I’m so sorry I haven’t blogged in a while…what with the snow, drama productions let alone everything else this term, I just haven’t had time. However, the photos section is now updated on our website. I hope you enjoyed the snow (half way through our dress rehearsal, the snow came down which ended with pandemonium!)
Did you see our talented children in the drama production ‘The Amazing Adventures of Superstan’? Weren’t they fantastic? I was so proud of them all and know that it will have helped their confidence and self-belief so much! Thank you for supporting us, it really means a lot. Go #DramaClub17/18!
Over the past month the children have been getting stuck into a project based on being a roman estate agent. They had to write their persuasive estate agents styled texts which were born after creating their own Roman Villa floor plans. They were given a budget of 10,000 denarii (Roman money) and had to decide what they could afford from the types of rooms to the art work inside it – even the slaves they could buy! This stimulated lots of discussion and fantastic ideas which they then turned into a real-life plan using their knowledge of area to establish the size of each room. Then they wrote persuasive adverts in the style of estate agents particulars to sell their property – these looked great and some are on display. Over the next two weeks and the first week after half term, they children will create green screen persuasive advert!
A huge congratulations to Milly W, Oscar P & Isla who have been awarded with star writers this half term.
Reading is a huge passion of St Hilary (and mine!) and we always do our best to engage children in high quality texts. So, with World Book Day rescheduled, I decided to hold a world cup of books. This meant that I gave extracts, blurbs and picture of 8 different amazing books that we could use as our class reader this term. In group stages, the children had to vote for certain books through to the quarter, semi and final. The book that was crowned the winner was ‘My Brother is a Superhero’ and already its brought lots of laughs!
Ode poetry has been our most recent work where the children have to write to the subject they absolutely love. The children have chosen various food and objects to write about which has been a lot of fun! We’re hopefully going to have a poetry show down (battle) when they’re complete!
In Maths, we have begun our journey of Year 4 fractions. First, we learnt how to find fractions of shapes where the denominator may be less than the parts within the shape e.g. ¼ of a rectangle with 12 pieces so 12 ÷4 = 3. They then used fraction walls to identify equivalent fractions e.g. ½ = 2/4 = 3/6 etc. This then moved onto representing equivalent fractions using diagrams to really visualise the concept. Understanding that a fraction is part of a whole, the children then learnt about fractions more than 1 again, using pictures to help understand this. The children have learnt how to use bar models to find fractions of quantities. It’s been great to see them using and applying their knowledge in their arithmetic tests which shows that the information is sticking!
Mr Davy has been teaching the children about electricity and the children have really enjoyed it. They learnt all about how to create circuits using vocab and pictures to demonstrate this. They experimented with practical equipment, recording their results. There is lots of fantastic learning in their topic books which you’ll be able to view in the meetings.
Fancy joining the Roman Army? The children have learnt how to become soldiers and what was the criteria in order to join up. They then created posters to persuade the public. I wonder how many people they convinced! Our classroom displays are now full of fantastic writing and artwork which you’ll be able to see during parent consultations from next week.
The children have learnt about artefacts from the past by using an app called Streetmusem: Londinium which is based on a street map of London showing exactly the point when and where historical objects from the past have been found. The class were given challenges to find certain items and recorded it. Pictures are on the website!
We’re massively proud of our awesome cricketers Oscar P, Toby and Shilah for being in a team that won a silver medal at the Kwik Cricket Country finals and to Lilyrose, Robyn, Emma, Dan, Alfie and Oscar P for competing in the Penwith Schools Swimming gala some of whom won medals! Dan also came 4th in a Judo competition which is fantastically awesome – keep it up team!!
To finish this week, we’ve had a big chat about camp Delaware where we were able to answer any questions and reassure children. We know some children have huge anxieties about this but we can’t explain in words how much they’re going to love the experience. We will be telling the children which group/room they will be in before Easter as they wrote down who they want to want to be with during their stay and we do our best to accommodate this where possible!
Music, PSHE, R.E, P.E are just a few other subjects we’ve been learning about but I don’t want to make this blog any longer than it is.
A massive well done to Beth D, Amy, Toby, Dan and Isabelle who have all been star pupils this half term – who will achieve the next two weeks’ worth?
I’m very much looking forward to seeing you all over the next few weeks to discuss your child’s progress. If you have any last-minute questions about camp, please do let me know 😊
Have a great weekend.
Mr Larter
class4sthilary 