Bangladesh Class Year 4
Autumn 2023
This half term has been very busy in Bangladesh class. We’ve been on a school trip, had a visiting artist, had a visitor for PSHE and many other exciting events.
In maths, we have mainly been looking at place value, number lines and rounding. We enjoyed recapping some of our previous learning then used this to help us with the challenge questions. We really enjoyed making a class number line too.
In English, we have just finished recount writing. This was based around our fun trip to Hummer Woods. We loved going into the woods and using collaboration, resilience and aspiration to build dens. When we returned to school, we wrote our recounts. We looked at the photos that had been taken and talked about the key events and our favourite parts. Our recounts included the key features and we shared them with our partners.
Helen visited us for PSHE and we learnt about Harold the giraffe and his adventures in Diversity World.
We also had the opportunity to work alongside Darrell Wakelam and created three amazing pieces of artwork. This linked to our biomes, Viking and coasts units. We loved creating papier Mache sculptures and painting aspects of the design.
SPRING 2 2023
Wessex Water
On Thursday 2nd February, we had a visitor from Wessex Water as the hook for our Changing State unit. He explained about where water comes from for our water supply (Sutton Bingham reservoir) and compared this to Dorset. He explained using pictures how the water cycle works. He then set us a challenge to ‘clean’ the water. It was really good fun and we all learnt something new.
Science
We enjoyed out topic on ‘changing state.’ We ended our topic by looking through our books and discussing which facts we knew now that we didn't know at the start of the topic. As a class, we created a list of the key words we had learnt and the definition for each one. The previous lesson, we created an A-Z of states of matter where we almost managed every letter of the alphabet.
We tested our understanding by completing a game of 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' To complete the topic, we made fact wheels and chose key facts we wanted to include and shared these.
The whole school also took part in British Science Week where we complete a range of interesting, fun activities around the theme of ‘connections.’
Paignton Zoo
On Tuesday 28th February, we spent the day at Paignton Zoo to celebrate their 100- year anniversary. After arriving at the zoo, Matt one of the educational experts, gave us a talk and set us some challenges to solve as we explored the park. We listened to lots of facts about the giraffes and were told the giraffe was about the height of three lots of Mrs Lloyd!
We enjoyed looking at all of the animals. Our favourites included: giraffes, tigers and monkeys.
Maths
Over a few weeks, out focus was fractions.
For adding fractions, we used a bar to help us then drew our own and used multi-link to work out what happened when you added two or three fractions together.
There were many other tasks such as: subtracting fractions, improper to mixed fractions, problem solving using fractions and many more.
R.E
In RE we have been learning about Christianity. We linked this to our previous history topic and looked at how the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings converted to Christianity.
SPRING 1 2023
It has been lovely to be back in our new building and we’ve all settled in really well.
In history, we have had great fun learning about the Vikings. The lessons included: daily life, jobs, Viking raids and long ships. For one lesson we had to become historians. This was a great way to show collaboration within our groups as we put our ‘historian hats’ on. We had to look at a range of objects and think about what they were, who they could have belonged to and what they were made of. We displayed our findings and gave feed back to the class to share our ideas. Our teachers are very proud of the work we produced for this topic.
English was focused around ‘Beowulf’. This was a great book and we predicted what was going to happen and it was a shock (we won’t ruin the ending!) We completed a range of activities around the text. Our setting descriptions were really interesting as we were interested in the text. This was then followed by a unit on newspapers. We wrote a newspaper about the key events in Beowulf.
We’ve been kept busy in maths with times tables, division and fractions. Our latest times table has been the 9s so we noticed a pattern to help us remember. We enjoy doing our daily tests and like it when we get to choose the timer on the board. For division, we had to use the place value method which some of us found a little tricky. ‘Equivalent’ is a key word we’ve been using with fractions and have used a fraction wall to help find equivalent fractions.
We have also been doing gymnastics in PE, head, shoulders, knees and toes in French (great fun) and Viking songs in music.
DECEMBER 2022
We have been very busy in Bangladesh. These are some of our highlights.
In French, we’ve been learning how to say different instruments. We have learnt: harp, cymbals, guitar, piano, violin, trumpet and a couple more. Most sound very similar to the English.
In PE, we’ve been focusing on a lot of games that required agility, balance, communication, coordination and movement into space. First, we did this without the use of a ball then included a ball into our games. We played Reaction Drop, Send and Chance, Bounce Clap, Reaction Ball, Treasure Island and our favourite, Chicken or Hero.
In music, we’ve been using the glockenspiels. We played a piece of music called ‘Portsmouth’ where the timing was very important and then we learned to play a duet. We had to look at the notes on the sheet music to see if it was a semi-breve (worth 4 beats), a crotchet (worth 1 beat) or a minim (worth 2 beats). We also learned some new notation for when you don’t play a note; called a ‘rest’.
In history, we were able to look at some Anglo-Saxon artefacts from Sherborne Museum. We all had a great time looking at the different objects and guessing what they were or might have been used for. Some of the objects were: a Saxon doll, a drinking horn, a wooden bowl and a carved wooden spoon.
NOVEMBER 2022
We have been very busy in Bangladesh learning new things. In English, we've enjoyed using a video clip where we only watched a small part then had to guess what would happen next. This led to us writing some great descriptions linked to the Amazon Rainforest.
Maths has been using exchanging for addition and subtraction. We discussed different methods we needed to use. We've continued with our times table tests (the 8s have been a bit trickier for some of us). We've continued using our counting stick and saying the facts aloud to help us learn them.
Our geography has been linked with 'biomes' that we looked at last half term. We used an atlas to identify different countries within Europe then looked at the biomes within those countries. This then led to a comparison between the UK, Greece and Russia.
We've been busy with many other subjects too and lots of us especially enjoy computing, PE and music.
OCTOBER 2022
In Bangladesh, we have been working hard to write own own stories in the style of 'The Stone Trolls'. In Maths, we have been using our knowledge of place value and looking at number lines. We've enjoyed learning our times tables in a new way and completing the daily tests. A visitor came to speak to us about our physical and mental health in PSHCE.
