Rowan
Welcome to Rowan Class
Teacher: Miss Nicola Forbes
Other adults that work in our classroom:
Mrs Vicki Wager, Mrs Felicitiy Ssebugenyi & Mrs Deverill
We are a Year 4 class at St James Church School.
Dates to remember this term:
Tuesday 4th February - Road Safety talks for KS2
Wednesday 5th February - Rowan Class Bible Performance
Thursday 6th February - Net/Wall Sports Festival for Year 4
Half term - Monday 17th February to Friday 21st February
Thursday 5th March - World Book Day - Vocabulary Parade
Tuesday 31st March - Easter Service at St James Church - 1:30pm start
During Year 4 the children will develop their ability and understanding in all areas of the curriculum. Engaging and motivating activities and strategies will be used to develop a positive classroom culture for writing, while in Maths, part of each lesson is devoted to mental maths and all the children are working towards increasing and improving their mental and written calculation strategies.
How you can help your child:
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Encourage mental maths skills such as adding and subtracting differing amounts.
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Rehearse times table facts and related division facts.
(eg 3 x 9 = 27 so 27 ÷ 3 = 9)
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Give them experience of handling and identifying money, working out costs of items and change. When shopping work out which offers are cheaper and by how much. (eg 3 for 2 or 2 for £1)
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Talk about the books they are reading: What was their favourite bit? Did they have a favourite character? What do they think will happen next and why? Lots of discussion helps develop children’s language and understanding of the text.
Homework
Homework each week will comprise of reading, practising of times tables and spellings. All homework needs to be completed in their home learning book which should be in school each day and is checked through weekly. Please pop in to see me if you need any support with homework as it is an important part of your child's learning.
Reading
In Key Stage 2 all pupils have access to Accelerated Reader. Each child is set a termly points target on Accelerated Reader and they earn points each time they pass a quiz at school. Any support that can be given at home with reading is incredibly beneficial - reading together daily, discussing new vocabulary as well as making trips to the library all help. For those children that meet their reading target and complete all homework, a reading reward will take place at the end of the term.
Spellings
The children learn a new spelling pattern each week. Children are tested on their spelling patterns each week but our focus is on learning the rule and understanding of the patterns. New spellings will go home on a Friday and will be tested the following Friday.
Children also have their award spellings to work towards and they will be tested on these each half term and will be awarded a special certificate if they get them all correct.
Times tables
Times tables are an essential part of every child's learning. From this academic year, the Government have now introduced a times table check at the end of year 4. Times tables are practised daily in school and are tested on a Friday. The children receive a special certificate when they pass each level. It is a national expectation that children know all their times tables by the end of the year.
Any practice at home will really help to develop maths skills. There are many website and apps to support learning in this area. Each child now has their own login details for Times Table Rockstar which is an interactive game that helps children with their times table recall. There will be various competitions in school to motivate the children.
Below are the spelling award word lists we use here at St James Church School.
It is expected that;
- by the end of Year 3 that children should be able to spell all of the Bronze Spelling words
- by the end of Year 4 that children should be able to spell all of the Silver Spelling words
- by the end of Year 5 that children should be able to spell all of the Gold Spelling words
- by the end of Year 6 that children should be able to spell all of the Platinum Spelling words
PE and Forest School
This half term we will have PE every week on alternate Monday's and Wednesday's.
26th Feb
2nd March
11th March
16th March
25th March
30th March
Please ensure you child has a change of clothes for Forest School that you do not mind getting muddy, a coat and a spare pair of shoes (preferably wellies). Please ensure they have their full PE kit in for these lessons.
If they do not have the appropriate clothing/kit/shoes they will not be able to take part in Forest School or PE.
Take a look at what we have been getting up to in Rowan Class
Stone Age Somerset and Digging Deep in the Bronze Age Trip (Museum of Somerset) 27.02.20
Bronze Age Day Cooking 24.02.20
12.02.2020 Chocolate Melting Investigation for Science states of matter topic
Bronze Age Wagon Making (Feb)
Cooking on Stone Age Day 13.01.2020
18.11.19 - We designed Henna and Rangoli patterns in our RE lesson
16.10.19 - We made our own model volcanoes!
14.10.19 We made paper plate fish to help us understand the importance of chronological order within instructions
11.09.19 We made play dough worlds to help us learn the layers of the Earth
10.09.19 Our first violin lesson
09.09.19 We have been looking at representing numbers in maths to help us with our place value knowledge
Last Years Class Web Page (2018-2019)
below
22.5.19 We learnt all about the digestive system with help from a yucky experiment
2.05.19 ZooLab came to visit us with some rain-forest animals: a snake, a millipede, a rat, a tree fog and a tarantula!
LKS2 Topic Exhibition 04.04.19
Bridge Making 03.04.19. Today we made bridges using 4 cups, 20 art straws, lolly sticks and masking tape!
Trip to the SS Great Britain and the Clifton Suspension Bridge 20.3.19
Evaporation - 14.3.19: We were interested to observe water evaporating so we filled up a pot of water to 800ml and checked it after 7 days - 100ml evaporated!
7.03.19 World Book Day - Vocabulary Parade
Tuesday 12th February 2019 - Four children from Year 4 spoke with BBC Radio Somerset today about a wide range of subjects, including politics, school and Valentines Day. They were a bit nervous and excited at the same time, and their interview will be on Wednesday’s breakfast show!
24.01.19 - Today during science we investigated the weight of gas as part of out states of matter topic by weighing fizzy drinks, shaking them lots, waiting for them to go flat and then re-weighing them.
9.01.19-10.01.19 - We went on a walk around Taunton town centre to understand the term perspective. We then had an art day focusing on L.S.Lowry and drawing our own perspective pictures of Hammet Street in Taunton. We then created a class painting of this.
Spring Term Learning Expedition
Our learning expedition this term is.....Marvellous Minds!
12.12.18 Today we had our LKS2 Carnival Day. We designed and decorated stalls in the morning and in the afternoon we ran/experienced our stalls and then invited our parents in to join the fun!
05/12/18 Today we had our violin recital to which many of our parents came to support.
03.12.18 We went down to the church today for the Christmas Experience which the church volunteers put on for us where we learnt about the Christmas story.
23.11.18 Aiyden and his mum brought their pet snake in today. The children were very excited and had lots of interesting questions to ask!
19.11.18 Today we made Carnival Floats
12.11.18 We are starting to look at instructions. Today we had to put a set of instructions, that had been cut up, back together and identify the features used in this sort of text.
8.11.18
We had a Red Cross RE Day.
We found out about our school being a Red Cross Hospital in WW1 and looked at notes and drawings people left in an autograph book when they were being treated here. We then wrote letters and diary entries from soldiers/nurses about some of the pictures in the autograph book on tea stained paper.
25.10.18 and 7.11.18 We made Carnival/Diwali Lanterns!
17.10.18 We had so much fun making our carnival costumes for our teddies!
11.10.18 We have been looking at circuits in our science lessons and what materials conduct electricity.
5.10.18: We had lots of fun dressing up as hero's today in order to raise money for the schools new set of Sphero's!
We have begun to start playing the violin. What do you think? (26.10.18)
After doing lots of work on 4 digit numbers we have been learning to represent them in various ways 19.9.18
Learning to use a thesaurus to find synonyms and antonyms to create character descriptions 13.9.18
Our first violin lesson 12.9.18
Autumn Term 2018 Learning Exhibition
This term our Learning Exhibition topic is 'Crazy Carnival'
2017-2018