Dear Gingko Class Parents,

We can’t believe that we are halfway through Year 4 already - where is the time going?! We are so proud of how hard the children are working and the progress that they are making.

Our topic this half term has been Misty Mountain. This has been Geography based. We have focused in on how mountains are created, what a mountain is, the different types of mountain, human and physical features of mountains and the tallest mountains in the UK and the world. We learnt that a hill is classified as a mountain when it is over 800m tall! We have also had a fun time trying to pronounce Snowdon’s Welsh name Yr Wydda.

In Maths, we have been focusing on further multiplication and division. The children have been focusing on multiplying and dividing a two or three digit number by a one digit number. As a class, we have established that we need a strong understanding of our times tables to help us with all our Maths work. Can you please carry practising your timetables at home on Times Tables Rockstars as this is having a big impact in the classroom. We have also begun representing data on bar and line graphs.

In English, we finished writing our twisted version of The Three Little Pigs. The children had some really creative ideas and really enjoyed writing their twisted fairy tales. For the rest of the term, we have been focusing on biography writing through The Little People Big Dreams series. We have focused on how a biography is written, how to write chronologically and the children have picked their own inspiring person to write a biography about. We have also focused on the difference between plural and possessive apostrophe.

In Science, we have been focusing on creatures and their habitats. We have learnt about the difference between a vertebrate and an invertebrate, how we classify animals and how we can create a classification key. It has been brilliant to hear the children’s knowledge on the natural world and they have really enjoyed making their keys.

In RE, the children have been learning about some of the parables of Buddha’s teachings. We have looked at how the messages from his teachings could make the world a happier place.

In Art, we have been manipulating colour to create tones, tints and shades in order to give a 3D effect to our work. We have studied the work or Cezanne and Friedrich and established how they have used different tones for effect. We have put our learning together to create our own mountain landscape paintings.

Mrs Palmer-Auld and Miss Blunsdon