Welcome to Life at KPS for Year 4

Mr Sussmann and Mrs Thamu warmly welcome you to Year 4.

The aim of this page is to highlight some of the fantastic learning that has been happening in Year 4, this page will be updated monthly, with photographs and information about the learning we have completed during the month.

We hope you enjoy looking through these updates and do discuss your child’s learning with them to celebrate their success. We look forward to any suggestions you may have to make your child’s learning a pleasant experience.

March 2021

Art

We have been looking at the art of Applique in Art this term as well as exploring three different sewing techniques. The children learnt how to do a running stitch, a back stitch and a cross stitch.  Many children had never used needle and thread before and they showed great dedication and care in practicing their stitching techniques.  The children then designed their Applique pieces based on one of the scenes from the Three Billy Goats Gruff story.  They created annotated designs in their art books and have started producing their final pieces by cutting fabric and using their stitching techniques to create applique collages.

English

In English this month we have been learning how to write diary entries. We have been exploring a new Alan peat sentence; the emotion, comma sentence and using it to describe the emotions of our characters in the Three Billy Goats Gruff story. We have looked at exemplary texts and developed our descriptive and figurative language to craft our own versions of a diary entry from the point of view of the misunderstood troll in the fable.

Gardening

We have been spending some extra time looking at gardening during our first weeks back at school.  We went outside during our first week back to look after the seeds which have been overwintering, that we planted in Autumn last year.  We discovered that the garlic, Crocuses and Sweet Peas which we planted have germinated and started to grow. We have been examining the beds on our daily walks and watching the onset of spring through our flowering plants. We have also been planting herb seeds in propagators.  The children are in groups of 3 or 4 and each groups has a small propagator where they have planted seeds.  A number have begun to germinate and we look forward to seeing what happens over the Easter break.  Year 4 have also been helping other year groups by spreading woodchip on the communal gardens.

History

We have been looking at the ancient Scandinavian tale of The Three Billy Goats Gruff for our topic work during the first few weeks back at school. We have explored different versions of the story including the gory original. We created a storyboard of the tale and the children planned and performed their own versions of it using roleplay. We explored the different characters in the story and looked at their character traits with a special focus on the troll.

Maths

We have been reviewing our fractions module at the beginning of our time back at school.  We discovered where the children had some gaps in their fraction knowledge and did a couple of review and problem-solving lessons. Then we moved onto Decimals, which we will be covering for the next four weeks, before and after the Easter holidays.  The children learn how to apply their knowledge of fractions, especially hundredths and tenths to convert to and manipulate numbers using decimal places. This is particularly useful when using money and also when timing sports races where athletes can win by mere hundredths of a second.

The children have also been reintroduced to Times Table Rock Stars. We hope they will improve their times and KPS can rank top 3 in Slough.

Music

Being back at school has made a huge difference to our class music lessons

Returning to classroom learning has helped the children to use percussion instruments and play samba rhythms as a whole class

They have focussed on changing pitch, beating ostinatos using different dynamics and playing syncopations alongside a pulse beat

They have listened to the theme ’Mambo’ from West Side Story and used the words to play each rhythm individually

On the 25th March the children took part in a body percussion workshop

PE

This term, children have been taking 3 PE lessons a week!  The children have taken part in fitness lessons, team building and sports/games.

The aim in our lessons this term has been to brush up on motor skills and get our fitness back up to scratch!  Children have been pushing themselves to increase their stamina and strength after being away from their normal school life for such a long time.  We have been going on daily walks, doing shuttle runs and lots of sprinting games.

We hope that the children will keep their fitness training going over the holidays so we can continue with many more sports and games when they return.

PSHE

We have been pursuing the recovery curriculum in PSHE and exploring important themes of rebuilding friendships by finding things they have in common, looking after existing relationships, caring for each other’s feelings and being kind to each other.

RE

We have looked at the Jewish holiday of Pesach/Passover for RE this term.  We learnt the story of Pesach.  From the Jews being slaves in Egypt and Baby Moses being raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter. Moses found a burning bush in the desert which spoke to him with G-d’s voice and demanded that the Jews were set free.  We learnt about the 10 plagues of Egypt and how the Jews finally escaped their enslavement and wandered in the desert for 40 years.

Science

In science this month, we have been learning about states of matter.  We have made sure to dedicate time during this term so the children can develop their experimental and investigative skills. We have looked at the three main states of mater; Solids, liquids and gases.  We have looked at why materials change state and the impact of heat on the bonds inside materials.  We have learnt that when heat energy is transferred into ice, for example, the H2O molecules start moving faster and sliding over each other so the solid ice turns into liquid water.  As more heat energy is transferred to the liquid water it eventually turns into a gas.  We continued our exploration of the different states of water by exploring the water cycle.  The children were very interested in why and how snow was formed.