It has been a super week this week with Red Nose Day on Friday! Thank you so much for your donations, they are going to a fabulous charity! Take a look at this week’s blog to find out what we have been learning about all this week!

Writing

In Writing this week, we completed our independent writes from last week. I was really impressed with the persuasive letters Y4 Manatees wrote as this is a particularly tricky style of writing. On Tuesday, the children were introduced to their next independent write which will be a poem. We began by learning all about the different features of a narrative poem in particular exploring rhyme and rhythm.  I was really impressed with how well Y4 grasped rhyming couplets in this lesson. We then recapped the story of Hansel and Gretel as this is the narrative poem we shall be writing for our independent write next week. On Wednesday, we looked at different types of vocabulary we could use in our poems. We learnt that in our poems we would need to use both high-level and narrative vocabulary. Y4 worked really hard in this lesson, however we struggled slightly when it came to independently writing our own part of the poem, so on Thursday we did some more work on a poem’s structure and syllables. On Friday, we learnt all about imagery and how we can use similes, metaphors and personification to help create an image in a reader’s mind when writing poems.

Arithmetic

In Arithmetic this week we have focused on recapping our number bonds to 100. This is an important skill which will come in useful for our decimals learning. We shall continue to build our fluency and confidence throughout the week.

Maths

In Maths this week we continued with our topic of ‘Decimals’. On Tuesday, we learnt about how to make a whole. We used hundreds squares to help us do this by considering how many hundredths had been shaded in and how many more needed to be shaded in to make a whole. This was a tricky lesson but as usual Manatees approached it with determination and enthusiasm. On Wednesday, we then moved onto writing decimals ensuring to use place holders when needed. Later on in the week, we compared decimals. We absolutely flew this lesson however we now need to work on our explaining of mathematical concepts to build our mastery. On Friday, we then used our understanding of comparing decimals to order them. 

Science

In Science this week we celebrated British Science Week. This years theme of British Science Week is connections and Y4 considered the connections within The Water Cycle and created posters to display this. We also completed a reading activity that links to The Water Cycle to help consolidate our understanding.

DT

This term in DT we have been learning all about bread. This week we used salt dough to practice different shaping techniques that will come in useful when we make our actual dough. We are certainly a very creative class, take a look at some of the incredible dough shapes Manatees managed to create with their salt dough!

History

This week has been a very busy History week, as we have had two History lessons. In our first lesson we learnt all about the British chieftain Caratacus who fought against the Romans to try and prevent them from expanding. However, he was ultimately in unsuccessful when the Queen of the Brigantes tribe betrayed him by capturing him and handing him over to the Romans. In our second lesson, we then learnt all about Boudicca who was another leader of a Celtic tribe (the Iceni tribe) who wanted to revolt against the Romans. we learnt that Boudicca raised an army of 30,000 warriors and razed to the ground in Colchester. However, as Boudicca grew in confidence she ultimately led a failed uprising against the Romans.

Geography

In Geography this week, we learnt all about where and why people go on skiing holidays. We learnt all about the Matterhorn and learnt that tourists visit Zermatt in Switzerland to go skiing down the ski slopes. We then began to consider the advantages and disadvantages tourism brings in Zermatt. We learnt that although tourism has produced lots of jobs in the area of Zermatt, lots of trees have been cut down to make room for ski slopes and ski-lifts which is bad for the environment.

Thank you for taking the time to read this week’s blog! We hope that everyone has a lovely weekend and to those who celebrate Mother’s Day we hope that you have a lovely day!

Miss Selman and Miss Marshsmiley