Welcome back

First day back of a new term. Yesterday the teachers went on a course about how to use music in the classroom. Today we saw the result, we skied and danced to different music.
In Numeracy we had had to count up in steps. We took it in turns working with a partner. One counted up in steps while the other checked on a calculator.
We looked at the Beaufort wind scale as our new topic is Information texts and our new afternoon topic is History and the Tudors.

Read all about it

In Numeracy we carried on with our work of finding fractions of numbers. We are now much better at this, this will be our Numeracy homework as well. In Literacy we were writing the headlines and stories for our newspaper.
We managed to finish our headlines and stories just in time for the newspaper to be given out at home time.

Bleep test

In PE half the class completed the Bleep Test. This is where children have to run between two markers before the next bleep. As the children get more tired the bleeps speed up. The children did really well with Brogan and Titi getting really good scores.

Caribbean visit

After Numeracy work on parts of fractions we went into the hall with Year 3 for a drama workshop about the Caribbean. All the children joined in with the dancing, singing and playing drums. It was great when children were swallowed by the big snake and had to be helped out by other children.
In the computer suite we thought about where we would like to travel to in the world.

Teachers TV

Today a film crew came and filmed our Numeracy lesson on decimals. The three crew were very friendly and were in the classroom filming for nearly two hours. The completed film will hopefully be shown early next year and will be about six minutes. The crew were very impressed with the children and of course Karen. When the film is completed everyone will get a copy on CD.

Times table challenge

We have set ourselves a very tough target. By the end of next week 3/4 of the children will know their tables up to 10 x 10. if we succeed we will get a big treat. Good luck everybody. In numeracy we combined coordinates and shape knowledge to solve questions. We investigated on the Internet information about Hinduism, different children had different items to research.

Cuptastic!

This morning we demonstrated cup stacking to primary and secondary schools all over London. Year 4 were fantastic speaking loudly and clearly. It was great to see people on the big screen cup stacking with us. We also saw other conferences including children using sign langauge, french children talking about cooking, and we listened to a soldier from the trenches of World War 1.

Fantastic children

We got a letter today about our videoconference with teachers in Bromley. It said:

Your pupils were outstanding in their contributions, I had many comments from the Teaching staff involved in the VC meet and they commented on how well the class behaved and how great they were. You certainly have a class of VC Gurus!!

So well done Year 4. As there was no singing on Friday afternoon we practised our cup stacking for Tuesday's London Live. We finished off our poems and began writing these on plain paper so they can be sent off for the competition.
IN Numeracy we had some word problems about length. These are always difficult. We looked at:

1. crossing out information that wasn't important
2. circling the numbers that we need to use
3. working out what operation we need to carry out
4. remember to include units in our answer (if needed)

Joined handwriting

It was National Poetry Day today. All the children wrote a poem about "myself" that will be entered into the Mobile library competition with a top prize of a £20 book voucher.
There were many different styles of poems chosen. Children wrote acrostics, rhyming couplets and poems with powerful language and repeating patterns.
What was really impressive was the fanatstic joined handwriting that everyone did.
In the afternoon we studied a spooky picture and thought about the sounds that could go with the picture. We then listened to a song, made about the picture, and in groups thought of souns that the group could add. The result was really good.

Newsround

We worked in groups today to write newspaper stories. We made up headlines and then wrote a report that answered the questions: who, what, where, when and why. In Numeracy we estimated and then measured the length of objects in the classroom.
We started our music topic in the afternoon where we listen to music and picture what is happening.

25 teachers

Well done to all the children for performing and teaching so well in our videoconference to teachers from Bromley. It was fantastic when we demonstrated Tia Chi and the teachers stood up and joined in. Everyone used big strong voices which made sure it was a success.