Advent Term

English Learning Weeks 1-4

At the start of every new school year, years 2-6 start their English learning with a unit called the Place Value of Punctuation and Grammar (PVPG). This unit has been curated by an organisation founded by ex-teachers, with the aim of improving the foundations of children's writing and grammar at the start of the year, providing building blocks to refine throughout the year. Historically, schools have focused on teaching children to write for a purpose and in a particular genre from September, however, research has shown this often meant that children were not explicitly taught the fundamentals of grammar and sentence writing in the same way they are taught place value in maths at the start of new academic year.

This unit will last approximately 4 weeks and will teach children different word classes, building on those they already know and will recap how to correctly write and punctuate a sentence using this knowledge. Your child has completed the PVPG units in Year 2 and 3 already, so this unit in year 4 is designed to recap this prior knowledge to support retention and understanding and to build on it to encourage your child to write coherent, grammatically correct sentences  and can explain how they know their sentences are correct. This unit will also aid editing of their own writing once they start the PAINSLEY writing process of deconstructing, contextualised construction, reconstructing, drafting, editing and publishing.

Today, we began our topic on the Anglo-Saxons in history. We looked at some clues as to why they may have decided to settle and invade, but we had a the difficult job of sorting potential reasons into categories! We worked well with our partners to come to conclusions which we then shared with the class to come to a whole class agreement on some of the reasons.

In computing, we started our coding unit, logging into Purple Mash and having a go! We started with a generic code already written, and then changed things like the background, the size of objects and then introduced 'if' statements to make our code different to everyone else's.

We braved the weather today to take part in an enrichment session to help us with some ideas on what to play at playtimes! We enjoyed the activities set out for us and learnt the rules well, but then enjoyed setting up our own games and getting on with them - Miss Evans even got involved in some! 

We have been learning about the seven summits in geography this half term. Today, we used atlases to find the tallest mountains in the UK. We discovered that not only did the atlases hep us find the mountains, they also told us what mountain ranges they were in and how tall they are above sea level! 

We started a rather disgusting science experiement today to find out which liquid is the most damaging to our teeth! After planning our experiment together, discussing all of our variables and recording methods, we carefully measured out the liquids (Coke, milk, water and squash) and put an egg in each cup. We revisited the eggs a week later and what we found shocked us! We found that squash was the most damaging liquid - we all thought it was going to be Coke!

We followed a simple biscuit recipe today in DT. After making sure we were all hygienic and clean, we began to measure out ingredients and mix them together. These biscuits will be bakes ready for out lesson next week, where we will taste test them and decide what ingredient our group would like to add to the recipe to make the biscuits more exciting - stay tuned!

In October, we celebrate Black History Month and learn ore about some key individuals throughout history. We started off in class, learning about some significant achievements of black people throughout history. We were surprised to find out that one of Henry VIII's trumpeters was black, we also learnt about Katherine Johnson who was a mathematician for NASA and Tessa Sanderson who was the first British female to win gold at the Olympics! We then met up with Year 3 in the hall, where we shared our learning and coloured in some pictures of these key people that should be remembered.

As promised, here we are baking and proudly showing off our biscuits that we baked in DT! We worked in teams to add one or two ingredients to the basic biscuit recipe and make these with Mrs Potts over in the house. We also made boxes to put our biscuits in and ensured these had all the key information they needed; a brand name, the target audience and of course, the ingredients!