Living and Learning: rights and responsibilities
In Year 4, we know that rights come with responsibilities.
For example, we have the right to think and believe what we wish to so we have the responsibility to respect other people’s thoughts and beliefs.
We have the right to an education therefore we have the responsibility to come to school and engage with our learning.
We have the right to food and therefore we have the responsibility to make our own healthy choices.
We have the right to play and we have the responsibility to play safely and sensibly with our friends.
Help at home by asking your child to think of their rights and therefore what responsibilities come with these rights.
Leeds Diving opportunities
Recently, Year 2 and 3 welcomed Leeds Diving as part of their talent in diving programme.
If your child is interested in learning to dive, please see the information and requirements below.
We are biologists!
In science, we are biologists.
We have been learning about living things and their habitats.
On Friday, we ventured into our school grounds to investigate what flowering and non-flowering plants we could find.
Help at home by asking your child what a flowering/non-flowering plant is.
Reading records
Last year, we enjoyed exploring our love of reading through our reading records.
As a reminder, here is the key information you and your child need to know about:
- Each time one of the children signs out a new book to read from the library, they can make note of these in the book and rate them out of 5 stars.
- Every Friday, I chose an activity for the whole class to complete in their reading record. More information on these activities is found inside the record.
- The children bring in these reading records every Friday for our Book Club lesson where we’ll discuss their books and develop their love of reading.
- Please accompany your child’s weekly activity with a short comment sharing with us the reading their child has been doing at home.
Take a look at some fabulous activities Year 4 have completed so far this year!
Acceptable Use Agreement
On Friday, your child was sent home with our Acceptable Use Agreement.
This is our school’s online safety policy which explains the expectations we have when children are online in school.
Please read this with your child and sign and return this to school.
Thank you!
Autumn term after-school clubs
*Availability update*
Our after-school clubs are available for booking on schoolcomms. Please contact the office if you need any further information or help with booking places. Clubs will begin next week.
Living and Learning: rules
Our first Living and Learning session this year was all about the school rules and why they’re important.
Our three school rules are:
- We’re respectful.
- We’re ready.
- We’re safe.
We spent our Living and Learning session discussing what following these rules looks like and sounds like in the classroom.
We concluded that following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy place to learn.
Help at home by asking your child to give an example of how they followed a school rule today.
Blue Peter Book Badges – apply now!
Do you like reading? Do you fancy getting your hands on an exclusive Blue Peter Badge? Now is your chance!
Blue Peter are introducing their exciting new Book badge, designed by one of the UK’s best known illustrators, Sir Quentin Blake, who you might know from bringing to life characters such as Roald Dahl’s BFG and Matilda! To earn your badge, just share your love of books with Blue Peter by answering the questions on the website! You can apply using the online form or by post.
Make sure you get an adult to help you!
Please read this information before applying.
Good luck!
Spellings
Instead of learning eight different words each week, we’d like you to learn these 40 words over the whole half-term. Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long term.
How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all.
However you decide to do it, is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best.
Each week, we’ll choose eight random words to test you on. These tests aren’t pressured. They might just help you figure out which words you need to practise more.
Learning spellings in this way might feel quite different – or even scary – but it shouldn’t. In fact, you’ve actually got less words to learn this half-term than you normally would.
We’ll keep thinking about this in school and we’ll regularly talk about how we can best practise these words at home.
If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out this ‘Super Spelling Strategies Guide’ : Some-super-spelling-strategies
Half-term 1
This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:
- alternative ways for writing the ‘ay’ sound
- alternative ways for writing the ‘ee’ sound
- ‘double up for a short vowel sound’
- ‘drop the e for ing’
- ‘drop the y for an i’
- adding the suffixes ed, ing
- homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)
Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.
| famous | believe | accident | breathe | answer |
| library | passion | notice | were | possess |
| century | address | favourite | appear | here |
| their | weight | complete | ordinary | wear |
| straight | they’re | surprise | busy | increase |
| session | possible | there | hear | where |
| suppose | mission | eighth | extreme | occasion |
| fraction | different | attention | learn | possession |
Welcome back!
Year 4 have hit the ground running this week – it’s like we’ve never been away!
It’s been so lovely to spend time as a class again and Mrs Burgess, Mrs Charlesworth and I have been blown away by their behaviour and attitude towards school and learning. They are superstars!
A few bits of information:
- Our PE days are Wednesday and Friday. Please wear PE kits on these days. (If you have been told that your child is going swimming on Wednesday, they will need to come in their PE kit and bring their swimming kit with them).
- Reading records will be sent home tomorrow. The activity (stated on the homework) needs to be completed and accompanied by a parent/guardian’s comment and signature and brought back to school every Friday for book club. Thank you for your support with this.
As always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.