Monthly Archives: March 2020
Hello from Mr Johnston!
Hello Year 4,
Welcome to another week in which you can show how incredible you are!
I am sorry that I wasn’t able to see you towards the end of your time in school. I hope that you and your families are all well and that you have been able to enjoy some quality time with them.
It has been great to see that some of you have been busily working away at the work I set for you.
It’s fantastic that Oliver, Callum C and Alexi have completed all of the Mathletics exercises I set! Hopefully, more of you will join them in the days to come.
I was also proud to see that Moharnab has the highest Lifetime Earnings on Times Tables Rockstars – out of the whole school! Great effort Moharnab!
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to see all the hard work you have been doing on the other tasks I set as they weren’t online.
I think it would be lovely to be able to share your work on our class blog so I will be setting more work in future that you could share online with everyone.
I will be setting more maths and English work today, in the blogs to follow this one and I am launching the first special project you will be able to take part in. Keep an eye out for it!
Please feel free to comment on the blog so I can hear how you are getting on with things.
Take care all of you.
Mr Johnston
English
Creative Writing
We may not be in school but I hope you are still continuing with your own pieces of creative writing. I loved listening to those you shared in class and hope that you will post your writing so that we can add it to the class blog.
If you are able to type them up or take a picture of handwritten work, please send it to the email address below and add, “FAO MR J Creative Writing” in the subject. I will share as many as I am able to.
Spellings
Please see the separate spelling blog.
Reading
There has never been a better time for reading so I hope you are all working towards completing your ERIC challenge.
Please complete the Desert Climate Comprehension this week – answers will be blogged on Friday.
The comprehension document will appear in this blog thread.
SPAG
I hope you did well with your mini SPAG revision check last week. Please make a comment on the blog to let me know how you did with it.
Please complete this week’s SPAG questions – the document will be in this blog thread.
Fronted adverbials – please match up the fronted adverbials with the correct main clauses. If you have completed this, why not try using the fronted adverbials in sentences of your own or creating your own new ones. Remember to put a comma after the fronted adverbial!
I will add a few more SPAG activities on here during the week, to help keep you ticking over.
Homework Documents
Desert Climate Comprehension
Fronted Adverbial Matching Game Editable
Year 4 English Grammar and Punctuation Test 2
Mr Johnston
Maths
White Rose Lessons
Please visit the WhiteRose website link below. It gives you a video explaining the maths and then questions based on it – just like we would do in class.
https://resources.whiterosemaths.com/resources/year-4/
Don’t worry if you don’t have a printer to print off the worksheets, click ‘Get the Activity’ and the worksheet will open on the screen. You can then talk to an adult in the family, explaining the answers to them. (I’ve had to do that with my children as our printer isn’t working)
One lesson a day is enough to keep you going and revisiting your learning each day helps you to remember things more easily in the long run.
Once you have done the questions, you can then check the answers by clicking on ‘Get the Answers’.
Number Facts: x6 and x7 tables
It is great to see that you have been accessing Mathletics and TTRockstars. Regular practice and learning key number facts is very important. Please keep up with your times tables practice and focus just on particular ones, you can use the interactive quiz on:
Go to their Online Times Tables Test and select how many questions you want to do, the 6 and 7 boxes (so you only get those tables) and start the test.
It shows you if you get the question correct (it turns green) and shows you the correct answer if you get one wrong.
I look forward to hearing how you all get on with your maths!
Spellings
As we usually do in class, every Monday I will give a new set of spelling words which you then practise and learn during the week. On the following Monday, please get a member of your family to test you on the words.
We will be using the same lists as I sent out a few weeks ago and, having reviewed the class’ test scores, we start back at week 1. This spelling list is called the ‘Main’ spelling list.
For those of you who were working on a separate set of spellings, we will do the same for you – go back to week 1 to consolidate those spellings. This spelling list is the ‘Extra’ list. Please also feel free to work on the Main spelling list.
Remember to let me know of your achievements in the comments section.
Home Learning Packs
Maths Homework Grid
Year 4 can practise tables, play a maths game and choose one other thing to work on each day. Watch the video link for each one and then have a go yourself!
“A bookie and a cookie”
This afternoon Year 4 had a special ERIC… we called it “A bookie and a cookie”.
We all sat and read our book with a lovely chocolate chip cookie..YUM! We remembered to wash our hands before we ate our cookie too.
It’s amazing how long the cookies lasted…little nibbles as they read.
The children have all chosen two reading books to take home today, extra reading is good.
Advertising and stereotyping
In today’s PSHE lesson, we discussed advertising and the effect of media on our choices, as well as stereotyping in the media.
The media is:
► The internet
► Adverts on posters.
► Adverts on TV
► TV programs
► Social media
We looked at the ways in which adverts persuade us to buy their products, we saw:
► Bright colours
► slogans
► jingles- catchy songs
► catchphrases
► funny adverts
It was clear that we are persuaded to buy different products because they look great and also because the people who have them are happy/healthy/popular/clean or even funny. This is a little stereotyping, making you feel that all people will be that way if they eat or have something.
We have to make up our own minds by using all the information we have and talking things through.
We had a little experiment to see what adverts came up in between children’s programs.
As expected, lots of food adverts were seen, with very catchy jingles that kept us entertained in class!
Show and Tell
Leo made a At-at Walker out of Lego!
It took him all day and lots of sweat!
It broke a lot as he tried making it.
There were parts from the original but the rest were from other sets.
It has legs but only walks if you move the legs.
He just wanted to get creative and use different colour bricks.
He created it from scratch and off by heart.
We are very impressed with Leo’s perseverance. A great learning behaviour.
Well done Leo!
Fair Trade persuasion letters
Today Year 4 continued with their Fair Trade discussions.
They recapped what it meant and why it was important.
They decided that it was so important that they should persuade others to try harder to buy Fair Trade items. They decided to write a letter to Mrs Knipe and persuade her to think about what she buys, paying specific attention to Fair Trade labels.
Have a look at the language they used and some of the letters.
Persuasive language:
I think….
I feel that…
I am sure that…
It is certain….
In some ways…
On the other hand…
Firstly/secondly….
Furthermore….
Also….
Moreover….
Specifically….
For example….
In fact….
For this reason….
In other words….
Without a doubt…
reasons
arguments
unfair
Don’t you agree…?
What else would YOU use as persuasive language?
Have a look at some of our examples above.
Consumer power
Today we tested our consumer power. We had a token each to use as a vote for our favourite chocolate. We tasted a piece of dark chocolate, white chocolate and milk chocolate.
We noted down what we thought of the tastes- there were some interesting adjectives!
Dark chocolate– strong, like living in heaven, lovely, horrible, gross, nasty, weird, amazing
White chocolate– great, incredible, delicious, tasty, excellent, sweet, milky, indescribable,
Milk chocolate– luxurious, mouth watering, disgusting, awesome, creamy
Once we had voted we added up the votes. The results were:
Dark chocolate- 6 votes
White chocolate- 8 votes
Milk chocolate- 15 votes
This showed us that we all preferred milk chocolate way more than the others and if we were to open a shop, we would make sure we had plenty of milk chocolate to sell! Consumer power influences what is sold in shops.
