18 May 2018

Yr4 Curriculum Update – 18/05/18

Working together to achieve success for every child

 

Dear Parents,

Last week was a very busy week for the students as they completed their chain reaction machines and videoed their machine working and an explanation of how it worked. There were lots of technological challenges for some students who used the problem solving skills in order to work them out. The machines all contained a number of simple machines and the students were able to demonstrate their learning about them with confidence.

This week we have begun our final unit of Year 4. Under the transdisciplinary theme of Where We Are In Place and Time we have begun to explore how historians use evidence to find out about past civilisations. They have begun to identify what skills a historian needs in order to find out about the past and have then used these skills to look at artefacts and try to work out what they tell us about the person they belong to. There was some great learning as students discovered that drawing conclusions based on assumptions were not always accurate.

In language, students have applied their knowledge of explanation texts in order to describe and explain the functioning of their own crazy contraptions. Combining their engineering knowledge with their skills as writers, the children worked together to create a piece that explained how their machines worked. After some strenuous planning, some of the groups then recorded their explanations as voice-overs to the videos of their machines in action. Be sure to log onto your child’s evidencer page to see all their hard work when it goes live on the 25th! The children will next be moving on to use a range of persuasive language to describe their theories as to the ownership and origin of a range of artifacts.

In reading we have been noticing the questions we ask as we read. This helps us to build our comprehension skills and think deeper about what we are reading.

In Maths, students have been looking at the properties of 2D and 3D shapes. Students have been identifying and classifying 2D and 3D shapes according to their features. In addition, we have been consolidating our knowledge of place value and learning how awareness of this system can help us when dividing and multiplying numbers by 10 and 100.  We will continue to review place value as well as begin construction of 3D shapes.

 

How you can help

Year 4 will be visiting the Hong Kong Museum to view the special exhibition “Age of Luxury”. This new exhibition contains objects from the British Museum and Hong Kong will display artefacts from 900-300 BC. These visits are scheduled for the 28th May and 31st May. A letter will be sent soon with further details. Please check the link below and share with your children.

http://hk.history.museum/en_US/web/mh/exhibition/current.html

 

Remember if you have any concerns or questions about your child’s learning and wellbeing at school please contact your child’s teacher in the first instance

 

Kind Regards

Team Year 4.