Author: year4

Sammy, one half of the Knuckleball twins, joined us to showcase knuckleball football skills and get the children out practising.

He told the children all about their adventures and inspired them with names of famous people they had worked with – Jürgen Klopp, Mo Salah to name just two!

The Skill Explanation

The Practice Session

Hi everyone,

We hope you have had a relaxing and enjoyable Christmas and New Year break. We are all geared up here for a new term packed full of learning!  Our history topic for the next two terms is the Ancient Egyptians and we have so many exciting (and sometimes quite gross!) things to learn! We will be extending this theme into our English too with our new book, Marcy and the Riddle of the Sphinx. In maths, we will be continuing with multiplication and division, before moving on to length and perimeter, followed by fractions.  Take a look at our overview below for further information about these and all our other subjects.

Term 3 Overview

Term 3 Overview – Ancient Egyptians (PDF Download)

Our Key Instant Recall Facts this term revolve around the 9-times table.

KIRF – 9-times table facts (PDF Download)

PE this term will be on a Wednesday and a Thursday, so please ensure full PE kit is at school for those days. For full details about what the St Nicholas PE kit comprises, please visit the uniform page on our website (Uniform – St Nicholas CE Primary Academy)

The Year 4 Team – Mr Houghton, Miss Ryan, Miss Wayland, Miss Ellis, Ms Mattock

We were all very excited to be involved with Light Up New Romney 2024.  The LUNR team came into school every Wednesday in November and we had workshops to build our individual lanterns and our themed, feature lantern. We had to keep it top secret so that we didn’t give anything away before the night of the parade on 13th December – we weren’t even allowed to tell our families!! The parade started at the top of the high street and ended at the church. We sang two songs – When Christmas Comes to Town and Thank, Thank You, Jesus Christ! – at the end of the service.

The Plans!

What are we building? – the reveal

Blueprints

Workshops

The Parade

This week was Anti-Bullying Week with the theme Choose Respect. The children were able to describe what bullying is and distinguish it from just falling out with someone. On Tuesday, they wore odd socks to celebrate the fact that we are all different and that we should respect those differences.

Today, the year 4 children led KS2 worship in the hall.  The theme was peace and forgiveness, looking at The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant taken from Matthew 18:21-35.

Sometimes people do and say things to hurt us on purpose. Sometimes they don’t mean it, but it hurts anyway. Forgiveness is hard.

The children dissolved a tablet into a jug of water, turning the water a different colour. It reminds us that our actions often have consequences and that the consequences may go on even after the person has been forgiven. Forgiveness may need to be an ongoing, conscious process. However, forgiving and being forgiven is an important part of feeling at peace in body, mind and spirit.

We watched a short video about the unforgiving servant.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
²¹ Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?”

²² “No, not seven times,” answered Jesus, “but seventy times seven, ²³ because the Kingdom of heaven is like this. Once there was a king who decided to check on his servants’ accounts. ²⁴ He had just begun to do so when one of them was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. ²⁵ The servant did not have enough to pay his debt, so the king ordered him to be sold as a slave, with his wife and his children and all that he had, in order to pay the debt. ²⁶ The servant fell on his knees before the king. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay you everything!’ ²⁷ The king felt sorry for him, so he forgave him the debt and let him go.

²⁸ “Then the man went out and met one of his fellow servants who owed him a few dollars. He grabbed him and started choking him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he said. ²⁹ His fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back!’ ³⁰ But he refused; instead, he had him thrown into jail until he should pay the debt. ³¹ When the other servants saw what had happened, they were very upset and went to the king and told him everything. ³² So he called the servant in. ‘You worthless slave!’ he said. ‘I forgave you the whole amount you owed me, just because you asked me to. ³³ You should have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you.’ ³⁴ The king was very angry, and he sent the servant to jail to be punished until he should pay back the whole amount.”

³⁵ And Jesus concluded, “That is how my Father in heaven will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Reflection
I wonder how it feels when people forgive us for something we did that hurt or upset them?

In science this term, our theme is Can we control electricity?

This week, the children were building their own electrical circuits, working out how to make the bulb illuminate or a buzzer sound. They started with a basic circuit with a cell, wires and a bulb / buzzer. Then, they moved on to a circuit with a switch, learning how when the switch is open, the circuit is broken and no longer sounds the buzzer or lights the bulb.  After building each circuit, they also drew circuit diagrams, using the correct electrical symbols.

Every morning we do a daily mile to encourage us all to get outside and exercise, but today a strange thing happened! Without any prompting, the children started to link together in a conga line, working together as a year group and having fun, perfectly reflecting this term’s value of Friendship.

Well done year 4, you inspire and amaze us every day!

Hi everyone,

We hope you have had a relaxing and fun half-term and are ready for another term packed full of learning! This term we start our project with Team LUNR in readiness for the Light Up New Romney Parade on 13th December (please keep this date free). We will also be leading an Advent service at St Nicholas church on Monday 2nd December (again, save the date, more details to follow). In English, we will be reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and focusing our writing around this wonderful story. In our maths learning, we will have a final week looking t subtraction and answer checking strategies before moving on to measurement (area) and multiplication and division.  Take a look at our overview below for more information across all our subjects.

Term 2 – Where does our food come from?

Term 2 Overview (PDF download)

The children should continue to practise their times tables using Times Tables Rock Stars (don’t forget to challenge the adults!). Our key instant recall facts for this term are centred around the 6x table.  Focus on this one at home and use Jamming on TTRS to help practise your recall skills!

Key Instant Recall Facts – 6x Table

Key Instant Recall Facts – 6x Table (PDF download)

We look forward to welcoming you all back on Monday 4th November!

The Year 4 Team

Term 1 was a great start to the year, absolutely packed with learning.  Here’s a look at some of what we got up to…