Welcome to Year 4!

To contact the year leader please email: 

heatherlands.office@coastalpartnership.co.uk

Please phone the office if you have an urgent message or enquiry.

The Heatherlands Way

PE days: Monday (indoor) & Tuesday (outdoor) - Children to come into school dressed in PE kits.

WORLD BOOK DAY

We had a fantastic time on World Book Day! We read a new book called 'The Bag Guys' and we created our own 'Suspect Rap Sheet' for other villainous characters we know from stories. We also all got a book from the Pre-loved book sale! Thank you to all the parents that donated money, this will go towards buying new and exciting books for our school library. 

In Year 4, we had a fantastic end to our topic 'Food and Fairtrade' by welcoming in Sarah from DEED who spoke to all the children about the impact of Fairtrade on the wider world. The children impressed her with all the knowledge they had been learning all half term! We then had a fantastic time getting our classrooms ready for our Fairtrade Sale. Thank you to all the parents that attended and bought some of the Fairtrade products, we raised £261!

Next half term our topic is called 'Heavy Metal' where we will be reading the story 'The Iron Man' by Ted Hughes. We will be making wire sculptures based around the story in our art lessons and learning about the sculptor Alexander Calder. 

Road Safety

On Friday 7th February we welcomed Nickie and Helen from BCP to kick off our Road Safety learning which will take place after half term. They spoke to us about how we can cross the road safely and what they will show us when we're out on the roads.

There has been a buzz of excitement in Year 4 this week, as the children have explored the powers of artificial intelligence (AI). In our computing lesson, the children considered the pros and cons to AI technology. As a decision making tool, it has the power to solve problems quickly and effectively, but at what cost to humankind?

Following our ‘Ruined City’ setting descriptions in English last week, we decided to use AI to see just how effective some of our setting descriptions were. The teachers put some of the children’s work into AI technology, which then created an image. We were blown away by the accuracy and also the quality of the children’s work. We decided to test the AI technology by creating another text, which was not as descriptive, to see the result as a comparison. The children had clearly written some fantastic setting descriptions of ‘The Ruined City!’

This week in English the children have been writing setting descriptions about the ruined city, which was discovered in our text 'The Explorer.' The children had fun imagining what the details of the setting might be. They have included statues, temples and ornate pillars in their writing.

On Monday, the children took part in a fun 'Emile' battle across the three Year Four classes. More battles to follow!

In science, we have been using equipment to investigate the rate at which hot and cold water cool down.

In our topic work, we have been finding out about the journey of the cocoa bean and have written a diary from the point of view of a single bean, describing the journey from the tree to the shops- so much is involved!!

Multiplication Check - Emilie

We have been testing the children on their times tables monthly since the beginning of the school year. From this week, your child will be sent home their scores each month in the form of a table as shown below. This will identify how many questions they got right as well as identifying which ones they got wrong.

You will also be given their Mathathon results each week, which will show which times tables they are working on. These will all support parents in working on specific times tables to support you child'd progress with their times tables. Please speak to your child's teacher if you have any questions or need any clarification. Thank you!

The Explorer

This week the children have been writing the next chapter of our class text 'The Explorer'. The children were told the title of the chapter, which is called 'Smoke' and the first line. The children then had to create the next part of the story. We have been working on including fronted adverbials and correctly punctuated speech, which the children will include in their writing. We have also learnt about literary devices to create drama and anticipation such as repetition, alliteration and similes. We can't wait to read their chapters!

Happy New Year! 

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas break. We've started our new topic called 'Food and Fairtrade' where we have found out more about what Fairtrade is, and how some Fairtrade goods are produced. We learnt all about the journey of a banana from Costa Rica to England. Did you know that by ship, it takes 11 days to transport bananas from Costa Rica? We will be having a Fairtrade Sale at the end of the term, supported by a Sarah from DEED who will be teaching us about Fairtrade during the day. Watch this space for more details!

See How Far We've Come - Autumn

For the whole school's 'See How Far You've Come' writing the focus has been on careers. As we are going to be writing our own poems about sweets, we thought we would delve into the world of chocolate production. We learnt all about the Cadburys factory, what the different jobs are and what they have to do. We have then picked different roles to write about in the form of a diary entry. Our diary is going to be based around a special day in the factory, the day a new chocolate bar is invented! To get our creative juices flowing, the teachers invented their own chocolate bar and the children got to taste it. Some even tried to guess what the flavour was before we told them! Luckily, lots of the children enjoyed our strange, new creation - chocolate with popcorn and ready salted crisps! This was because in our diary entry that we modelled, we said that we got inspiration from eating our crisps at lunch. We are looking forward to the children finishing their diaries this week, which will include their own newly invented chocolate bar!

Anti-Bullying Week

To launch Anti-Bullying week in Year 4, we had some visitors from AFC Bournemouth to talk about respect and what bullying is. The children learnt about the definition of bullying, what to do if they are being bullied and how to help someone if they think they see bullying. They then worked together to create some excellent acrostic poems about one of our Heatherlands Values - Respect!

MULTIPLICATION CHECK MEETING

Thank you to all the parents that attended our meeting on the Year 4 Multiplication Check. Attached below are the slides from the presentation. If you have any questions, please speak to you child's teacher. 

Anglo-Saxon Presentations

This week in English we presented our Anglo-Saxon knowledge verbally in group presentations. Last week we gathered all of our facts about the Anglo-Saxons and organised them under sub headings. We then worked in groups to write as many facts about the different headings that we chose - Anglo-Saxon life, Arrival to Britain, Artefacts, Sutton Hoo and Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. The children all wrote their own scripts which they all took in turns to present to the class. We spoke about public speaking and how you should stand and speak when reading aloud to others. They all knew lots of different facts about the Anglo-Saxons and presented their learning well!

This month, we have been delving more into the story of Beowulf and are excited to finally find out how the story ends before the half term holiday! We've also learnt  a lot more about the Anglo-Saxons, such what Sutton Hoo is and why it was an important discovery. We have then used this learning to create our own presentations to the class so we can share what we have already learnt.

For our maths we have been learning how to add and subtract 4-digit numbers using the column method and this is something that the children can practise at home. We are also moving onto learning our 6, 7, 9 and 12 times tables and the children are expected to practice their times tables at home using Emile or MathsFrame. If you need any help with this, please ask your child's teacher. 

After half term, we will continue our 'Invaders or Traders?' topic and learn some more about the Vikings.

An advance notice, we will be making Viking clay boats towards the end of the next half term so all children will need to bring in an old t-shirt or art apron as it gets very messy!

Week 5 - home learning reminders

Thank you to everyone for their excellent quiz questions. We have all been testing our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings! Just a reminder that all children should be using Emile for times table homework. We are consolidating our 2, 5 and 10 times tables at the moment but feel free to practise them all. If you have any problems accessing Emile please speak to your child's teacher. Also, children should be reading with an adult at least 3 times a week and recording all their reads (with an adult, or independently) in their reading journals. If they finish a book then an adult must tick off the 100 Golden Reads at the back please. 

SWIMMING

Swimming will take place on a Monday for a block of 5 lessons. We need permission to take each child as well as if they are going to be picked up from Rossmore Leisure Centre after swimming at 2.45pm or if you want your child to walk back to school for end of day collection at 3.15pm. The Google Form has been sent by the school office and payments for lessons (£5 per lesson) need to be made through Arbor.

SWANAGE: Monday 16^th Sept - 14^th October 24

KIMMERIDGE: Monday 4^th Nov - 2^nd Dec 24

LULWORTH: Monday 9^th Dec, 16^th Dec, 6^th Jan, - 20th Jan 25

Week 3 - w/c 16.9.24

This week in English, the children came to school and discovered lots of posters scattered around Year 4. Seems like a strange creature has been spotted! So, we started off our week being creative and drawing our own strange, hybrid creatures and made sure that we described what they looked like, where they live, what they eat and any special features they have. We've then been learning about the features of a non-chronological report because we're going to write our own about our creatures.

EMILE

Emile is a learning webskape that we will be primarily using for times tables practise. The children have been shown how to use it in school. The children can play freely as well as completing challenges set by their class teacher. The site tracks children's progress and helps them to earn coins and trophies!

The site can be accessed through a browser or downloaded as an app through your device's app store.

https://emile-education.com/ (click on Premium Login) and click on MESO for multiplication practise.

We have attached a more detailed guide below