Welcome to the Class Page for Year 4 2020/21

Hello to our lovely Year 4 and their families!

If you are currently learning from home, this is where we will add our links and activities each week. They will mirror the work we cover in school but please don't panic! You don't have to do everything, just enjoying doing what you can together.

Your English homework, Maths homework and spellings will still be posted on Seesaw every Monday afternoon. Below are the links for times tables and reading at home but you will also find them on Seesaw:

• Times Table Rock Stars https://play.ttrockstars.com/auth/school/student 
• Read Theory comprehension https://readtheory.org/auth/login
• Oxford Owls eBook library https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/free-ebooks/

It would be lovely if you could share your work with us via Seesaw or email  r.carson@knottyashprimary.co.uk. You can take a look on Twitter @AshKnotty to see what we've been up to in class each week too! 

Take care and keep smiling!

Mr. Houghton, Mrs Rees, Mrs Jakobsen, Mrs Fairclough and Mrs Robinson

Theme for this half term - Autumn 2 2020

The theme for this half term is as follows:

An exploration of the terms difference, disability and diversity. Adopting a positive and empowering view of difference.

This means that we are going to be exploring the things that we all share as a class, in terms of our abilities, identities and physical features and examining what is unique and different about each of us. We will discuss what we perceive to be our differences and exploring whether they truly are differences between us. Where we do find genuine differences, we will examine how we and others feel about them - do we appreciate them? Do we try to hide them? Why would anyone ever try to change or hide a part of themselves? Do we ever do anything that would lead someone to feel that they had to do that?

These are meaty questions! We will watch videos of many different people showing off their differences, owning them and being proud of them. We will read about disability rights advocates. We will acknowledge how lucky we are to be such an inclusive school and use our connections to the Deaf Resource Base within school to the maximum. Does learning how to sign mean that we fully understand the challenges that deaf children face on a daily basis? The children will record their responses to these tough questions in a variety of ways - through video, sound recordings, art, a dramatic performance and the good old written word.

Monday 23rd November - This week we are...

English

This week, the children are working in teams to create a magazine. The theme of the magazine can be anything that interests the children in that group - but the magazine needs to focus on our topic: Difference, Diversity and Equality. The children will research information for their own article, practice taking notes and gathering useful information and then planning out their article, ready to write the first draft on Friday. For example, if the group chooses to do a magazine about gaming, the article could be about the different ways in which people with disabilities play the games on the new PS5.

Daily tasks:

Monday - spelling test and writing sentences with the spelling words.

Tuesday - Searching online for information for the magazine article they wish to write. Taking effective notes so that they can use what they find online.

Wednesday and Thursday - planning the article, choosing a title, planning paragraphs and subheadings, choosing photographs.

Friday - writing the article, following the plan made through the week.

Maths

This week, the children are embedding their learning about Roman numerals - making sure that they understand the system the Romans used to reduce the number of symbols that they had to use (so 9 is IX, not VIIII) and also recognising where and why roman numerals are still used today. 

We will also be practicing our recently learned rounding skill - See the Oak Academy series of lessons here:

https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/rounding-numbers-to-the-nearest-1000-crr66d

Science

This half term it's all about the human body, We are learning the major bones in the skeletal system, the names of the major organs and developing an awareness of some of the systems in our body - the digestive system and the circulatory system. 

See the Oak Academy lessons here: https://classroom.thenational.academy/units/human-anatomy-f968

iPad work

iPads are being used for research in order for the children to write their magazine articles. They need to think carefully about how to incorporate our topic theme into their article: Diversity, Difference and Equality.

Children have also been loving creating their own scratch games at: https://scratch.mit.edu/

Y3 & 4: BLACK LIVES MATTER

No doubt you have seen images or heard about current events in America. People have been protesting and rioting due to the killing of a black man named George Floyd. We have put together some information so you can understand this a little more and maybe understand why it is all happening. We have also set you a challenge at the end!

• Watch ‘A Kids Book About Racism’ by Jelani Memory
• Choose a story book to watch (document with QR codes)
• Read our facts behind the protests in America
• Watch our KS2 teachers setting you a challenge!
• Send us your way of spreading the message and we will put them all together

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international group that began in 2013 with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. They are against violence and racism towards black people.They became known for their street demonstrations

Science

Reading

Mr P the IT genius has made a series of comprehension tasks based on songs from films!

I told you he was a genius!

Check it out here:

https://www.mrpict.com/music-for-reading-comprehension.html

BBC Bitesize Daily Lessons

I've had a look over this and it looks like a really useful resource:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/tags/z63tt39/year-4-lessons/1

Please keep in mind that some of the content may be topics that the children haven't studied yet - generally the target during Lockdown has been to revise and strengthen the children's understanding on topics that they've already covered. Please consider this if you choose to use this service.