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.

November 2021

Art

This month in art we continued with our work on clay. This brief had to change. As we realised that it was not working for many reasons which we discussed. We then came up with an idea that allowed us to relate our clay work to the environment. We wanted to display a message using the clay to illustrate the damage being caused to the Earth. Such as de-forestation, pollution in the sea and air. We wanted to highlight the harmful effects human behaviour was having on the Earth.
We decided to paint each ‘pebble’ of clay in light green, dark green, light blue, dark blue, brown, grey and finally black. The brighter colours represented how nature was preserved. It depicts how Earth was thriving, clean and full of natural resources. Whereas, the darker colours illustrated the pollution and the harm caused to Earth. As our artist Aye Weiwei was a human rights activist we felt our clay art helped also by highlighting the plight of Earth.

English

We have been looking at list sentences this month. We have learnt where we need to place a comma and where we need to add an ‘and’.  We have also been looking at 3ed sentences and examples of greater depth writing during our English lessons, in order to prepare us for our creative writing task this term.  We have been exploring how best to write 3ed sentences by creating word clouds with as many ed suffix words as we can think of.  We thought of boring sentences about the animals in our class story and improved these by adding 3 relevant ed suffix words to make a 3ed sentence – Excited, delighted, thrilled Monkey swung from tree to tree chattering with great enthusiasm.’

Geography

This month we have continued with our topic on China.  We have looked closely at the Chinese New Year and how these celebrations run for 15 days.  We discussed the differences and similarities between Chinese culture and customs to that practiced by children in our class.  We learnt how food is an integral part of most celebrations. We were surprised and shocked how day 7 is considered as everyone’s birthday!

We have also looked at the Chinese Zodiac.  We learnt how each year is associated with an animal and we apparently share the characteristics of this animal.   Most of our class are Dragons and Snakes.  We looked at their characteristics in great detail

Maths

We have been looking at techniques for adding and subtracting 4-digit numbers this month. Based on the maths skills and knowledge we have developed during last half term about place value, we have found that by following simple rules and remembering each place value is 10 times the previous place value it is easy to add and subtract large numbers. We have been using counters to learn about exchanging and working on our column method skills to subtract numbers. Starting our lessons with ‘fluent in five has helped immensely to consolidate what we have learnt.

Music

I have been very proud of the attitude of the students this term.

The Children have further developed their singing skills, singing a song called Jasmine flower. They have created class rules in order to produce the best group singing that they can, including clear words, keeping to a pulse beat, listening to others and balancing their sound.

The children have also begun to compose their own Chinese melodies and rhythms, using a pentatonic scale.

Panjabi

PE

This month in PE the children have been learning about Football.

Children have been learning skills such as dribbling, passing, and defending.

We have been focusing on team play and working collectively towards a set goal. We have focused on pitch positions and children have been given the task to recognize their strengths and play in a position on the pitch that utilizes that strength.  We have narrowed the positions down to defenders, mid fielders, strikers and goal keepers.

We have also started to introduce left and right positions and will continue to broaden these roles as we learn more about the game.

PSHE

We have been examining themes around e-safety and bullying in PSHE this month.  For our bullying lesson we looked at what the definition of bullying was and at the different ways in which people can be bullied or bully.  We discussed physical, social, emotional and cyber bullying as a class and came to understand how it might feel to be bullied and began to discuss why a bully might bully someone else.  We looked at the positive emotions we felt when we were included and the negative emotions felt when we were excluded.  We agreed that if we saw someone excluded from an activity we would use kind words and include them.

Religious Education

This month in Re we concentrated on Bandi Shor Diwas, Diwalli and Guru Nanak Dev ji’s Gurpurab.   We discussed these in great detail and looked at how they were celebrated.  We also prepared Shabads to recite at our assembly and even managed to learn one in class.  We discussed these and ensured that we understood what they meant. We also looked at Remembrance Day and why it was so important. We discussed dhow we remember the men and women that gave up their lives in different ways and how one way of remembering them is through wearing a poppy. Finally. we learnt about Menin Gate in Belgium and why this site was chosen as a memorial.

Science

For Science this month we have started to look at sound.  We started our topic by walking around the school and listening to the different sounds in the different parts.  We were surprised to learn that sound is an energy created by vibrations and that the louder the sound the bigger the vibration. We learnt that pitch was a synonym for volume and faster vibrations created a higher pitch. And slower vibrations made a lower pitch.  We discussed how sound energy travels from particle to particle far easier in a solid because the vibrating particles are closer together.  Lots of ideas were shared as to how to make the music from a mobile phone louder without using external speakers. To illustrate what we had discussed we also used string and paper cups to create our own telephones and were pleasantly surprised at what we could hear.

Sikh Studies

In Sikh Studies this term, pupils have been learning about the first few Gurus and the key teachings from each of them from Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji to Guru Arjun Dev Ji. Children have learnt stories about each of the Gurus and what the main teachings are from each.

Children were able to recall key facts and the teachings of each of the Gurus and show what they learnt about the Guru by writing sentences in bullet form of what they have learnt. This helps children learn the names of the Gurus and some facts and stories of each of the Gurus too.