Welcome to Year 4!

This week so far: Friday 6th June 2025

Our Value for This Term: Respect

Writing Competition 2025:

This year's theme for the writing competition is the Lion King.

We would like the children to write a story based in the universe of Disney's Lion King. It is up to the children whether they would like to include Dorkus (Richard Best's beloved corgi) as one of the main characters, or whether they would prefer to keep the original characters the same.

Could the children write an alternative ending to the original story?

Perhaps they can create an origin story for why Scar became so evil?

Is there a version where Mufasa doesn't meet his end?

What if the hyenas rebelled against their master?

We would like the children to take care to craft this piece of writing at home. Be mindful to proof-read your writing carefully and make it as engaging as possible.

The deadline for the writing entries will be announced soon. Happy writing!

English: This week, we began reading our new book Manfish by Jennifer Berne. Manfish tells the story of Jacques Cousteau, tracing his journey from a childhood fascination with the sea to his lifelong dream of becoming an oceanographer. The book highlights his desire to breathe underwater and become a "manfish," a dream that ultimately led him to co-invent the aqualung and explore the underwater world.

Maths: This week, we focused on the topic of time. The children practised reading analogue clocks and writing the time in digital format. They also worked on converting times from the 12-hour clock to the 24-hour clock. We revisited the concepts of 'quarter past' and 'quarter to', and they learned how to calculate the number of minutes that have passed between two given times.

DT: First of all, a big thank you for all the recycled materials the children brought in — they were much appreciated! Earlier in the week, we explored different musical instruments to identify their properties, understand how they work, and see how they are decorated to appeal to their audience.

We then experimented with elastic bands and balloons to create simple instruments, testing whether we could change the sound by using different widths of elastic bands or by stretching balloons over various containers. It was a fascinating lesson, and the children learned a lot.

To end the week, they designed their own instruments. Next week, we’ll begin making them — and we’re all really looking forward to it!

PE Kit: Please ensure that your child comes to school wearing their PE kit on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Every week we have two PE lessons. This half term, we are focusing on rounders and dancing (preparing for the production).

 Times tables: We are using the game Soundcheck on the Times Tables Rock Stars site. This allows the children to practice answering questions within 6 seconds, which will be the same expectation next week when we take part in the Multiplication Table Check test.