Year 4 took a break from their usual timetable and enjoyed a trip into space on Tuesday afternoon. A planetarium was set up in the hall, courtesy of Science Oxford, and the children spent a wonderful hour stargazing. We looked at some constellations, comparing different ones from around the world – there’s almost always a lion. We learnt that the ‘plough’ is visible in the UK all year and we saw a time-lapse of how the stars ‘move’ across the sky, discovering why the north star is so named. We also followed the path of the Artemis mission to the moon. The children showed a great deal of knowledge about space and also asked some great questions.

In maths, we have been continuing our money topic and using our skills to compare, estimate and calculate. Any real life application they can do outside of school would be really helpful to embed their learning.

In literacy, we have been continuing with biographies. This weeks focus has been on Michael Morpurgo, well known for his range of books, we also discovered that he served in the army and was a teacher before becoming a writer. We have been up-levelling our sentences with conjunctions and varying sentence starters.

Year 4 have moved forward in history, only slightly, to look at how the fall of the Roman Empire led to invasions along the east coast of the island. We paid particular focus to the accuracy of the evidence historians have access to. We learnt that not much was written down in post-Roman Britain and so we rely on accounts by the monks Gildas and Bede who were born long after the events.

The poetry evening was a great success! Well done and thank you to all those who took part.

Over the coming weeks, year 4 have the amazing opportunity to be taught chess by Mr Smith. Each class will have 5 weeks of tuition. 4JM/KC had their first lesson on Friday afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It was lovely to hear that so many already had some experience of chess and are looking forward to next weeks lesson.

Upcoming events: Bank Holiday 4th May (school closed), On Your Bike 10th May

The Year 4 Team