect, enthusiasm, responsibility, honesty and teamwork and work hard to show these values wherever and whenever we can. 

Although we are not all in school this week, a lot of good learning has been happening both in our homes and at school.  Well done to all children who have completed tasks set online this week.  We would like to keep our weekly awards up and running and so we will now have "Virtual Shooting Star" every Friday!

In Year 4, our Virtual Shooting Star of the week was a tough choice, I've had to pick Mallie for showing how hard he's worked in his literacy work on non-chronological reports on the fastest animal on the planet - just check the walls of fame below if you don't believe me! - and for showing fantastic independence and determination in his place value work. Well done Mallie!

Well that's it for another half term! This one might have ended on a bit of a strange note that none of us expected at the start, but in the immortal words of Bear Grylls - improvise, adapt, overcome! You've all done brilliantly following this mantra for these troubled times and I've got to share your amazing practical science work with pitch, building your own instruments - just don't play them too much, your parents need a break too! As I said this morning if you haven't got round to any remote learning tasks they'll still be up there and you've got your Spice Points to do too. I'm always just an email away. Without further ado, who needs a 1964 Gibson ES-335 when you've got these:

Buona fortuna as they say over there, can't wait to see what we come up with!

Tuesday, Day 7.

Good morning Year 4, today in our remote learning we're getting on with those non-chronological reports to gear up and write our own, organising information under subheadings. For guided reading we're focusing on setting and atmosphere of our guided reading books. In maths we're doing a bit of revision and extending our learning adding 3 3 digit numbers. No, that wasn't a typo, I did type 3 twice. In ICT we're using 2Logo commands to do some pattern making; see if you can do better than my spiky monstrosity and we'll post them up to see! The key is to experiment with the number of commands you put in and the values you give to those commands.

Quite a few people have emailed me scratching their heads about where to start with the third maths challenge we did on Friday, and it is a toughie so I'll give you a sneaky hint to get you started, as long as you keep it between us - the E is 1.

The bell rings for the end of another school day and once again I'm amazed at all the fantastic work that's been emailed and submitted on PurpleMash. Year 4 have put in so much effort in thinking of your schedules, and though I won't embarrass anybody by uploading their full schedule I did want to share some of the activities that we thought of to keep us happy, healthy and helpful in these trying times, big thanks to Emily, Lewis, Ben, Mallie, Ciaran, Myles, Finlay and Jacob for all these thoughts;

To stay active; Doing PE with Joe Wicks on YouTube, trampolining in the garden, taking walks, doing press-ups, playing hopscotch, running on the spot, doing star jumps, doing sit-ups, skipping, doing Yoga on a mat.

To be creative; Making rainbow cards for neighbours and family, making pom-poms and butterflies, painting and drawing views, decorating pottery, baking, writing stories, doing science experiments, junk modelling making quizes. making a bird feeder, building with lego, making cookies.

To connect with others; Facetime family members, phoning friends, playing online games with friends from school, live Mathletics with friends from school, talking to neighbours with mum or dad over the fence, .

To help others; Cleaning your bedroom, washing pots and pans, helping gardening, setting the table at tea time, helping brothers and sisters with their learning, making breakfast for the family, loading the dishwasher, running a bath, hanging the washing out, helping clean pets out, being kind to younger brothers and sisters.

Well done to everyone who cracked the maths investigations today - and if you haven't, keep going! They're designed to be a challenge and you need to get it wrong before you crack it. We've also had some fantastic thoughts about non-chronological reports and their features which will definitely help us moving forward this week, take a look at some of these examples!

Day 6: Monday

I hope you've all had a fantastic weekend and are ready for some more remote learning! Today we're looking at evaluating reports, keeping our problem solving and addition skills sharp in some maths investigations, creating an advertising poster and completing a schedule to keep us healthy and happy in these unusual times. Best of luck, and remember your work could end up on our website!

Friday; and so ends our first week of remote learning, some fantastic examples of work! Enjoy your weekend Year 4, have a look at some of the zoo webcams, enjoy our art gallery and if you fancy a challenge have a go at these crossword examples - the answers are all wow words that we could magpie taken from our reading books!

Ben;

Jacob:

Mallie:

FInlay:

Happy Friday morning Year 4, we've reached the end of our first week of remote learning and although it's been a new experience for all of us, you've really impressed me with the work you've sent in and the messages you've written. An enormous thank you to all the parents and guardians for their correspondence and feedback, as well as dedicating your time to helping with this brand new process.

Today in literacy we'll be focusing on prefixes - parts of a word you can add on to a root word to change the meaning. Check the link above for more detail. In guided reading, we've got something a little different - making a crossword out of wow words from your reading book. Think carefully what your crossword clue could be! I'll put them up on the website here for the rest of Year 4 to have a crack at solving! As it's Friday, we'll be doing RE as usual and thinking about the meaning of Lent for Christians. Good luck, and once again your work could feature on our class page!

Thursday: Some super learning going today Year 4, special mentions go to Lewis, Kyla, Caylen, Lorcan, Sam, Ben and Jacob for their excellent English work spotting those fronted adverbials! Tip top work from Mallie on solving problems with graphs; a perfect score!

I hope it's a bright and sunny Thursday morning for you Year 4, and I hope we're ready to give it our best effort in learning today - you could earn a PurpleMash award (lots of people already have!) and, even better, have your work put up right here on the school website for the whole world to admire.

For today's literacy we're brushing up on adverbials, nouns and verbs - check the remote learning link above for further guidance. We're going to finish off our statistics work with a bit of problem solving on all the types of graph we've looked at in Year 4. In guided reading, it's about time we practice some spellings so we don't get too rusty when we come back to school - so grab your spelling activity booklet! I've been kind to you and only given you 8; don't say I never do anything for you. 

The big one I'm hoping to see lots of inspiration with is our art - we have a beautiful Tuscan landscape (you can look for another if you like) for you to use your landscape, layer and focus understanding on - remember, lots of detail at the front. If you can, add colour and don't forget to sign it at the bottom with your first name just like a real artist! 

Ask your adult to send a photo to my email and the best examples I'll hang in a digital art gallery for everyone to see - will yours be hanging there? It's up to you!

I hope you've all had a fantastic Wednesday Year 4, and if you've got a garden been able to enjoy some sunshine. I wanted to share some great quiz facts we've discovered - this time about the city of Siena, since non-chronological reports have paragraphs which focus on a particular topic. Can you answer these questions from Jacob, Sam and Myles?

I also wanted to say a big well done to Lorcan and Emily who showed that they were pictogram experts, in record time! They remembered to read the question carefully and checked what each picture on the graph showed as well as Ciaran who showed super effort looking at different types of graph.

I've also got to show Ben's amazing work comparing and contrasting Lancashire and Tuscany;

Fantastic or what? We'll see you tomorrow for some more brilliant learning!

Bon matin Year 4! Comment allez-vous? Je vais bien, merci. See if you can keep active and have a go at speaking a bit of French yourself with SuperMovers:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/supermovers/ks1--ks2-mfl-french-greetings-with-ben-shires/zdpdvk7

À tout à l’heure!

Looking back at Year 4 2018 - 2019

Zdravstvuyte from Year 4, who spent European Languages Day looking at the Russian language and peoples, composing a diamond poem on Russian topics such as the wintery steppe, symbolic brown bear, towering onion domes of St Basil's Cathedral and graceful ballet dancers as well as performing Russian folk dances and performing waltzes to Russian composer Dmitri Shoshtakovich's music.

Like all classes at Northern Year 4 has their own class novel, ours at the moment is Just Call Me Spaghetti Hoop Boy by Lara Williamson. While we were reading we thought up questions we might like to ask the author then, on a wing and a prayer, sent them to the author and were incredibly grateful to receive answers to all of our questions. It's not every day you get to interview an award winning children's author!

Thank you so much for your lovely email and I’m thrilled your class have chosen Just Call Me Spaghetti-Hoop Boy as their class novel and they’re enjoying it so far. Yay! That’s great news! And thank you for the questions that they’d like to ask me. Here goes some answers:

Q: Which of your books that you've written is your favourite?

Lara: Ah, choosing my favourite book is like choosing between buns, cakes and sweets. I love them all. They’re all a bit different to each other but equally delightful. Although, between you and me, I do have a soft spot for my second book, The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair. I think it’s because I love the snail in the book.

Q: Who is your favourite character in Just Call Me Spaghetti Hoop boy and why?

Lara: Ooh, tricky question. I like different characters for different reasons. I like Tiny Eric a lot and Sausage Roll too. Who doesn’t love an invisible dog? Maybe Sausage Roll needs his own book.

Q: What made you think of calling your book Spaghetti Hoop Boy?

Lara: I’m a fan of spaghetti-hoops. And it felt like the right name for this story as Adam needed a superhero name that was also a little bit of fun.

Q: Why is there Boy in all of your book titles?

Lara: All three books feel like a set and so I’ve used the word ‘boy’ in all three to connect them. And I like to imagine that my characters might have passed each other in the street or have been friends.
Q: How did you think up Tiny Eric?

Lara: Sometimes characters just come to you and you have to write them as you imagine them. I knew Tiny Eric would be tall but called Tiny. And I knew he’d be a good friend to Adam.

Q: What made you interested in becoming an author?

Lara: I’ve always written little stories, even from a very young age. I can’t remember a time where I didn’t write so it felt natural to write a book. I didn’t know if I’d manage to get it published though and when it happened I was over-the-moon. It was a huge dream come true.

Q: What is your favourite part of Spaghetti Hoop Boy?

Lara: I don’t really have a favourite part of a book because I see the book more as a whole story. Sometimes I think being an author is like weaving little magical threads together to make something special at the end. If you do it right everything works perfectly but if you make mistakes little holes appear and you need to sort them out.

Q: What did you do before you became an author?

Lara: Before I was an author I worked for a teen magazine where I styled photo shoots with models and wrote about beauty products. It was an amazing job and I loved it.

Q: Were you good at writing stories when you were in primary school?

Lara: I think I was quite good at English in school and I was also good at Art. Unfortunately, I was not so good at Maths. I’m a creative person who loves to draw and make things and paint and design.

Q: When did you start to like writing?

Lara: I’ve always loved writing, even when I was younger. When I was about ten I’d meet up with my friends and we would split into two groups, write plays and then act them out in front of each other. Then we’d choose the winning group with the best story. Thinking back, it was good experience for writing a book.

Q: What's your next book going to be about?

Lara: Ah, much as I’d love to spill the beans I have to keep the beans firmly inside the tin. That’s what my editor says anyway. Joking aside, I wouldn’t want to spoil the story for you but keep your eyes peeled as it’ll be out in the spring. Yay!

Year 4 have been looking at the Winter Olympics in South Korea testing their reading comprehension skills on a story based on this years games, as well as looking at the individual events and interviews with athletes. We thought about the international spirit of the games and welcoming all backgrounds and countries. We also acted out in role as an athlete facing a challenge and a motivational coach inspiring them to overcome it, and posed in a scene from our favourite event - can you guess which ones we picked?

Safer internet day

For Safer internet day Year 4 looked at how technology should be used responsibly and in accordance with our agreed class charter on safe use of the computer. We composed acrostic poems based around key words about the importance of never sharing personal information, telling an adult straight away if someone wants to meet you and if you see something which makes you upset or uncomfortable.