Year 4

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…

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!