Today we had a brilliant session from the Inspire Learning team.  We were using the Sphero app to write some code.  Our aim was to get our Sphero Bolts (Mini robots) from one cone to another and back again as fast as we could.  P4 had great fun and were quite disappointed that it was just a taster session.  I think we could have stayed out there all morning.

We then finished the day with a class picnic.  We thoroughly enjoyed the cakes, sweets and bubbles; thank you Kingsland.

As this is my last day teaching P4a I would like to say a huge thank you to all the children and their families.  It has been a very strange year but it has been my absolute pleasure to teach this class.  I wish you all the best going forward.

I hope you all have a wonderful summer. 🙂

We are focusing on telling the time at the moment. We are revising o’clock, half past and quarter to/past and learning to tell the time on an analogue clock at 5 minute intervals.

We have been using the interactive clock in the link below and using 3 steps to identify the time: Is the minute hand on the past or to side of the clock? What hour has the hour hand has gone past or is coming up to? Finally we have been counting in 5’s to identify the minutes?

https://www.visnos.com/demos/clock

This Maths Frame game is a fun way of working on this at home too.

https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/116/telling_the_time#

This week’s spellings are:

Health and wellbeing:

We have been thinking and talking about disability. This was explained to the children: A disability is when a person finds it difficult (or maybe impossible) to walk, see, hear, speak, learn or do other important things. Some disabilities last forever, some just last for a while.  A disability can be something a person was born with, or it can be because the person has been ill or had an accident.

We are learning and talking about disability because we want our school and our class to be a place where every child is welcome and learning and has friends. We watched some short films to help us learn.  Here are the links.  Your child might be happy to watch them again with you.

• Winnie is 9 and has Cerebral Palsy https://attitudelive.com/watch/Kids-with-Disabilities-Winnie
• Luke is 9 and has Downs Syndrome https://attitudelive.com/watch/Kids-with-Disabilities-Luke
• What’s up with Nick? https://researchautism.org/resources/kit-for-kids/

This week we are monitoring and recording the growth of the cress seeds we planted last week.

Today we looked at the life cycle of a plant as well as discussing the germination process.  We then worked a little bit of magic and initiated the germination process ourselves. We filled a plant pot with compost, popped in a sweet pea seed, covered it over gently with more compost, gave it a  little water and put it in a warm place. We will be keeping a close eye on our seeds and looking out for signs of growth over the coming weeks.  Keep an eye out for some photo’s to follow.  When we have nice, healthy, established plants, each child can bring their sweet pea plant home.

This week our spellings are:

In maths we have been looking at the symbols for:  greater than > less than < and equal to = and using these symbols to make some equations correct.

We will be moving on to looking at what function  machines are and how they affect a given number.  e.g. If my function machine multiplies everything I put into it by four, what numbers will I get if I put  6, 3, 9 and 8 into it?

Here’s a fun code cracking worksheet you could try: 01b – Function Machines – What is the secret code (Worksheet)

It was so lovely to see everyone’s smiling faces last week. Everyone looked refreshed and ready to learn after the Easter break.

We have a busy few weeks ahead of us and if anyone is keen to follow up on anything or do a bit extra at home here is a little bit more information.

This week P4a’s root word spellings for this week are:
boil

foil

spoil

coin

boy

toy

annoy

joy

Your child will have a personalised list on their iPad. Please feel free to practise these at home.

In science we are looking at plants. So far we have looked at naming the various parts of plants and flowers. We have been learning about different types of pollination; wind and insect pollination as well as self pollination and cross pollination. We’ve been ‘busy bees’ distributing pollen around the various flowers in our garden. (P4 you can tell your families how that worked) and we will continue to look at: Fertilisation and dispersal, What plants need, Plant adaptation and the life cycle of a plant.

We have been revising our times tables over the last couple of weeks and the children are doing really well – they beat me 10-1 in beat the teacher today!!!!
For the next couple of weeks we will be looking at missing number sums using all 4 number operations. Some examples:
23 + __ = 51
__ – 12 = 10
6 X __ = 18
42 __ 7 = 6

The children all have their Sumdog logins and should be able to access a wide range of maths (and literacy) activities from home.

Our pet monster stories are coming on beautifully and we can’t wait to share these with you.
Next week we are moving on to exposition writing and we are looking at an email that has been sent from a class of children to the local council.

We have been learning to use a thesaurus and we have been finding exciting synonyms for some standard everyday words. (e.g. nice)
In reading we have been exploring the difference between fact and opinion.

Our health and wellbeing focus is: Expect the unexpected and you should have all received an email with a flyer explaining all about this topic.

We are looking forward to a lovely final term in P4 and we will keep you updated over the coming weeks.

P4a designed an investigation to find out which materials made good conductors and which made good insulators.  They then used their findings to design and make a switch to control when their buzzers sounded.

P4a have been making a “stained glass window” poppy display ahead of Remembrance Day tomorrow.

The children will bring their poppies home today should you wish to display them at home.

P4 have been finding out about electricity.  We learned that electricity is a flow of electrons and we have been investigating how these electrons flow best.  Last week we used some of our new knowledge to create a simple circuit to make our bulbs light up.

Continue reading Electricity →