Year 4

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…

In DT this term, the children have been designing and creating pavilions having looked at examples from trade fairs around the world alongside examples from the Milan World Expo 2015. The children used card, lolly sticks, straws and paper strips to build and clad their creations.

We started the term looking at different structures using plasticine and cocktail sticks, understanding which shapes are strong shapes for building. We discovered that triangles are really strong and that we can strengthen structures with double thickness sides or by adding braces across corners

Work in Progress
After we had created our designs, we started creating our structures.

Our Finished Designs
We clad our structures using paper weaving, concertina paper strips, lolly stick and straws.

Today, we had the first of our 6 wellbeing days.  In Beech class, we spent some time refreshing our memories about our environmental activist, Greta Thunberg. We were inspired by her passion for the environment and wanted to do something for ourselves that will make a difference to the world. We looked at the UN Global Goals and started thinking about Global Goal 15 – Life on Land.

Wellbeing Day – Caring for our world

Greta Thunberg

Little People, Big Dreams

UN Global Goals

Global Goal 15 – Life on Land

Shelter examples

Shelters with information boards

Example how to guides

Example design briefs

We are going to create shelters to encourage helpful bugs and animals and increase biodiversity around the school. We want to include information panels to tell people about the school and what creatures the different parts of our shelters are designed to attract. We spent the day creating our design briefs, either on our own or in groups.

Everyone came up with fantastic ideas which we can take forward to our next Wellbeing day in November. We were really pleased when Mr Dale came in to see what we were doing. He told us he’d ask our site team to help with the construction phase of the project and that he’d get our information boards made professionally too! We are very excited for next time…

Every year on 26th September, schools across Europe join in with the European Day of Languages, celebrating the diversity of language across the continent.  At St Nicholas this year, every class chose a European country to learn about.  Beech class chose Czechia (formerly the Czech Republic).

We created flags, learnt about the country – capital city: Prague; population: 10.3 million; size: 30,452 sq miles; currency: Czech koruna (£1 ~ 30Kč) – and learnt some of the language.

We can say hello and goodbye, both formally and to friends and family, and we can also count to 10!

Formal greetings
Dobré ráno – Good morning
Dobrý den – Good day
Dobrý večer – Good evening
Na schledanou – Goodbye

Informal greetings
Ahoj – Hello!
Ahoj – Goodbye!

Year 4 have been loving our music lessons this term with Mrs Vincent. The children all enjoy getting involved in both singing and playing instruments. Already this term we have learned 3 new short songs, about minims and crotchets and so much more! We can see how much our music lessons are improving our listening skills which is essential in all areas of our learning. We look forward to the rest of our lessons this term!

On Friday, Birch class enjoyed reading in the school library. Everyone loved looking through the books and found lots of different topics to choose from! All children chose a library book to take home and read with their family. The children were so excited to share their books and the beanbags were a real hit with the children, what a lovely way to cosy up with a book.

Hello everyone, welcome to year 4. It was so lovely to see so many smiling, happy faces coming into the classrooms this morning, ready to start new classes.

This term is packed with lots of new learning which we are excited to share with the children. You can see below an overview of the term and the wide variety of different areas we will be covering.

Term 1 Overview – Rivers (PDF Download)

KIRFs (Key Instant Recall Facts)

This term in our maths key facts, we are asking the children to ensure they know their 3x, 4x and 8x tables.

T1 KIRFs Year 4 (PDF Download)

Our PE day this term is Thursday, so please ensure children have their full PE kits in school for Thursday. PE kit requirements can be found on the website here – Uniform – St Nicholas CE Primary Academy (st-nicholas-newromney.kent.sch.uk).

We are really looking forward to the year ahead.  If you have any questions, please contact your class teacher.

Many thanks

Year 4 team