Literacy

This week in our reading circles we were looks at higher order questioning, reading a new chapter of our book with our groups and discussing questions such as ‘how could you change the story to make a different ending.’

We have read chapter 5 of our class novel and we wrote a character description of the main character Kensuke. We used the novel to highlight parts which told us a little about his physical appearance and his personality to draw and write the character description.

We have also had a new focus in grammar this week, looking at speech marks and how to use them. We had another sentence battle this week and Alicia and Layla were the winners!

Through book week we have also looked at Authors Live where we learned a little about Alex T Smith, the author and illustrator of the Claude books. We also got to draw our own Claude and he showed us step by step.

In music this week we learned how to play jingle bells on the keyboard, guitars and drum pads.

Topic

Our climate focus of the week has been on climate change. We have been looking at how car pollution effects the environment and we have been designing our own posters to reduce the use of cars around the school. These posters had to include snappy slogans, illustrations and have an eye catching layout.

Maths

We’ve been continuing on with addition strategies this week looking at partitioning numbers and ‘finding the difference between two numbers’ using a variety of strategies. We did a fantastic job of explaining the different ways we can ‘find the difference’ between 2 numbers, try us with a few examples!

Our climate zone of the week has been the rainforest. We have continued our climate fact file by researching information on the computers about the rainforest. Zack and Ryan found out that the Amazon rainforest is 5.5 million km squared! Through our topic we have also looked at the water cycle and we have remembered some of the new vocabulary – runoff (Elise), precipitation (Robbie), condensation (Ellie) and evaporation (Tyler).

We have been reading more of Kensuke’s Kingdom and for our writing this week we used our five senses to describe a story setting with a waterfall. Some of the stories were fantastic! We have also been developing our VCOP skills – this weeks focus has been on apostrophe’s!

In reading we also used our knowledge of Kensuke’s kingdom to highlight key words that describe 2 different settings in the story and then we illustrated them.

We have also been working on our new spelling words in sprint and blind spelling.

It has been Anti-bullying week so today we looked at what bullying looks like, how it can make people feel and what we can do to help.

Maths

We have been looking at different adding strategies e.g. compensation so to add 19 we know we can add 20 and take away 1.

We have been  looking at making up our own word problems using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division!

We have also been recapping our number bonds to 10, 20 and 100.

Happy Children in Need Day! (Ellie)

Miss Nicholl and P4N

Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope you find the following information useful.  If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Learning in Term 1:

Our class novel The Wild Robot Escapes provided a link between learning in P3 and P4 and the class thoroughly enjoyed hearing about the adventures Roz and Brightbill got up to in this sequel. We used the novel in a number of ways: drawing migrating geese, using ideas and writing techniques in the children’s own story writing and also used the novel to highlight how the writer uses our senses. This led nicely to our next topic, Living Things and Their Habitats where the class developed their online research skills, made fact files on animals and created bird feeder and instructions on how to make them

In numeracy we worked on our understanding of place value and learned how to partition numbers to 10000 as well as how to use this knowledge to round number to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000. The class also worked on their recall of multiplication facts and how these can be used to solve word problems.

Learning focus this term:

Through our Weather around the World topic we will be learning about/to:

• Investigate and research different climates around the world
• Observe and record rainfall, temperature and cloud cover
• The difference between climate and weather
• The Water Cycle

Core Literacy:

This term we will be:

• Highlighting information in texts that help us create a picture in our minds
• Using mind maps to understand characters, plots and messages in texts
• Taking notes to create new texts
• Using ambitious adjectives and verbs in our writing
• Using the three sharings approach (puzzles, likes/dislikes, connections) to discuss our class novel
• In writing trying to use our senses to create and describe story settings in detail
• Learning to use paragraphs correctly

Children will continue to be given books and weekly reading homework. Children will keep their group reading book in class and take home a book of their choice from the class or wing libraries. Please ensure your child completes this at home and remember to sign their reading diary. Encourage your child to read widely for enjoyment at home and use the three sharings approach to discuss what they have read.

Core Numeracy:

This term we will be:

• Looking at a range of mental strategies for addition and subtraction
• Looking at written algorithms for addition and subtraction
• Using counting strategies to multiply, using the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 times tables
• I can estimate and measure volume using ml
• I can record the measurement of volume to the nearest standard unit, e.g. ml

We encourage your child to use Sumdog at home to practice their maths skills. Children should all have a copy of their usernames and passwords.

Health and Wellbeing

This term we will be:

• Learning Cool in School strategies to help us resolve conflict and fall outs independently
• Learning when it is necessary to ask for help from an adult
• Learning about Poverty and how we can help reduce the costs of the school day

This week in P4N, we have started looking at a new climate zone – The Arctic. We used our theme of the Arctic to pretend we were scientists, describing our journey using our 5 senses. We have been using our skills from our ‘sentence battle’ on Monday by uplevelling boring sentences – Zack, Tyler and Jaxon were the battle champions!

We have been reading more of our novel Kensuke’s Kingdom and today we wrote a fantastic piece of writing on what we would see, think and wonder if we were Michael washed up on the island!

In maths we have been continuing to practice our 6 times table. We have also been looking at adding 2 digit numbers bridging 100, using different strategies. For outdoor learning day we did a relay addition race around the trim trail track solving problems and running to the next person. The winning team was Aaron, Lexi, Zack and Evie!

In topic this week we have been keeping track of the weather using our weather observation chart, recording temperature and rainfall.

With Mrs Tavendale we have been looking at animals in French, multiplication and division of 6 times table and poems based on Remembrance Day.

Thank you for reading our blog!

Last week in Primary 4 we were very busy!

In maths we were continuing our focus of addition but looking at ‘near doubles,’ where we were looking at how this  strategy can help us when mentally adding 2 digit numbers. We have also been revising our number bonds to 100, making sure that we have a good understanding and quick recall!

In literacy we have started a ‘sentence battle,’ where we take a boring sentence and turn it into a fantastic, exciting one! Everyone has been working really hard on ‘uplevelling’ their sentences and the work is paying off!

We have began our topic ‘Weather around the world’ and we are beginning to think about the different climate zones, the equator and why some countries are hotter/ colder than others.

We had a fantastic time at the Halloween disco, everyone made a fantastic effort with their costumes!