Croeso i Flwyddyn Pedwar

Teacher: Mrs Miles and Mrs Phillips

P.E. days - Wednesday and Friday (please come to school in P.E. kit)

Forest School - Wednesday afternoon, alternate weeks (Wk 1)

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Class update

Spring 2025

 

10.3.25 - 21.3.25 

Well, what a busy couple of weeks. Science Week started with a bang- using fizzy drinks and mentoes to create an explosion. Which drink created the highest explosion? What was the reaction that caused this? We then added alka seltza to a small amount of water to create an explosion (but that was quite disappointing). We used a whole box of them before we got the hang of it. We made a wormery which we are feeding each day and monitoring. Then, we carried out an experiment to collect pure water from salt water. So, we will be okay if we get stranded on a desert island. The most interesting one was testing different types of paper to discover which ones disintegrated the most. Therefore, being most suitable for toilet paper. We had lots of in-depth discussions on this topic which was great. We have now decided to test various types of toilet paper to see which one is the best. Perhaps we can send our results to Welsh Water. We are halfway through our weekly African drumming sessions, which the children are absolutely loving. (We knew they would!). Hopefully you will be able to come in and see what the children have been doing. In Literacy, we completed comic strips and this week we are looking at the language and text features of a balanced argument. Currently, we are creating a Spring picture in the style of the Welsh artist, Therese James, together with designing a Mother’s Day card (Shhhhh), in the style of Georgia O’Keefe. St Patrick’s Day was last Monday, and we looked at the significance of Irish symbols, together with finding out about St Patrick. Forest School was cold, but at least it was quite dry over there. We always seem to get so muddy. The children worked in pairs to make algorithms from sticks. The children then tested the algorithm and debug it if necessary. Can we just remind you to ensure your child has a water bottle in school with them each day. Have a lovely weekend and thank you for your support. 

17-21.2.25 & 3-7.3.25 

What a lovely, fun packed start to the Spring Term-Eisteddfod Celebrations and World Book Day. The weather has been great too, so nice to see a bit of well-deserved sunshine for us all. The children made Welsh cakes with very little support, so we are sure they are going to want to make some at home now they can see how easy it is. Each group gave the other tips on how to make a tasty Welsh Cake-it’s all about the texture, not too thick and not too thin, don’t add too much flour or too much egg! Our Literacy this week is creating a comic strip. We identified the specific language and text features and compared them to storytelling. They are not quite finished yet, but we have a feeling they are going to be amazing. Eisteddfod is always such a lovely event with children singing, dancing and displaying a variety of work. World Book Day was lots of fun and the children looked fabulous. Thank you as always for your support. Each class had a chapter read to them in another class with another teacher. We really need to encourage our children to read for pleasure, so they see it as a real adventure rather than a chore. Plus, it greatly improves children’s life chances, confidence, spelling, writing skills, creates an imagination beyond their dreams and so much more. The children also created plans for a new library that desperately needs revamping. In Expressive Arts, we are creating a Spring picture in the style of the Therese James. This Welsh artist has given us tips on how to recreate this and the specific paints to use. Hopefully, we will do her proud, as she wants us to photograph the finished paintings. Next week is Science week-so another fun packed week ahead. Thank you for your support. 

3.2.25-14.2.25 

These weeks are just flying by and before you know it we will be in Spring. We have completed a lot of work on report writing this half term, both chronological and non-chronological. The newspaper report was quite a challenge as the children had lots to say about the mysterious box in our classroom, but they found it rather difficult to report the incident keeping in the third person as the reporter. We will be visiting this genre again to keep it on the boil. This week we will be retelling the Welsh Myth- The Lady in the Lake. The children have identified the specific features of a Myth and in particular various sentence openers to create effect. Last week the children created posters about themselves after following a live lesson to mark Children’s Mental Health Week. This week has been Internet Safety Week, where the children have looked at how they use the internet. What is your favourite thing you like doing? How can you protect your identity? How to keep details safe and secure etc.  At Forest School, we used natural materials to create a dragon. This will help us when we create one next week using various materials. In PE, we have completed some team games with the emphasis on core strength which the children enjoyed, albeit challenging. Our block of cricket sessions has now come to an end, we have thoroughly enjoyed them and look forward to building on this in the summer. Our outdoor P.E sessions will now go back to a Friday as of next week 21st February. This week we are going to learn a Welsh folk Dance with Reception Class ready for Eisteddfod. Thank you for your support. 

20.1.25-31.1.25  

Well, the children have come up with so many ideas in relation to our topic- Cwl Cymru. We have made a start at looking at some of the lovely paintings by Therese James with the theme of Community. The children created a Web Page to illustrate some of her work she has created using various digital skills. To celebrate St Dwynwen’s Day, we created various hearts using different materials together with using Adobe Express to create a digital love spoon.  This week is the start of Chinese New Year- The Year of the Snake. We researched the significance of the Lion Dance, then in groups created a dance, together with musicians and creators. During numeracy sessions, we have continued our focus of fractions, including finding a fraction of an amount, e.g 1/3 of 15 and ¼ of 20. We quickly linked this to division and used resources to help us. In Literacy, the children have worked so well to write a non-chronological report about dragons together with a chronological report for the Science experiment on digestion. This week there has been a bit of a commotion in our classroom. Firstly, a mystery box appeared all wrapped up and within minutes the box had burst open leaving a trail of shell, feathers and slime everywhere! The children have concluded that it must have been a baby dragon. We have been busy collecting evidence including interviews to analyse the situation. I am sure the children will keep you up to date. Thank you for your support. 

6.1.25-17.1.25  

Blwyddyn Newydd Da and we hope you had a lovely Christmas-seems ages ago now. There is just a tiny bit of additional light at the beginning and end of the day, so that’s good news. Our new topic this term is Cwl Cymru (Cool Wales). We are not sure at this stage where we are going with the topic, as we are led by the children’s interests and ideas; and they have already given us some food for thought. We tried to find a Welsh Artist with the theme of Community, and we found a very helpful Welsh Artist who lives in Southwest Wales. She creates beautiful and evocative paintings of nature and the countryside. Therese has said she will support the children with specific techniques and skills to create a painting in her style. So exciting! In Literacy, we have begun to read “How to Train a Dragon” by Cressida Cowell. The focus has been on collecting adventurous vocabulary and prepositional language to write a description of a dragon. In Science, we have started to identify the organs of the digestive system and recognise how they work together to digest food. Next week, we will complete an experiment to demonstrate this process. Our focus in Maths for the first few weeks has been decimals and fractions, looking at place value of two decimal place numbers and their equivalent fractions. We are lucky to be welcoming in James Williamson for the next four Thursdays to lead our P.E sessions. James works for Cricket Wales and is delivering a programme called ‘Chance to shine’ - introducing cricket to our pupils.  We really enjoyed session one yesterday and look forward to the coming weeks. The season was certainly seized last week as we made some ice decorations to hang in the school grounds. We think they were there for several days due to the icy temperatures. Thank you for your support. 

Autumn 2024

25.11.24-6.12.24

Christmas is quickly sneaking up on us all. We have started to create our enterprise products to sell at the Fayre and we believe you can pre-order as well. We have some lovely 3d stars that the children are quite obsessed with so, I think some of you may be having them made at home as well! They have also chosen to either make some Winter Bunting or a Nordic Christmas tree. These are all priced at £2.00 each. Any profit will be spent on resources for Year 4. We discussed the recent floods that have affected so many local people. We tried to think logically of where the flood water disappears to. It’s quite hard to understand how it finds its way back into the rivers, streams and sea. The water cycle helped us to understand firsthand how some of the water evaporates back into the clouds. We have continued to focus on perimeter and area in maths, in particular some practical work and investigating. The children were challenged to come up with a shape where the perimeter was numerically equal to its area- we found some examples, but surprisingly not that many! Have a look on the home learning blog for more information.  In Literacy last week, the children wrote a narrative based on the story- Journey using adventurous language. This week we have looked at the difference between a narrative and a free verse poem. Using previous taught language and skills, the children built up to creating their own narrative poem using rhyme and rhythm. We are soon going to be busy learning some carols ready for the Carol Concert during the last week of term. Hope you can join us. The children were introduced to a Digi map that provides access to maps and geospatial data. We have experimented with finding different landmarks and pinning specific places around the River Wye. In Forest School, the children had lots of fun making an obstacle course using natural materials. The children were very competitive and adventurous, and they never cease to amaze us with their creativity and imagination. Enjoy your weekend.

11.11.24-22.11.24

Well, the last 2 weeks have flown by and what a surprise to get some snow on Tuesday- much to the delight of the children. The weather has certainly got much colder this week, so can you ensure your child has a hat, and gloves, especially for Forest School. The children completed their leaflets this week, advertising River Wye activities. We looked at various leaflets for ideas and magpie the ones that we thought would entice the reader. We started a new book this week- Journey by Aaron Becker. The theme of this book is an emotional and spiritual rewarding experience of stepping off the known into the unknown. We had a visit form Barclays bank, where they gave the children an insight into managing a budget, understanding the terms-debt, credit, scam, service charge etc. The children listened carefully as they tried to work out why the young boy who had an amount of money to spend, spent more due to the hidden charges. Forest School was a cold one but that didn’t hinder the children’s enthusiasm for making various shapes and measuring their perimeter. It is important at this time of year that children have warm clothing for playtimes and outdoor activities. Lots of excitement this week for the commencement of swimming sessions. Soon, we will be making Christmas creations to sell at the Fayre. As much as possible, decorations will be made from recycled materials to cut down on costs, make a profit for our class and make the most out of natural materials. If you have any empty kitchen rolls, thinnish cardboard (like the packaging from amazon parcels) smallish baubles, any nice foliage that would be gratefully received. Enjoy your weekend.

21.10.24-8.11.24 

Welcome back to our second half of the Autumn term! We hope you had a good break and feeling refreshed for the busy term ahead! It’s been lovely to welcome everybody back and a particular welcome to Toby, who has joined our class. This week in maths we have got straight into reading from and plotting a line graph- these are a real step up from a bar graph, but the children have worked really hard and focused on accurate plotting. We are keeping mental maths on the boil too, with regular practise of place value, doubling, halving, times tables etc. In our Health and Wellbeing sessions, we have been discussing different emotions and what may trigger these for us. We likened our different emotions to a thermometer- at times we can feel red with anger and frustration etc. However, we can regulate ourselves to try and get back into the green, where we feel happy, calm and content. P.E will continue to take place on a Wednesday and outdoor P.E on a Friday where we are starting a block of netball now till Christmas-we will try and work outside as much as possible, so please ensure children are suitably dressed for this each Friday.  We were very impressed with the children's Literacy before half term- writing a short story with the use of place openers and adventurous vocabulary. In Literacy this week we have written Remembrance Day poems with an emphasis on the use of personification and rhyming words. These poems were quite poignant and emotional to read.  We also created sketch notes to illustrate our understanding of Remembrance Day. It was Divali during half term, so in Expressive Arts we used our knowledge of colour and symmetry to make Rangoli patterns. Forest School is starting to get a bit chilly now, so please can you ensure your child has warm clothing, together with wellies. We collected some sticks in the forest ready to make some Christmas decorations. (Not sure what yet, but you can guarantee a stick is always useful!). At Forest School, the children surprised us with their teamwork, strength and communication whilst creating a Sukkah. This is a temporary hut that is constructed for use during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. Thank you for your support and have a lovely weekend. 

23.9.24-4.10.24 

Busy, busy, busy in Year 4 in the last two weeks. The children have used various materials to create some amazing Autumn Art, using the Zentangle technique. In Literacy, we have been identifying the language and text features of a diary to write an entry from the perspective of the boy in the picture book- Flotsam. We have also been looking at different emotions and using interesting adverbs to begin a sentence. Maths has seen a focus on finding differences and methods of addition, the children are really starting to show improved confidence in this area. Next up is time telling, so please have a look at analogue and digital time telling devices at home this weekend!  This week we have created an algorithm (a set of instructions), for a dance, which we then performed. We had great fun completing this together with keeping fit. We have made a good start to our new topic- Rivers and Mountains. The children have looked at various maps of the River Wye, identifying the source and mouth, together with different landmarks. In Forest School, we created Autumn decorations using natural materials which will enhance our classroom. The children are loving our Gardening Sessions where they have been able to harvest some of last Summer's produce. We have a lot of exciting things planned for the forth coming weeks with Mrs Cornish and her helpers. We have been recapping some French language this week, with a focus on greeting each other and saying goodbye. All the children sang beautifully at St Nicholas Church, we were very proud! Thank you for your support.  Have a lovely weekend.  

2.9.24-20.9.24 

What a lovely, sunny start to a new and exciting term. (We will forget about the weather in the 1st week). We hope you have had a lovely break from school routines and your family has had a chance to recharge their batteries. The children have settled in brilliantly and are adapting to new routines and expectations very well 😊. Our topic this term is- Rivers and Mountains. Initially, we will be focusing on our local rivers- River Usk, Wye, Monnow and Severn. We have been finding out about the Water cycle and how water constantly moves. Some of the concepts are quite tricky, so we created a storm in a jar to illustrate how clouds collect water before releasing the droplets as rain. During our first Forest School this term, we worked together in small teams in a race to construct a bridge and travel along without falling into a swamp. There was lots of collaboration and teamwork to achieve the result. Last week in Literacy, we focused on grammar and punctuation before commencing our class text- Flotsam. This week we have looked carefully at this beautifully illustrated book to show how the pictures show meaning. (Carefully looking for the clues). The children then created character descriptions using interesting sentence openers. We have started to create some Doodle Art. This is a form of meditative drawing that involves creating repetitive, structured patterns in a deliberate, focused way. Not only is it fun and relaxing, but it also has many therapeutic benefits. It helps to reduce stress, improves focus and concentration, and promotes feelings of calm and well-being. Just a reminder that home learning is uploaded to Google Classroom every Friday, including spellings. Thank you for your support.