Well, we’re at the end of term 1 already! It’s hard to believe 7 weeks have passed. Team Aqua and Team Topaz have settled into Year 4 so well and we’ve had a brilliant term with them! Here is what we have been up to this week…

Maths

In maths this week, we have been learning to tell the time. We started by telling the time on analogue clocks e.g. 10 minutes to 6, 20 minutes past 8, quarter to 7. Some of the children did this to the nearest minute e.g. 23 minutes past 8, 16 minutes to 11. We then moved on to digital time, and being able to match the digital time to analogue times and vice versa. The children were excellent at this when the minute hand was on the ‘past’ side of the clock e.g. 10 minutes past 5 = 05:10, 25 minutes past 8 = 08:25. If the minute hand was on the ‘to’ side of the clock, the children found this a little trickier so any practice they can do with this at home would be amazing e.g. 20 minutes to 6 = 05:40, 5 minutes to 12 = 11.55.

We will move on to 24-hour digital time later in the year.

After half term we will be learning about fractions.

English

In English this week we finished reading ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes. The children enjoyed the ending where the people of the world became more peaceful and wars ended! We learnt some more skills needed to write an information text this week, using cause and effect conjunctions and using commas in lists. Some cause and effect conjunctions that we used were; for this reason, as a result of this, since, because of this, due to the fact that, as a consequence of this. We then planned and wrote our 'showpiece' for information texts, an information sheet about tigers.

After half term we will begin reading our new book called Ice Palace and learn about how to write a 5-part narrative (story).

RE

In RE this week, we have been learning about Sikh rites of passage. We began by finding out key facts about Sikhism. Then we found out about Sikh naming ceremonies, Sikh weddings and Sikh funerals. We also found out about Sikh’s beliefs in life after death and reincarnation.

After half term we will begin our next themed curriculum unit called ‘Walk like an Egyptian’. In this unit we will be covering history and science learning. We will find out all about the Ancient Egyptian civilisation, and about the digestive system and food chains.

Spellings

We really enjoyed one of our spelling lessons this week where we made ‘spelling tablecloths’. The children covered large pieces of paper in the words we learnt this week in lots of different colours. They looked great. Here we are doing this…

This week’s spellings are red words (words that can be trickier to sound out or can’t be sounded out). These are the spellings to learn for a test on Thursday 30^th October:

people, beautiful, because, before, climb, everything, everybody, again, whole, many, would, shouldn't, different, describe

Love to Learn

Over the half term, we would like you to find out about one of these things to do with Ancient Egyptians. Please find out about either:

• Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics

• Ancient Egyptian pyramids

• Ancient Egyptian mummification

• Ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

You can choose how you would like to present what you find out. Some ideas could be writing an information sheet, drawing labelled pictures or making a video telling us about what you found out and emailing it to your teacher (emails below).

claire.cousins@chiltonprimary.co.uk

george.cook@chiltonprimary.co.uk

Dates to remember

27th October – Inset Day, children not in school

28th October – Parent/teacher consultation week

31st October – Halloween disco

3rd November – Poppies on sale for following 2 weeks; children to bring in donations in named envelope and house captains to bring poppies round to classrooms

11th November – Service Uniform Day, children allowed to wear their service uniforms into school

12th November – Individual School Photos

14th November – Children in need – This year is a challenge yourself theme. We are challenging the children to come into school wearing as many spots as possible!

24th November – Book Fair on all week

5th December – Year 2 and 4 Come Dine with me (Sapphire 11.30, Cornflower 11.45, Team Aqua 12.30 and Team Topaz 12.40)

10th December – Christmas Fair 3.15pm-4.15pm

15th December – No PE this week

16th December – Year 3 and 4 Church Performance at 10am at St Laurence Church

17th December – Year 3, 4, 5, and 6 Christmas Party Day – children to wear Party Clothes to school

17th December – Christmas Dinner Day

18th December – Christmas Jumper Day

18th December – Final day at school; school finishes at 2pm and there will be no after school club

We hope you have a lovely half term,

Mrs Cousins, Mr Cook and Miss Jordan