Wednesday 12th July 2023

This week we have developed and redrafted our Tudor style self portraits, learned about negative numbers, examined the tomatoes that we mummified before half term, enjoyed being taught lessons by Year 6 for Yom Talmid, finished reading Kaspar Prince of Cats and making the Titanic booklets, made mazes for Spheros in computing and experimented with different techniques using watercolour paints! Quite a lot to fit in to such a short week!

Wishing you all a wonderful summer, thank you for a wonderful year!

The Year 4 team 💫

Friday 7th July 2023

We can’t believe that this is it, we have had our last full week with this amazing class. 

We have had a busy week in class. Much time has been spent practising for our end of year show, and the children did a fantastic job on this and it was wonderful to see so many parents there. Many thanks to those who allowed their children to bring in the few props that we needed.

On Monday the children had a session with a representative from Norwood. The pupils were given information about the charity, what learning disabilities are and how challenging life can be living with one. The children were very curious and asked some great questions. They then were asked to make a card for people living at Norwood, using materials with different textures.

In English the children continued with their Titanic booklets, promoting tickets for the great ship’s maiden voyage. We also continued reading Kaspar Prince of Cats.

In history the children learned about the wives of Henry VIII.

In Maths, the children learned about lines of symmetry in shapes, and symmetric figures. We then looked at interpreting charts and line graphs.

Our final session in Forest school was fantastic! Many of the children loved the opportunity to use a knife to whittle down some hazel. They listened carefully about how to use the knife safely, which way to hold the hazel, and how to sit. The children also used a pygropher for the first time to add designs to their hazel.   

In science we completed a cloze activity about electrical circuits and reviewed all the topics we’ve learnt. We discussed the many investigations we’ve carried out and our highlights this year. 

Next week we will begin sending books home with the children. Any recently started books that are less than half full will be kept for next year. Please make sure that any Aleph Champ books, Hebrew or English reading books, or library/class book shelf books come back to school. You can keep plastic wallets at home, unless you feel they are in good enough condition to be reused. School bags should be emptied each day, and including a spare bag might be helpful.

We can’t believe that we only have a few more days with the children, we will really miss them next year and have loved being their teachers.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies 11th Tammuz - 30th June

In JS this week Year 4 have been reviewing and learning their general knowledge through numbers - for example we thought of all the number 3's that we could, connected to Judaism, eg 3 forefathers, 3 regalim, 3 daily tefillot etc. Can you think of any others?  How about for each of the other numbers? The children each created their own Mini Book of Numbers, including all of their ideas for numbers 1-10.

In Parasha, we learnt about this week's double parasha, Chukat and Balak.  Who knew that there was a place for Shrek in a JS lesson?!  I'm sure your children will tell you the connection!

Please note, I am not around next week as I am away on a course, but the children will be being taught JS by Miss Goodkin instead, with a really exciting JS art project with Mrs Goldfarb.

Have a lovely Shabbat and a peaceful weekend!

Mrs Hill

Friday 30th June 2023

As we speed toward the end of term, we can’t help but reflect on what has been an utterly fantastic year with this incredible class. They have grown so much, physically, emotionally, and academically. They have become more independent, more able to use their initiative and make decisions for themselves, and more willing to take risks in their learning. We will miss being their teachers next year and hope that we will all be able to enjoy the last week (and a half) of school.

This week we have been working hard on our end-of-year show! The children helped to write the script and made many decisions for themselves. The performances take place next Wednesday, 5th July, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Outside of working on our script, the children continued with their designs for their Titanic leaflets, which we hope to make next week. In maths, the children began a new unit on Geometry. We recapped the children’s prior understanding of angles as a measure of a turn, degrees as the unit of measure, clockwise and anti-clockwise. The children compared and ordered fractions, learned about the properties of different triangles, quadrilaterals (four-sided shapes) and other polygons (2-dimensional shapes with straight sides).

In art, the children learned about Tudor clothing, jewellery and accessories, and in history they were introduced to the early reign of Henry VIII.

This week in spelling, we recapped all the words on the common exception word list for years 3 and 4. The list is attached below, in case you would like to work on these over the summer to prepare the children for year 5.

Our Forest School session was fun despite the mud and rain! We talked about our individual needs such as, purpose, creativity, learning and discovery. Throughout the session we tried to meet our needs through the different games and activities and we discussed this  during our reflection time at the end. Activities this week included mud painting, bracelet making and den building. 

In science, we continued with electricity creating different circuits using bulbs, motors and buzzers. The children had the opportunity to explore, investigate and experiment with the different components collaborating closely with their peers.

Looking forward to our last full week at school!

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 23rd June 2023

The children had a brilliant time using coding blocks to direct Sphero robots across the floor. This is one of the many ways that the children are taught to code at school. To hear more about our exciting and innovative computing and coding curriculum, please join us for an interactive showcase on Monday 26th,Tuesday 27th or Wednesday 28th June, in which Ms Vinokur will show you what the children have been doing in computing classes this year. You will have the opportunity to engage with some of the robots, programs and devices that we use to develop their computational thinking and technology skills. Please sign up using this link. 

In maths the children learned about money, converting between pounds and pence to compare amounts.

In English, we began a nonfiction piece of work. The children are designing a leaflet to advertise tickets for a voyage on the Titanic using superlatives such as greatest, largest, fastest and safest (no spoilers!). 

Our art lesson was about the life, career and work of Hans Holbein the younger. We learned about where he was born and why he came to Britain, as well as some of the techniques that made his work desirable, and famous!

We all had a brilliant time at Hampton Court Palace on Wednesday. Our day began with an educational workshop, entitled ‘Investigating Henry’. After an introduction from our Tudor era guide, the children went around a number of stations, each of which had a question or statement and a number of sources to explore so that the children could come to a conclusion. They learned about primary and secondary sources and had very detailed and articulate discussions. We then explored the gardens and had a wonderful picnic lunch, before conquering the maze and going into the palace itself. The children loved looking at the artwork because we had discussed it so much in our art lesosns, and the whole trip really brought this era to life for them. We hope they told you all about it!

This week in spelling, we worked on homophone and near homophones. 

Homophones are words that sound the same, but have different meanings and spellings. An example of this are the words hole and whole.

Near homophones are words that sound very similar, but have different spellings and meanings. Because they sound the same, confusion with spelling is common. An example of this is were and where, and our and are. The words on our spelling list are:

here      hear

rain       reign

break    brake

who’s    whose

grate    great

were    where

your      you’re

there    their     they’re

hole      whole

There are so many homophones outside of these, please look out for them and see if your child recognises them too.

The common exception words we worked on this week are regular, reign, remember, sentence.

In creative writing we had a ‘free writing’ session. The children were given the freedom to write their own piece based on the clip we’ve been watching called ‘taking flight’. They really enjoyed using their creativity for this. We had a huge variety of excellent pieces including poetry, diary entries and letters. 

Forest school was lots of fun! The focus was team building and collaborating in groups working towards an end challenge. We reviewed knot tying including clove hitches, timber hitches and square lashings. Things didn’t always go to plan and we discussed different ways of managing that and changing our expectations. 

In science we investigated different materials and tested if they were conductors or insulators of electricity. We tested a coin, hair elastic, stick, foil, scissors and paper and some lead! We concluded that all the materials which were conductors were types of metal.

We are nearing the end of the year, and so it is time to begin doing some transition work with the children. We had a wonderful class chat about everything they have achieved this year, challenges they have overcome and skills they have developed and ways in which they have changed. We talked about how change makes us feel and how we can prepare ourselves and allow ourselves to process it positively, while acknowledging that it’s okay to be happy, worried, anxious, excited and sad, all at the same time. This morning, the children spent some time with their new teacher,in their new classroom, and they enjoyed this so much. We know that they are going to absolutely smash it in Year 5!

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies 4th Tammuz - 23rd June

It was so lovely to have you all with us on Monday morning for a shared Rosh Chodesh learning and Tefillah with your children.  Thank you so much for having joined us for the session!

This week we have concentrated mostly on our study of Chumash, continuing our learning of Parashat Toledot.  Esav has returned home, tired and hungry from hunting all day and demands that Yaakov pours the red soup right into his mouth for him.  Yaakov, from this point, calls his brother 'Edom' - which means red.  We thought of all the links we could make between Esav and the colour red to figure out why this was a good name for him.  How many can you think of?

Shabbat Shalom and have a lovely weekend!

Friday 16th June 2023

It has been a busy and exciting week this week at school, with the school funday on Sunday, which saw many of our pupils come along  and even had their own stalls, selling their own hand-made products to support the school (well done and thank you!), Year 2’s Chaggigat Hachumash on Wednesday which siblings popped in to watch, the whole-school photo on Friday, and of course sports day on Tuesday! Sports day was a fantastic event, the children enjoyed their races and showed how hard they have been working not just on their physical ability to compete, but also in their resilience, persistence and support of one another. It was a joy to see so many parents come along to join us and stay for the community picnic. Thank you for supporting this event.

This week Forest School kicked off with a fun challenge. The children needed to communicate clearly and collaborate with their team members to turn over a tarpaulin mat without standing on the grass. Following this, activities included making catapults, identifying plants and animals, making bracelets and finally and using some willow to make a sun. Some children chose to use cyanotype paper to make designs, these came out beautifully.

In science we continued to make electrical circuits. The children attempted this using one bulb, two bulbs and a buzzer. We also learnt the electrical symbols for each component and used these to draw different circuits in our books. We concluded the lesson with writing five rules for how to create a successful circuit. 

In English, the children read the next chapter of Kaspar Prince of Cats and re-wrote the dramatic events of the chapter from Lizziebeth’s point of view. This week’s spelling rule was using the possessive apostrophe for plural nouns, which involves adding an apostrophe after the s, eg. A sink in the girls’ toilets was blocked. This included irregular plural nouns, where the plural is not the same as the singular noun word with the addition of ‘s’, such as child/ children, foot/ feet. In this case, an ‘s’ is aded to show possession with an apostrophe before the s. The common exception words we worked on were possible, potatoes, pressure and probably.

In maths, the children learned about the decimal equivalents of ¼ (0.25), ½ (0.5), and ¾ (0.75). This is a key instant recall fact for Year 4, so please ask your child if they remember the decimal equivalents for these fractions, and help them to memorise them if not. Next, we moved on to learning about money, using our new knowledge of decimals to write amounts of money and convert between pounds and pence.

Next week we are extremely excited to be going on our final outing of the year, to Hampton Court Palace! An email was sent from us this week with details and reminders for the day, including a request to arrive at school for the beginning of soft start, please search for it if you have not seen it. The children have enjoyed our history lessons so far on this topic, about the Plantagenet family tree and how the Tudor era came about, and the events of the War of the Roses’ final battle- the battle of Bosworth. We have also begun our cross curricular art project on Tudor art, examining many different portraits and discussing the style of portraits during this era, the fact that many artists chose to paint their subjects in a flattering light and why, and what we learn about what life was like.

Shabbat Shalom, enjoy the sunshine,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 9th June 2023

We hope you all had an enjoyable break over half term, it has been wonderful hearing about some of the adventures that the children had last week.

Yesterday saw the return of forest school for year 4  and it was lovely to be back! We began the session talking about how we were feeling according to Marc Brackett’s mood meter. Some of the emotions children chose were relaxed, happy, excited, content or comfortable. Then we played a game called Lily Pad, where the children needed to collaborate in their teams to get from one rope to another using only four discs. The children needed to be flexible, open minded and think about how they were communicating with each other.

Please keep checking the weather forecast each week, as it has been known to rain even in the summer and we want all of the children to be prepared for the weather. Our session is first thing in the morning so there will not be time to bring items later. Thank you! For anyone interested, our timetable has been updated in the ‘Useful Information’ section above.

In maths this week, the children learned about the effects of dividing 2 and 3 digit numbers by 100. Each digit in the number moves 2 place value column to the right, meaning any digit in the tens column becomes tenths and in the ones column becomes hundredths. This is another reason why we avoid a zero is simply added when multiplying by 10 or 100. The children then used their knowledge of place value to compare and order decimals, identifying the place value column to look at first, depending on the numbers involved. 

In English lessons the children learned that a clause is a building block of a sentence, and contains a subject, which will be a noun, and a verb, which is being performed by the subject. This on its own would be a simple, or single clause sentence, such as:

Yesterday, Year 4 enjoyed their forest school session.

Multi-clause sentences can be constructed by putting 2 or 3 clauses together. Coordinating conjunctions such as and, but and so, go between the 2 clauses. 

Year 4 enjoyed their forest school session and were glad that the sun was shining!

Year 4 enjoyed their forest school session so they can’t wait for next week.

Subordinating conjunctions, such as when, if, because, although, can be used at the start of the sentences, or between 2 clauses. If used at the start of the sentence, a comma must go between the 2 clauses, instead of the conjunction.

Year 4 were so lucky to have good weather when they had their forest school session.

When Year 4 had their forest school session, they were so lucky to have good weather.

The children wrote sentences based on Kaspar Prince of Cats using different conjunctions in different ways.

In history the children began to learn about their new topic, the Tudor era. This week, they learned about the Plantagenets and their complex family tree, to understand how Tudor rule in Britain came about.

In science the children had a fantastic time making their own electrical circuits! We learnt about what you need to make a complete circuit and their challenge was to create a circuit which included wires, a cell and a mini light bulb! They experimented, problem solved and investigated reasons why their circuits weren’t working and were very excited when their light bulbs turned on! Some groups even managed to use two light bulbs and a buzzer! 

In creative writing we watched a clip from literacy shed called taking flight. We used this as inspiration for our writing focusing on how to portray feelings in our writing and how those feelings can change within a piece. The children were encouraged to use fronted adverbials and figurative language. 

A few reminders, next Tuesday 13th June is sports day and we can’t wait to see many of you there! Please check the email sent from the office for all the details, and let us know if your child will not be returning to school. A reminder that all children returning to school need to be brought by a parent or friend.

The following week, on Wednesday 21st June, we will be going on our class outing to Hampton Court Palace! We will update the blog with more details and reminders for this next week.

Finally we are seeing some sunshine, we hope you have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the Kerem School PTA Funday on Sunday.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies - 20th Sivan - 9th June

I hope you all had a really lovely Shavuot and half term break.  This half term we will be focussing on our general Jewish knowledge as well as our Chumash learning of Parashat Toledot.

This week we have been reviewing the Jewish calendar and the dates of all of our main chagim.  The children worked in groups to create some lovely games to help them remember the dates (see pics below).  We have also been practising our Hebrew reading and had an in-depth discussion about this week's parasha. We were particularly interested in the idea of Moshe not knowing an answer and needing to ask HaShem.  We understood that if it is ok for our great teacher and leader Moshe to admit when he doesn't know something, it is definitely ok for us!

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Hill

Wednesday 24th May 2023

This week the children painted the canopic jars that they made on Friday, and they look absolutely fantastic and very much like real canopic jars, used in ancient Egypt to store the liver, spleen and heart after death. We also finished our Egyptian Cinderella slippers, a project that involved lots of resilience, persistence, collaboration, flexibility of mind as well as many other important skills and characteristics. Well done children!

In maths the children learned about hundredths, how these relate to tenths as well as how they are written as decimals, for example, 3/100 = 0.03, and 21/100 = 2 tenths and 1 hundredth = 0.21. They partitioned numbers involving decimals in different ways, making decisions about using tenths as well as hundredths. We used bead strings and hundred squares (base 10) which helped the children to understand this using concrete resources.

In English lessons, we recapped chapter 2 and read chapter 3 of Kaspar Prince of Cats. The children wrote a description of Kaspar based on what we know of him. The children used evidence from the text as examples to support their description and used all the excellent writing features we have been working on throughout the year, including expanded noun phrases, personification, similes, strong verbs and adjectives, and fronted adverbials. We also emphasised thinking about the reader as the children wrote, thinking about how this writing would be engaging and want to make them keep reading. We discussed the role of a bold opening sentence and rhetorical questions.

Due to Shavuot and half term, there will not be any homework set this week. In spelling lessons we took the opportunity to go back to a spelling misconception that we have seen a lot in books: when to double the consonant at the end of a one-syllable word when adding a suffix, and when not to. When the root word ends with a short vowel sound and then a consonant, eg. tap, the consonant is doubled, eg. tapping. If there are 2 consonants (eg. duck, ducked) or a long vowel sound (eg. play, played), the consonant is not doubled when a suffix is added.

We had some extra time together this week, so we were lucky to be able to have an RSE / PSHE lesson on friendships and relationships. The children considered what makes a good friend, and how to recognise healthy friendships that make us feel good, and unhealthy ones that make us feel bad. We also discussed that it is ok for friendships to have their ups and downs, and the odd argument is normal.

On Thursday morning we will have a whole school learning session in honour of Shavuot and the giving of the Torah. The children have been given a t-shirt which they will bring home today, please write a compliment to them on the front, something you are really proud of them about. They will write something on the other side tomorrow at school.

Have a wonderful Shavuot and an enjoyable half-term!

Chag Sameach,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the year 4 team

Friday 19th May 2023

It was a very strange week for Year 4, as while Year 5 and Year 6 were on their residentials we became the oldest class in the school! The children enjoyed spending break times with the lower school this week and set a fantastic example to them.

This week in English we continued to work hard to redraft the children’s diary entries, written as Howard Carter when he discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. We also enjoyed getting back to Kaspar Prince of Cats, using the text to identify, expand and write their own expanded noun phrases, and using present perfect tense. The children wrote excellent letters from Johnny Trott to the mother he never knew.

In maths the children made a fantastic start to learning about decimals, starting with tenths as fractions and then as decimals. They were introduced to the ‘tenths’ column on a place value chart, and understand that ten tenths = 1 one (or one whole).

In history the children learned about beliefs regarding life after death in ancient Egypt. They acted out the mummification process on a tomato and made their own canopic jars, which were used to store specific internal organs after death.

In spelling lessons the common exception words we worked on were particular, peculiar, perhaps, popular.

The spelling rule involved words with the sound /f/ spelled as ph.

cacophony 

paragraph 

pharaoh 

pharmacist 

phenomenon 

phlegm 

phobia 

physical 

physiotherapy 

symphony 

In science, the children learnt about the dangers of electricity and how to keep safe. Examples we spoke about included not using metal in a toaster to remove toast, making sure our devices aren’t plugged in for too long, checking our wires aren’t broken and making sure water isn’t near our electrical items. They made a poster to display in our classroom as well. 

On Tuesday the children took part in their annual ‘mini first aid’ training session. This gives them vital skills for life, the children showed fantastic enthusiasm for this and understood why it’s so important.

Next week school finishes for Shavuot and half term on Thursday at 2:00pm. There will not be any homework set, though daily times tables practice is always recommended!

Wishing you a fantastic weekend,

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies - 21st Iyar - 12th May

This week we learnt about Lag BaOmer, creating infographics about this special day.  We also enjoyed delicious ice creams to mark the occasion.

We have also been looking at the layout of a Siddur, having first figured out for ourselves that the word Siddur is similar to Seder, so must also mean order.  We then figured out what order makes the most sense for our tefillot appear in a Siddur - being from most often said to least often said.

We had a long discussion about the laws of shmitta, which we read about in this week's parasha, and tied this in with our middah of the week which is to care for our environment.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom!

Friday 12th May 2023

Happy Friday, we hope all the children had a wonderful time celebrating the King’s coronation last weekend!

This week, the children worked hard on their verbal reasoning and creative writing assessments, applying all that they have learned throughout this year and really showing persistence.

On Tuesday it was Lag Ba’Omer, and the children were given ice cream (with sprinkles!) after lunch to celebrate. 

Another huge highlight this week was an incredible environmental workshop, where the children learned about renewable energy, environmental issues and biodiversity. Have a look at the photos attached below, and ask your child what they earned about living sustainably.

The workshop was a great introduction into our new science topic - electricity. This is a fabulous hands on topic where we will be building circuits using wires, bulbs, switches and buzzers. Today we built the foundation to be able to do this, learning about the different types of electricity and where it comes from. The children also sorted different objects into two groups, mains and battery powered and non-electrical items.

In maths this week, the children learned how to subtract fractions with the same denominator, as well as from whole numbers. Bar models were used to demonstrate this visually and to aid understanding.

In spelling lessons we continued to look at words with the suffix –ous when there is an ‘ee’ sound before the ous ending. The ending of these words will usually be spelled ious, although some words are spelled eous. If the root word ends with ge, a final ‘e’ must be kept if the  sound of ‘g’ is to be kept, eg. outrage- outrageous. Below is our spelling list, though any words that demonstrate this spelling rule are relevant to this learning. 

courageous 

outrageous 

advantageous 

gorgeous

courteous

spontaneous

hideous

nauseous

righteous

simultaneous

The common exception words for this week are: occasionally, often, opposite, ordinary.

Looking ahead to next week, we are looking forward to a very productive week with lots of regular lessons, and the children will have their annual mini first aid session.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 5th May 2023

This week has flown by, with lots of confusion about what day of the week it is because of Bank Holiday Monday!

The highlight of the week was the launch of our new school uniform. The children were shown the different parts of the uniform during assembly, and there was much excitement when a range of children went to try them on. The photos are amazing and the children look so smart in them, even the PE uniform. These changes came about as a result of a survey made by the Kerem Cares Kehilla committee. The results overwhelmingly showed that the children do not like the current school uniform. The new uniform will not only look great, but is more comfortable, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly than the current one.

This week the children had some lessons about the upcoming coronation of King Charles III. We wanted the children to understand what a coronation is, and that they are living through a momentous historical event and witnessing it firsthand. They learned about the symbols and values represented by Queen Elizabeth and King Charles, and how this relates to and permeates our British values. As part of our creative writing lesson the children wrote a piece entitled “what it’s like to be in the crowd.” We discussed what it would feel like to be amongst the crowd, awaiting the procession from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace for the King’s coronation. The children came up with some fantastic similes to describe what would be happening around them, how they’d be feeling and what it would sound like. The school celebrated together in a whole-school Kabbalat Shabbat, where representatives from each class showed the rest of the school what they had learned.

We didn’t have any spelling lessons this week, so this week’s homework is based on last week’s spelling rule- words with the suffix –ous, when there is an ‘ee’ sound before the ous ending. The ending of these words will usually be spelled ious, although some words are spelled eous. Examples of these words can be found on the word list below. The common exception words we worked on were natural, naughty, notice, occasion. 

serious

obvious

various 

anxious 

delicious 

furious 

glorious 

gracious  

luscious 

luxurious 

mysterious 

curious

Wishing you all a fantastic and memorable special Bank Holiday weekend in celebration of the King’s coronation.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies 14th Iyar - 5th May

This week has flown by!  We have been looking at the special brachah that we say when seeing a king or queen, and also discussed how wonderful it is that our very own Chief Rabbi is having a sleepover tonight, on the eve of the Coronation, with King Charles! How truly remarkable is our King as well as our country!!

We have also discussed the concept of Eruv this week, and what it enables us to do on Shabbat.  We briefly touched also on the concept of muktzeh, being the word used for items that we can't use or even touch on Shabbat. Today, being 14th Iyar, we learnt about Pesach Sheni which is today - don't worry though, chametz are permitted!

Wishing you all a really lovely long weekend and Shabbat Shalom to you all!

Friday 28th April 2023

What a week!

The children were excited to begin reading our new class text, Kaspar Prince of Cats by Michael Morpurgo. We read the first chapter as a guided reading lesson, identifying and defining unfamiliar vocabulary and discussing the characters introduced so far. The children wrote interesting predictions for what might happen in the story, based on what was revealed in the first chapter.

In maths this week the children deepened their knowledge of adding fractions with the same denominator. When the sum of the fractions was more than one, bar models were used to help the children recognise this and work out the accurate total. They used their understanding of mixed numbers and improper fractions to understand the total. The children then learned about equivalent fractions and how to calculate fractions of amounts.

In spelling the children learned about words with the suffix –ous, when there is an ‘ee’ sound before the ous ending. The ending of these words will usually be spelled ious, although some words are spelled eous. Examples of these words can be found on the word list below. The common exception words we worked on were natural, naughty, notice, occasion. 

serious

obvious

various 

anxious 

delicious 

furious 

glorious 

gracious  

luscious 

luxurious 

mysterious 

curious

The slides from our spelling lessons can be found on Google classroom, please encourage the children to use these for spelling practice. 

Take a look at our photos which show how the children consolidated their knowledge of the water cycle in science. We used a Ziplock bag, water and blue colouring to portray the three main stages - evaporation, condensation and precipitation. We have left these on our window to watch what happens over time.

On Tuesday the children took part in a special tekes for the upper school to commemorate Yom Hazikaron. Year 6 did an incredible job of leading the tekes, and Year 4 showed that they understood the spirit of this day. Eliott and Natalya laid flowers on behalf of our class. On Wednesday the mood changed as we celebrated Yom Ha’atzmaut and 75 years of Israel! The children had an amazing day, with watercolour painting in the style of Israeli artist Reuven Rubin, writing a song for Israel, Israeli dance class and whole school dance, army training, blue and white necklace making, a show with a group of amazing Israeli singers and dancers and our flag march right at the end of the day. It was such an exhilarating day of togetherness and celebration, we hope that you have all seen the photos on our social media pages. 

Wishing you all a wonderful bank holiday long weekend, see you on Tuesday!

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies 28th April - 7th Iyar 

We certainly celebrated Israel's independence in style this week! In preparation for this special day, we discussed a little of the history leading up to the creation of Medinat Yisrael.  We also discussed why countries have a national anthem and explored the words of Hatikvah. On Yom Haatzmaut itself, we sang, danced, wrote a song, painted and marched our way through the day.  It really was a huge celebration of our wonderful State of Israel!

We also learnt about Sefirat HaOmer (counting the Omer) and created our own Omer charts.

Wishing you Shabbat Shalom and a really enjoyable bank holiday weekend!

Friday 21st April 2023

Welcome to the summer term! We hope you all had a wonderful break and a fabulous Pesach.

The children worked extremely hard in maths this week as we revisited fractions and recapped the meanings of the important concepts of the whole, equal parts, and the roles of the denominator especially but the numerator as well. They explored the concept of fractions when there is more than one whole, in terms of mixed numbers such as 1 ½ , as well as the improper fraction, in this case 3/2 or 3 halves.

In science the children learnt about the third state of matter - gas! We learnt that when a liquid turns into a gas it’s called evaporation. We discussed examples of these such as wet laundry drying outside, blow dryers and hand dryers. We then used this knowledge to understand the water cycle. We drew the cycle in our books, labelling evaporation, condensation and precipitation. Next week these terms will be consolidated with a hands-on activity which the kids are looking forward to!

In English the class began working on our new class text, Kaspar Prince of Cats by Michael Morpurgo. This is such a lovely story and if you would like to buy a copy for your child they are welcome to bring their copy in to read in class. Please ensure that these are named so that we can ensure that these don’t get lost.

On Friday we began our weekly RSE (Relationship and Sex Education) lessons, which are a statutory requirement. You may recall the children’s learning in this area from Year 3. The lessons in year 4 will cover: 

• human life cycles
• how bodies change during puberty, and that children change into adults to be able to reproduce if they choose to
• respect in a range of relationships
• the characteristics of healthy relationships.

Lessons will also involve learning about different body parts, and these will be referred to by their anatomically correct terminology.

In our first session, the topic was introduced and we created some class rules that we will all adhere to in the sessions. The children showed a lot of interest and maturity and took the opportunity to ask some important questions. We began learning about the human lifecycle and will continue next week.

We also began our unit of learning as part of the World Religions Programme, the religion focused on in Year 4 is Islam. The children started a new Book Creator on their iPads to collate all of their learning, and began researching the general information and background of Islam, such as language, country of origin, main beliefs, number of followers and dietary requirements.

 Next week will be an exciting week as we commemorate Yom Hazikaron on Tuesday and celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut on Wednesday.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies -  Rosh Chodesh Nissan - 21st April

Welcome back to the summer term - I do hope your Pesach was enjoyable and meaningful, and that you enjoyed sharing your child's Seder games.  

On our return on Monday, we paid a visit to the local blossom trees in order to say the special bracha for appreciating blossom and the rest of HaShem's beautiful world.  Besides this, we have started working towards Yom Haatzmaut, with each pupil creating a poster featuring one fact that makes Israel special.  All together we have made 75 facts, one for each year of the modern State of Israel. You can see them flowing all the way up to the top of the staircase!

We look forward to celebrating Israel's special day next week and I wish you all chag atzmaut same'ah!

Shabbat Shalom and have a lovely weekend!

Wednesday 29th March 2023

Despite it being a really short week, we have been extremely busy in year 4!

The children continued to plan and ultimately wrote their own Egyptian Cinderella stories in English. In these stories they were encouraged to ensure that they included essential skills we have learned, including paragraphs, meaningful dialogue that reveals information about the characters, their relationships, personalities and motives, fronted adverbials, a range of conjunctions and expanded noun phrases.

We had a fantastic art lesson, in which the children continued designing and making their Egyptian Cinderella shoe. You can see some photos of them making their pattern out of sugar paper below! They could see how hard it was to render their designs and some made important changes to what they had initially planned. It really was a lesson in risk taking, resilience and flexibility of mind. Well done Year 4!

On Monday afternoon the children had an amazing model Seder! A big thank you to Mrs Hill for all the fun, creativity, and hard work that went into this.

On Tuesday we went to The Barbican for a schools concert. The children learned about the musical journey of George Gershwin, and enjoyed seeing and listening to the live orchestra playing his music.

On Wednesday a special houses activity took place. The children got into their house teams and went around various activities together, including an obstacle course with Mr Antony, games, music with Mr Style and shared reading.

And so we have reached the end of the spring term. We wish you all a Chag Pesach Kasher Vesameyach, hope you all have an enjoyable chag and a great beak. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone in the summer term,

Mrs Collins and Mrs Kanzen

Friday 24th March 2023

Our last full week of the spring term has been busy and productive. We really enjoyed seeing you all at parent consultations this week, thank you all for coming.

In maths lessons the children learned about perimeter. We began counting the perimeter of squares, rectangles and rectilinear shapes (shapes with a number of straight sides which meet at right angles) drawn on a grid, and moved on to calculating perimeter with sides labelled  in metres and centimetres. The children learned some good strategies they can rely on to ensure that they had included all of the sides of the shapes and calculated accurately. They progressed to calculate the lengths of unlabelled sides by looking at other sides which had been labelled, and calculating the perimeter of regular and irregular polygons.

The children completed their story maps for Egyptian Cinderella in English and discussed ideas for their own Egyptian Cinderella story, which they then used to make a story plan. In creative writing this week, we spoke about perspective. The children chose an object such as a coin, basketball or teddy bear and wrote a piece from their object’s perspective. Once again they were reminded about their paragraphs, sentence openings and including thoughts and feelings from the perspective of their object. 

In spelling this week we worked on words ending with -ation. The children learned that this is added on the end of verbs to form nouns. In most cases, ation is simply added on, eg. inform- information. If the root word ends with ‘e’, this is removed before adding it, eg. sense- sensation      admire- admiration. If the root word ends with ‘y’, remove it and add ‘ic’ before adding -ation, eg. multiply- multiplication, notify- notification. You can find our word list below. The common exception words we learned about are: knowledge, learn, length, library.

information 

adoration 

sensation 

preparation 

admiration 

investigation 

frustration 

liberation 

animation 

operation 

narration 

dictation

formation 

In art the children were introduced to our exciting new project, based on the Egyptian Cinderella. The children designed their own version of Rhodopis’s ‘rose-red’ slipper in their art sketchbook, reflecting on the materials that cold be used to make it.

In science we carried out a melting chocolate investigation as part of our states of matter. This was to determine if the white, dark or milk chocolate would melt the quickest. We made predictions, discussed how to keep it a fair and accurate test, recorded our results and wrote conclusions. 

In PSHE The children’s first session focused on strengthening the classes’ sense of group. The children played the ‘Connection Wheel Game’ giving them a chance to have ‘mini-conversations’ with lots of different members of the class. 

They discussed their experiences and thought about what it feels like to be asked about themselves. The children reflected on the idea that they are all in the same class, but sometimes they forget to notice one another. We also clarified what an ‘upstander’ is, and the sort of real life situations that might need an ‘upstander’.

Next week we have an exciting week which includes the upper school model Seder on Monday and our trip to the Barbican on Tuesday morning. A quick reminder that, as emailed this week, the children no longer need a packed lunch for Tuesday’s outing, as our picnic has been cancelled due to poor weather being forecast. The children will not need to wear their PE uniform on Tuesday and should wear their regular school uniform. We are looking forward to sharing this experience with them.

Wishing you all a Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collin, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies - 2nd Nissan 24th March

Kadesh Urchatz, Karpas Yachatz... I'm singing it in my sleep now that we've sung it so many times in class!  The children have been working so, so hard on the Seder activities and are super excited to be able to share what they have made at their Sedarim.  I really hope that you love their games as much as they do! They have made lots of quiz questions for each stage of the Seder, a taboo game, plague wheel and lots more too!

On Monday afternoon we will be holding our model Seder, which we are really excited about.  Hopefully there will be lots of singing, drinking grape juice and eating of charoset and maror! I'm sure the children will tell you all about it!

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom.

Jewish Studies 24th Adar

This week it's been Pesach all the way!  The class are working really hard to create their beautiful guides to the Seder, making up for lost time and firing on all cylinders!

Have a lovely Shabbat and a relaxing weekend.

Friday 17th March 2023

The highlight of our week has been spending time making our class Israel 75 art project, our chosen theme was the Hamsa. You can see some photos of the children creating their artwork and their finished pieces, which will be displayed as one piece of artwork, below. You can read more information about the project using the link below.

In English this week the children continued their work on The Egyptian Cinderella. The children wrote a diary entry for Rhodopis using a range of emotion words and describing the events of her life so far. We then learned about verbs, writing a list of all the verbs that we could find throughout the story. The children then made a visual map of Pharaoh’s journey around Egypt, including the verbs and adjectives used in that part of the story. In our comprehension lesson we read a piece called The Red Stone. We picked apart the language, structure and inferential meaning of the text. When answering the questions, we focused on finding evidence in the text to back up our answers - this is a target for many children in the class. In creative writing the children wrote a piece called The Room. Our focus was varying out sentence openers by using fronted adverbials, prepositions and adverbs. They used their senses to build up their descriptions and some children attempted to use rhetorical questions to show thoughts and feelings of their character. 

In maths the children learned how to divide 3 digit numbers using flexible partitioning, a place value grid, and a touch of the bus stop method using counters. After this, we worked on correspondence problems, which involve working out and listing all the possible combinations of options, for example, an ice cream parlour has 5 flavours of ice cream and 3 different toppings. How many different combinations could there be using one scoop of ice cream and one topping? List all the possible combinations. The children found that the product of the number of options, eg. number of ice cream flavours multiplied by the number of toppings for this question, 5 x 3, would be the total number of possible combinations. Creating a table was a good way of finding all the possibilities, such as in the table below.

After this the children learned about efficient methods of multiplication and had an introduction to measures, including converting metres to kilometres.

In history the children have been enjoying the start we have made to learning about Ancient Egypt. This week they continued creating a timeline of major events that happened in ancient Egypt.

In science we continued with our states of matter topic. The children carried out an investigation to determine which is the fizziest drink (which drink has the most carbon dioxide). We discussed which factors need to remain the same in order for it to be a fair test. This investigation reinforced that gases do in fact have a weight! Have a look at our photos and discuss with your child which was the fizziest drink. 

This week in spelling the children learned yet another spelling for the ending pronounced /shun/, this time -cian. Our spelling list and common exception words can be found below.

optician 

politician 

musician 

electrician 

mathematician

dietician

technician

magician

Common exception words: increase, important, interest, island.

We can’t believe that next week will be our last full week of the spring term! We are looking forward to meeting all of you at the parent consultations on Wednesday.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 10th March 2023

The children have had an extremely exciting and busy week this week! We hope that you all had an enjoyable Purim. We had a fantastic time celebrating with the children at school. After the reading of the megillah, we went back to class and the children presented their mishloach manot to another member of the class, which was determined by pulling lots. In groups, they created a Purim-themed crossword, then swapped with other groups so that they could solve each others’. We also took part in Jewish Care’s sponsored Purim Zumba and had a fancy dress parade with the rest of the upper school. It was a really fun day.

Now on to our other learning! In English the children continued with our work on The Egyptian Cinderella, working on the ‘show don’t tell’ technique - how a writer shows how a character is feeling, gives insights into their personality or motives, through how they look, what they do or what they say. The children worked in small groups to note down ideas of how they could show, through dialogue, descriptions or actions, not tell through the narrator’s voice, that a character feels angry, peaceful, sad or hopeful. In comprehension, we finally got to read part two of Everest! The children were so excited to read this and compare the endings they wrote last week to what actually happened in part two. As the writer ended the story on a cliffhanger, the children were then able to write their own part three to the story in their creative writing lesson! They were reminded of DDAFT (description, dialogue, action, feelings, and thought). They were also encouraged to use fronted adverbials which they did so well! 

In maths we have spent lots of time working on the key operation of division, specifically using all our mathematical knowledge to divide 2 digit numbers by a one digit number. The children used place value counters and charts to ‘share’ the tens and ones by the number they are dividing by (mathematically known as the divisor). They also used part-whole models to partition the number being divided (mathematically known as the ‘dividend’) into 2 parts to make the calculation more efficient. For example, for the calculation 96 ÷ 4, you might partition 96 into 80 and 16, as dividing each of these numbers separately is an easier mental calculation (If you know that 8 ÷ 4 = 2, then 80 ÷ 4 = 20). These mental methods are crucial learning that should come before learning a formal written method, such as the ‘bus stop’ method, firstly so that children have the understanding of what is happening in that method and why, and also so that they can show their mathematical agility by choosing a mental method when this is more efficient than a formal written one. This is particularly important when dividing involves an exchange or remainders. Please ensure that all adults working with the children on their maths are aware of this. The children were briefly introduced to the ‘bus stop’ method as well so that they could use all that we have learned alongside it.

In spelling this week, the children revisited the spelling of the ending /shun/ as -ssion. We went back to this because of specific spelling errors with this sound, and also so that we could look at the spelling alongside -tion, our spelling from last week. The common exception words we looked at this week are heart, height, history, imagine, and below are the specific words we learned about. Lease remind the children that there are many other words with these sounds and spellings that we learn in class, and they should use their learning to spell those words too, rather than look at this as a fixed list of words they nmeed to know.

aggression 

depression 

discussion 

expression 

impression 

mission  

possession 

profession 

progression 

In science we explored the final state of matter - gases! We learned about the bubbles in a fizzy drink, who invented fizzy drinks, and how they are made. The children were given a question to investigate - does gas have a weight? We discussed how we could investigate this, and we decided to weigh the drink, stir the bubbles away and then weigh it again. The children were surprised that the liquid weighed less, showing that gas does have a weight even though you can’t see it or hold it! 

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend!

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies 10^th Adar – 3^rd March

Year 4 have been learning about the four ‘mems’ of Purim and the halachot (laws) connected to each of them. We created a Purim bookmark to help us re’mem’ber these four mitzvot too. We also explored an image of a German 18^th century Purim plate, created as a receptacle for displaying and delivering mishloach manot, and then created our own Purim plate.

In Chumash, we completed an online activity in which we focussed on the vocab relating to each of the twins, Yaakov and Esav. We also completed another page in our ‘Rivkah’s Diary’, building on the above vocab in our description of each of the twins.

Next week will bring with it our Purim celebration on Tuesday, to be followed immediately on Wednesday by our starting to learn about Pesach, which is creeping up on us suddenly!

Have a lovely Shabbat and a good weekend.

Friday 3rd March 2023

In English we started looking at our new class text, The Egyptian Cinderella by Shirley Climo. We discussed the similarities and differences between this story and the traditional version of Cinderella. The children then used comparative conjunctions, such as whereas, while and although, to make comparative sentences about Egyptian gods and goddesses. In comprehension we tackled a challenging story called Everest - part one. We pulled the story apart and unpicked some of the difficult vocabulary and answered questions. The children then wrote their own ending to the story in creative writing. We all look forward to reading part two next week!

In maths, the children learned how to use their knowledge of tables and place value in calculations to calculate related number facts, such as 7 x 8 = 56, which can be used to calculate 560 ÷ 7 = 80. The children moved on to learn about informal methods, which underpin understanding, to multiply 2 digit numbers by a 1 digit number. These methods included using a place value grid and counters, using a number line, and partitioning the 2 digit numbers into tens and ones to multiply separately. They then learned about the formal written methods of long and short multiplication. The children really noticed how much easier this was when they could use their mental recall of times tables they have learned, and conversely how much harder it was when they hadn’t yet learned the tables involved, so please encourage them to keep practising as often as possible.

The spelling rule we learned about this week is the suffix ‘tion’. This is the most common spelling of words with the suffix /shun/. It is used if the root word ends in t or te.

invention

animation

investigation

injection

education

construction

option

correction

affection

The common exception words we practised are: group, guard, guide, heard.

In science we started our new topic - states of matter. We began the lesson with discussing if rice is a solid or a liquid. The children came up with many thoughts, opinions and questions. Next the children moved around the room investigating other items such as fanta, honey, sprinkles etc.

We discussed the different properties in solids and liquids and then wrote our own definitions in our books. 

The children had a lovely time at the Ivrit Theatre show on Tuesday afternoon, many thanks to Morah Sharon and Morah Neta for organising this.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 24th February 2023

It has been wonderful to see the children back at school this week. There is so much happening this term and we can’t wait to get stuck in! 

In English lessons this week we wrapped up our study of The Great Kapok Tree with the children planning and writing their own story with a similar structure. All the children did a fantastic job on these, the stories had a clearer structure and included lots of detail, as well as the specific language features we have studied through the unit- description, figurative language such as personification, persuasive devices and fronted adverbials.

In maths the children learned about multiplying and dividing numbers by 10 and 100. They used a place value chart and digit cards to show where each digit moves- one place value column to the left for multiplying by 10, 2 columns to the left for multiplying by 100, and 0 is used as a ‘place holder’ in the hundreds, tens or ones column if they do not have another digit. We avoided simplifying this to ‘a zero/ two zeroes is added on to the end of the number’ as this undermines the importance of place value in numbers and the children’s understanding. When dividing numbers by 10 or 100, the children noticed that each digit moved one or two place value columns to the right. 

In our spelling sessions the children learned about the prefix ‘ir’, which has the same meaning as the prefixes ‘in’ and ‘il’, but is used when the root word begins with an ‘r’. The word on our spelling list are: irrational

irresistible

irrelevant

irreparable

irregular

irreversible

irresponsible

irremovable

And the common exception words are: February, forward, fruit and grammar.

In geography we concluded our work on rainforests, and had a class debate about deforestation. The children worked in groups to prepare arguments to support the views they were presenting, as well as counter arguments for things that their debate opponents might say.

In science the children shared their beautiful posters which they’ve all worked so hard on! We enjoyed listening and learning about each endangered animal and the childern did a wonderful job at presenting to their peers. We wrote down notes in our books while we listened and asked any relevant questions. Their posters will be displayed for the rest of the school to see, they’ve done a fabulous job on these!

Homework

Spelling and maths homework is set weekly and there is a general expectation that this is completed. If there is an issue with this on the odd occasion then please get in touch with us. Books should be brought back to school every week, even if they have not been used to record current homework tasks (at times this is optional or not relevant to the task). Some homework books have not been brought back to school for a number of weeks, and we ask that these are returned as soon as possible. Many thanks for your support in this matter.

Reading

Whether your child is a ‘free reader’ or a reading scheme reader, all children should be reading a range of fiction and nonfiction texts on a regular basis. This can be with an adult or independent reading, however all reading must be logged in their reading journal, which should be brought in to school at least every Monday. Regular and diverse reading helps children continue to develop their reading fluency, comprehension skills, broadens their understanding of the world and others, broadens their vocabulary and general knowledge and gives them ideas for their writing, and so much more!

PE

Our Forest School block has now finished, our next one is in the summer term. PE will continue to take place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Children should wear their regular school uniform on Thursdays.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 10th February 2023

This week was Mental Health Week, which started in style with our (almost) whole-school outing to Kew Gardens on Monday, also an excellent way to celebrate Tu B'Shevat. The children demonstrated real curiosity and were delighted to see the plants and trees we have learned about in our Rainforest topic in ‘real life’. The orchids were beautiful and they were particularly interested in the carnivorous plants section! We were lucky to also have the opportunity to take part in an Art in Nature workshop, where the children both practised making observational drawings looking at colour, pattern and form, and created a collaborative transient piece of artwork. Some of the words used by the children to describe our visit were: breath-taking, interesting, colourful, calming and wonderful.

In maths this week we made a return to learning about multiplication and division. The children learned about the concept of ‘factors’, the numbers that can divide a number exactly, and factor pairs, a set of two factors, which, when multiplied together, give a particular product. For example, 6 is a factor of 18. 6 and 3 are a factor pair for 18, because 6 x 3 = 18. 

factor x factor = product

They then moved on to explore the impact when a number is multiplied by 10. We used a place value grid and noticed that each of the digits in the number moved one place value column to the left, and in the ones column, which was now left empty, a zero was added to act as a ‘place holder’. 

In English lessons we looked at the persuasive devices used throughout the story of The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. The children then wrote their own letter to the ‘senhor’, asking him nhot to chop the tree down. They used the persuasive devices we had learned about, such as addressing the recipient directly by their name or title, using personal or family stories, using  questions and talking about consequences in the future.

In geography the children began to learn about deforestation, though this has been touched on many times through our rainforest topic. The children explored the positive and negative impacts of deforestation, which helped them to understand the reasons that deforestation takes place.

In science the children continued their research on their endangered animal. We spoke in depth about only including information we understood and discussed how to change a paragraph into key points. The children will be using this information to create their poster at home as part of their homework. (More Information about this on google classroom)

For Children’s Mental Health Week, the children spent some time drawing their ‘happy place’, considering what makes them feel calm and relaxed, and in music lessons they composed a piece of music  

We hope that you all have had a lovely week over half term, we are looking forward to seeing the children back at school on 20th February.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies  19th Shevat 10th Feb

In JS this week, Year 4 have continued with their Chumash learning of Parashat Toledot.  We have made our next entry into Rivka's blog, including our 'doctor's report' on the unusual events surrounding the birth of Yaakov and Esav.  We have also designed our own rough hamsas ready for Israel 75 and learnt that this week's parashah includes the Ten Commandments.  We looked at the gematria of the word Torah, and figured out where the 'missing 2' was.

The children have no homework for the holidays, though I shared a parasha sheet with them so that they have something to share at the Shabbat table.

I wish you all a lovely half term and Shabbat Shalom!

Jewish Studies 12th Shevat - 3rd Feb

In JS this week we have continued our learning of Parashat Toledot, discussing why it was that Yaakov was born holding on to his brother's heel. 

We have been preparing for our work for the national Israel 75 exhibition, which we are basing around a special amulet containing a hamsa, which we learnt about this week.  To read about more about the project and exhibition, see here.

Shabbat Shalom and have a lovely weekend.

Friday 3rd February 2023

On Monday the class had a brilliant time at London Zoo. We had plenty of time to go and visit all of the animals and especially enjoyed the rainforest area and seeing some of the animals we have been learning about, such as a two-toed sloth and blue morpho butterfly. The children learned a lot about animals and their habitats, as well as the adaptations that help them to survive.

In English this week we returned to our work on The Great Kapok Tree, which they are really enjoying. We discussed the meaning of the words ‘dilemma’ and ‘resolution’ and identified the story as a dilemma story. The children then worked in pairs or small groups to role-play a short story about a dilemma, deciding on the resolution themselves and considering the consequences of the resolution. These were performed to the rest of the class. In creative writing we reviewed DDAFT. This is a mnemonic to help the children remember the 5 key features to include in their writing. Description, dialogue, action, feeling, and thought. They identified examples of these features in texts we have already explored in previous weeks. We also talked about adverbs and how to use them effectively to begin sentences. 

In maths lessons the children continued to deepen their knowledge of how to estimate calculations using the skill of rounding to the nearest 10/ 100/ 1000, and then checking these estimations using an efficient written calculation strategy. We then moved on to how to check the accuracy of calculations using the inverse.

In spelling the children learned the prefix ‘im’, which is used in the same way as the prefixes ‘in’ and ‘il’, and changes the meaning of the root word to its opposite, for example, patient- impatient. The specific words that we looked at were: 

• imbalance
• immature
• immobile
• impatient
• imperfect
• impolite
• impossible
• impractical
• improper

The common exception words that we learned about were experiment, extreme, famous

favourite

In science we began researching endangered animals. This work will help the children with their upcoming homework task - to create and present a poster to the class about an endangered animal of their choice. More information on this will be given next week. 

On Monday we are extremely fortunate to be going on our whole-school outing to Kew Gardens. Please remember to send a nut-free packed lunch, water bottle, snacks, warm coat and layers as we will be spending plenty of time outside. We are so looking forward to celebrating Tu B’Shvat in this way as well as commencing mental health week. Please put the lunch in a small rucksack which is easy to carry as the children will be carrying their bag around with them throughout the day. Boys should wear a kippah and Kerem school cap or beanie.

Next week is also Mental health Week and there will be some special activities at school.

Please make sure that the children are using Doodle Maths at home little and often, and continuing to work on learning and/or practising their times tables, using Doodle Tables, Hit the Button, or similar. Many thanks for your support. 

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies - 27^th January -5^th Shevat

Year 4 have continued learning Parashat Toledot. This week we questioned who the Torah is talking about when it says that “they” gave Esav his name.  According to Rashi, everybody that saw him exclaimed “Esav” – meaning he looks “ready-made”.

We have started to learn about tu b’shevat, considering all the different uses that we have for trees – we thought of so many different things that trees provide for us.  We created a gratitude tree, including many of our ideas. In our parasha lesson, we focused on the last three of the ten plagues, and discussed how the plagues came in groups of three.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom and a lovely weekend.

Friday 27th January 2023

Year 4 has had a creative and exciting week. The children worked hard on designing and making their rainforest dioramas. There were so many opportunities to demonstrate our Kerem Characteristics through this activity, including persistence and resilience, risk taking, humour, flexibility of mind and even middot. The children did an amazing job and reflected at every stage, they are extremely proud of their work. Well done children!

In maths this week we kept working on subtraction, with extra practice using the column method for anyone needing it. We then moved on to learn about efficient subtraction methods, depending on the question/ calculation. Towards the end of the week, the children used their knowledge of rounding to estimate the answers to questions and problems involving addition and subtraction. 

In English, the children finished their Book Week stories. These showed how much the children have learned about plot structure, story telling language and direct speech so far this term. Later in the week we read through a speech about a company called Gonzo Sweets. The children then answered questions about the text after we discussed it in great detail. They used this speech to inspire their creative writing lesson by writing their own speech. We talked about how to structure a speech and the formal language which should be used. 

In science we used the books in our library to carry out research about different animals. We discussed how to take notes and how to turn a page of information into key points that we can understand. 

In geography the children learned about the people who live in rainforests, their tribes and cultures. They learned why they live there, how they utilise the gifts of the rainforest without destroying it, and compared and contrastd how their daily routine is different from ours, based on their environment. 

On Monday we will be going on our trip to London Zoo. The weather forecast shows that it will be a chilly but dry day, please make sure that children are warmly dressed with plenty of layers and hats and gloves, as we will be spending most of the day outside. Children should wear their full school uniforms but may wear trainers as there will be lots of walking. Boys should wear a Kerem cap as well as their kippa underneath. We can’t wait for a fun and informative and educational day, which will complement the science and geography topics that we are focusing on. These include the rainforest, habitats and endangered species. They will also need snacks and a packed lunch in a backpack they can carry independently.

And finally, a small reminder about tzedaka. As a school, we have initiated ‘Tzedaka Fridays’, and we encourage the children to bring £1 or another amount for tzedaka each Friday, and we collect this in our class tzedaka box. Please support this whenever you can, many thanks.

We are looking forward to Monday and another exciting week ahead.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins and Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 23rd January 2023

This week was book week, and the children had such a brilliant time exploring books, reading and writing. Well done to all of the children who made a story scene in a box for the competition, we were so impressed with what they had made and the creativity they had put into it.

In English lessons, the children planned and wrote a story featuring the character they dressed up as on Monday. We spent a long time on the planning stage, to help the children understand how to develop the structure of a story, with different things happening in different parts of the story. First we discussed the main event, challenge or problem faced by the character. After deciding, discussing and tweaking these, the children planned their story opener, where the main characters and settings would be introduced and perhaps a hint of what might happen later in the story. We then moved on to the ‘middle’ section of the story, which will be the section where all of the action happens. The children planned one or two small events or problems that then lead up to the main problem or challenge faced by the character. Finally, they planned the last two sections, the resolution, where the main problem is resolved, and the ending, which could describe what happened next, any consequences of the story, lessons learned or how things have changed. This proved to be a very helpful exercise for the children to understand story structure and how to develop their story plots.

On Tuesday, we had an inspiring session with Pippa Goodhart, the author of the ‘You Choose’ books among others. She told the children that at school she didn’t learn to read and write quickly at school, and today she writes and reads books for pleasure as well as work. The children asked her some excellent questions and she gave amazing answers. Pippa told us about her story plans and explained what a messy process it is, with lots of changes and improvements as her story develops and evolves. We discussed ‘what makes a story’ and this related perfectly to our work on story structure.

In addition to this, the children enjoyed a ‘book tasting’ session, house and group reads, and an exciting book scavenger hunt in the library! We have had an amazing time in Book Week. 

In maths, the children enjoyed working collaboratively to solve a Book Week related ‘maths mystery’. They had to solve clues using their place value, addition and subtraction and problem solving skills. Later in the week, the children revisited addition and subtraction using the column method in preparation for next week’s lessons.

This week in spelling we learned about the prefix in–, which can mean both ‘not’ and ‘in’/‘into’. In the words given here, it means ‘not’. We also worked on the common exception words disappear, early, earth, and eight.

Words we looked at with the spelling rule are listed below.

• independent 
• indigestion 
• inedible 
• inefficient 
• inexcusable 
• inexpensive 
• insignificant 
• insincere 
• invisible

In art, the children completed their ‘jungle’ landscapes in the style of Henri Rousseau, and these are now up on a beautiful display in the corridor outside our classroom.

In geography, the children continued their research on rainforest plants and trees.

What a busy and exciting week!

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 13th January 2023

In English lessons this week the children really enjoyed being introduced to our new class text, The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. We recapped the rules of direct speech and the role of dialogue in stories. The children then wrote their own sentences or paragraphs using direct speech with correct punctuation, by writing what different animals would say to the man, who had come to chop down their kapok tree home, to discourage him from doing this. This work was then carried over into their comprehension and creative writing lessons. The comprehension text was called Monkey Business and the children enjoyed reading about the cheeky monkeys in a local market in India and answering both literal and inferential questions. In creative writing we read a piece together called The Gribble. The children were inspired by this to write their own piece and create a creature of their choice. They wrote some fantastic descriptions and came up with some very interesting outcomes! They were required to use dialogue in their piece too, focussing on skills learnt earlier in the week. 

In maths the children learned how to round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000. This involves first looking at the relevant place value column, eg. when rounding to the nearest 10 this would be the tens column, to see which multiples of 10 the number you are rounding sit between, such as 63 sits between 60 and 70. We used a number line to show this, and then plotted the number, to see which multiple the number sat closer to. We avoided vocabulary such as ‘round up’ and ‘round down’, as these can cause misconceptions.

The children had a really enjoyable geography lesson, in which they researched the various plants that grow in the rainforest, and which of the rainforest layers they collectively create, the forest floor, understory, canopy or emergent layer. 

In art the children are finishing off their jungle portraits in the style of Henri Rousseau. Once these have been completed, we will be able to move on to our next exciting project for DT (design and technology), which will involve designing and making a diorama (a 3D model) of the rainforest. This will tie together all of the children’s learning about rainforest climate, layers, animals and plants from geography and English lessons. Thank you to those who have brought in a shoe box for this project, I have brought two in so we have some spares, but anyone who hasn’t yet and is able to please bring one in. 

In spelling the children learned about the prefix auto, and practised using and writing the common exception words: decide, describe, different, difficult.

• autograph
• autobiography
• automatic
• autofocus
• autocorrect
• autopilot
• autorotate 
• automobile
• autonomy
• autocue 

In science the children learnt about animal adaptations and how animals survive in their environments. They researched an animal of their choice and used their information to make a poster for the display wall in our classroom. Some animals we discussed are camels, polar bears, sloths, toucans and fennec foxes. 

Next week is Book Week and we have an exciting week of activities to promote reading. Children should bring their entries for the story in a box competition, if they have made one, to school on Monday. Monday is also a book character dress up day, and we can’t wait to see the children ‘in character’. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team 

Jewish Studies 20th Tevet - 12th January

Year 4 have been working really hard on their Chumash learning this week. We have started to create 'Rivka's Journal' based on her thoughts and feelings as learnt in Parashat Toledot, and have learnt why she was suffering so much in pregnancy, as explained by Rashi. We have started to prepare for Israel75 and have explored this week's parasha of Shemot, focussing on the birth of Moshe and how he would always stand up against injustice in the world.

Wishing you all a beautiful, peaceful Shabbat.

Jewish Studies 13^th Tevet – 5^th January

Welcome back to the Spring Term.  It has been such a pleasure to see all your lovely children again.  This week we have introduced our special project for Israel75, for which we will be researching the Tower of David in the Old City of Jerusalem and creating a piece of artwork for display. We have reviewed our Hebrew reading rule for the week and studied this week’s parasha of Vayechi, in which we find the blessing that parents give to their sons on a Friday night. 

Wishing you all a peaceful and blessed Shabbat!

Friday 6th January 2023

It has been wonderful to see the children this week and catch up with them about their holidays while getting ‘stuck in’ with our learning.

On Thursday the children had a brilliant time in their first forest school session of the year. They dug in the soil for clay, made wishes and resolutions for the year on biodegradable cardboard leaves and hung them on a designated tree and played games. Enjoy the photos below!

In science the children learnt what classifying means and we explored different ways of classifying animals. They were introduced to classification keys and how to use them correctly. They began with completing a pre-made key and then used their skills to create their own key. This was tricky but they managed the task well.

In English, the children completed a challenging comprehension on a poem called ‘I Had a Dream’. We discussed the meaning behind each verse and the overall message of the poem. We shared our answers and spent time discussing how we could enhance and improve these by using evidence from the text. The children also wrote a postcard from their holidays, sharing with the class what they did and their favourite memories. 

In maths, the children learned about the number system of Roman numerals, including the numbers represented by the symbols and how they are used together to represent larger numbers. On Friday we had an introduction to rounding numbers, starting with rounding to the nearest 10. This will continue next week.

In geography, the children researched and presented the different animals that live in the rainforest. They also identified a number of animals and insects that live in each of the layers of the rainforest and added this to their diagrams from the last lesson. 

We are looking forward to Book Week, which will take place on the week commencing 16th January. There are many exciting and inspiring activities planned for the week, including a book character dress up day on Monday, an author visit and a book fair. Entries for the story in a shoe box competition should be brought to school on Monday 16th. Please refer to Ms Rose’s emails for more details! 

In the coming weeks, we will be starting a new design and technology project. For this the children will each need a shoe box, which we will begin collecting at school next week. Please send in any spares you have at home, thank you.

Maths homework has been set today, spelling homework will be set next week. Although the maths homework is not times tables related this is still an important focus, so please make sure that your child keeps practising to build up their rote knowledge and speed. Thank you for all the support you are giving them in this area.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins and Mrs Kanzen

Jewish Studies 15^th Kislev – 9^th December

It may have turned cold and icy outside, but inside the Year 4 classroom the atmosphere remains warm and snug as we continue our Chanukah learning. 

We have been looking closely at the Maccabees, examining their family tree and finding out that three of the five brothers were the Kohen Gadol at some stage during their lives.  We created a family tree about the family and we discovered three different reasons as to why they took on the name Maccabee. We also created a shield that was suitable for the Maccabee family, symbolising their bravery, strength, leadership and more.

In our parasha lesson, we learnt from Yaakov and Esav the importance of keeping away from any bad influences.  We discussed how this may effect our day to day lives.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom – keep warm and have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Hill

Friday 9th December 2022

Our last full week of the term has been very productive, and the children have been working especially hard to prepare for our end of term show!

In maths we temporarily left fractions behind and began learning about the concept of area. The children learned that area means the size of the surface of a shape- the space taken up. In Year 4 the focus is on the conceptual understanding of area, measuring area by counting the squares within a rectilinear shape (a shape with straight sides that meet at right angles) and comparing shapes according to area. In preparation for measuring and calculating area in Year 5 we have also touched on the fact that area can be calculated by multiplying the number of rows and columns of squares. We have also been focussing on our 9 times tables, making sure we know their multiplication and division facts.

As well as brainstorming ideas for our end of term show, in English lessons the children wrote beautiful poems about the rainforest, which we will complete and redraft next week. In comprehension we looked at a playscript text, and we spent time analysing the structure of the plot and how the sequence of events helped to build a sense of tension and urgency.

This week in spelling we learned about the prefix ‘anti’, which means against or the opposite of. The words on our word list are: 

antiseptic

anticlockwise

antisocial

antidote

antibiotic

antivenom

anti-aging

antifreeze

antiperspirant 

antigravity  

Plus the common exception words: circle, complete, consider, continue. 

Next week in Spelling we will be focusing on the common exception words. A number of children are misspelling some of these words that they use frequently, please continue to practise them in sentences over the holidays (there will be no formal homework set). The word lists can be found below.

In science we continued with our habitats topic. We discussed different ways of classifying animals and then learnt the terms vertebrates (with a backbone) and invertebrates (without a backbone). The children then further sorted the vertebrate animals into mammals, amphibians, fish, reptiles and birds. They worked in small groups to find out the features of each of these and then presented their findings to the rest of the class.

In art the children have continued to explore Henri Rousseau’s artwork, and they moved on the drawing the plants, animals and trees in the midground of their own rainforest landscapes. These are looking truly beautiful and very creative.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins and Mrs Kanzen

Jewish Studies 8^th Kislev – 2^nd December

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Chanukah…!  We have learnt the story of Chanukah and how Antiochus IV wanted all the Jewish people to give up their Judaism and instead follow the Greek way of life.  We talked about Matityahu, learning that he was the Kohen Gadol at the time of the Greek invasion (164 BCE), and how he and his sons trained and led a Jewish army to defend Judaism.  We made Chanukah newspaper headlines and wrote eyewitness accounts from the Beit Hamikdash as the Jews re-entered it, finding it wrecked and yet discovering a lone jar of olive oil to light the Menorah.

We have also reviewed the main Chumash prefixes to help in our translation, as well as learning about this week’s exciting parashah of Vayeitzei in which we followed Yaakov’s journey to Uncle Lavan.

I wish you all Shabbat Shalom and a peaceful weekend.

Friday 2nd December 2022

This week was an excellent time for us as a class to carry out the week as usual, with no special themes, football tournaments, a shabbaton or outings (as much as we love all of those!).

In English we learned about how to write poetry. The children were introduced to a range of different types of poems, including haikus and limericks, as well as the idea behind free-verse poetry. In class we read two poems about the rainforest, looking at the structure and descriptive and figurative language used, such as similes, metaphors and personification, as well as more familiar language features, such as rhyme, alliteration and onomatopoeia. We also used one of the poems to complete a comprehension discussing the meaning of challenging vocabulary and looking at how the structure of the poem is significant to its meaning. In creative writing, we discussed how to improve a piece of writing. They were given a very simple paragraph which they had to develop into their own piece of writing. They were encouraged to write paragraphs using: different sentence beginnings, similes and strong adjectives to enhance their writing. 

In maths, the children were enthusiastic to begin learning about fractions. We recapped the knowledge that in order to have fractions, we must also have a whole shape, number or quantity. The children were reminded about the role of the numerator and denominator and also counted in factions above 1. They learned some new mathematical vocabulary, such as the word ‘integer’, meaning whole number, and the phrase ‘mixed numbers’, which is a whole number and a fractions, e.g. 9 ⅔ (nine and two-thirds). 

Our spelling lesson involved learning about words with the prefix ‘super’, meaning above or beyond normal. Common exception words: caught, centre, century, certain

Spelling list:

superficial

superfine

superhero

submarine 

superhuman

supervise

submerge 

supersede

superpower

submerge 

superimpose

supernova 

We have started our new topic in science called habitats. The children learnt what a habitat is, different names of habitats and their features. They then worked with a partner to research and decide where they thought a variety of animals lived and needed to explain why they had chosen that habitat for each animal.

This week in PSHE we discussed what life is like in the playground. The playground may be the same every day, but what happens in it is different. The children worked with the ‘Blob Playground’. Each child chose an image that related to them on a good day and an image that related to them on a bad day. We spoke about how sometimes the playground is warm and sunny and sometimes it can be dark and cloudy. We linked this back to the children’s thoughts, sometimes they are bright and sunny thoughts and sometimes they are dark and cloudy thoughts. The children learnt that they own their thoughts and that we can choose which thoughts we have. 

We are looking forward to seeing you at parent consultations next week, on Wednesday 7th December from 4pm.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 25th November 2022

We have had a fantastic week at school, the highlight, of course, was our trip to Cadbury World on Wednesday. The day began (after an early start at school, morning tefillah and then a rather long coach journey) with a walk through the tropical rainforest of the Mayan Indians, 1000 years back in time. The children learned how Hernán Cortéz brought the cocoa bean back to our continent and how chocolate quickly became the drink of choice in high society. They also learned about the history of Cadbury and chocolate manufacturing and production, as well as advertising. They loved the Cadabra ride and the 4D cinema experience, but also took the time to carefully read all the information and timelines, comparing packaging and advertising at different points in history. The children behaved impeccably throughout the day and really maximised the experience. We hope they told you all about it! You can see photos from our day below.

Another highlight was watching England play Iran in the World Cup on Monday! There was a real sense of community in the dining room while the children watched the match. Children who needed a break used nets to make their own 3D footballs, and located the countries playing in the World Cup on the map.

This week’s PSHE lesson was about building friendship skills. The children explored the idea of friendship using the metaphor of a wave. We thought about our friendships, and acknowledged that they have highs and lows just like a wave. We made a wave in the middle of the class and the children wrote examples from their own experiences and placed their highs on the crest of the wave and their lows on the trough of the wave. They developed this further by jumping onto their imaginary surfboards (or sail boat) and riding the friendship wave, acting out what it would feel like when friendship surfing is going well and not so well. On a high, children rode smoothly, feeling content and confident. When riding a low, the children wobbled and some even fell off their boards. The children then worked in pairs to discuss the skills needed to maintain the highs of friendship as well as the ways we can work through the lows. 

In English lessons, the children enjoyed learning about the rainforest and imagining what it might be like to be there. They used their 5 senses to describe the rainforest and came up with some wonderful words and phrases. In creative writing, the children wrote amazing pieces! They developed their skills on how to create an exciting beginning to a story. They described the weather, the setting and their characters too, engaging the reader to want to read on. 

In maths, the children explored the effect of multiplying a number by 0 or 1 and dividing a number by 1 or by itself. They found some interesting patterns and explained the rules clearly. Towards the end of the week, we learned about multiplying 3 numbers, such as 3 x 6 x 5, and whether it matters which order they are multiplied in (Spoiler alert- it doesn’t!).

In art, we continued with our new art project about the French artist Henri Rousseau, who painted landscapes of the ‘jungle’, despite never leaving France! The children have looked closely at a number of his works and written notes about them, as well as a small fact file about his life. They have sketched a range of plants, grasses and trees in their sketchbook, to use in their drawings which they will begin next week.

In science, the class carried out an investigation to determine which substance causes the most tooth decay. We placed 4 hard boiled eggs in water, coke, apple juice and vinegar. Ask your children to tell you what the results where! We wrote up our investigation and learnt what needs to be included in each section. Key words included aim, prediction, equipment, method, diagram, conclusion and results. 

We wanted to remind you that when we return to school in January, the class will have forest school every Thursday, starting from 5th January. The last session will be on 9th February. In this period we will undoubtedly experience some wet and cold weather, so please ensure that your child has waterproof clothing, warm layers, wellies and any other items they may need.

Shabbat Shalom,
 

Mrs Kanzen, Mrs Collins and the year 4 team

Jewish Studies 1st Kislev 25th November

This week in Jewish Studies we focused on the Ethiopian Jewish festival of Sigd, which fell on Tuesday night and Wednesday, being 29^th Cheshvan.

We learnt about the different customs and practices that the Ethiopian Jews keep for Sigd, and also explored how this is now celebrated by the Ethiopian community in Israel.  We worked out that Sigd is a cross between Yom Kippur and Shavuot, and decided that possibly the reason the Jews of Ethiopia would climb a mountain on Sigd was to recall Moshe climbing up Har Sinai to receive the Torah. We also learnt that we should truly appreciate how lucky we are that we are able to fly to Israel and visit our beautiful city of Jerusalem whenever we want, as this is still not the case nowadays for some Jews around the world.

Chodesh Tov and Shabbat Shalom

Friday 18th November 2022

The children were rather sleepy at the start of the week, following our incredible class Shabbaton. Hopefully they have told you all about it, it was fantastic to see many parents for havdalah, thank you for coming.

This week was anti-bullying week, and the children enjoyed an assembly to launch the week and activities each day. In class, we discussed the differences between bullying and every day unkind behaviour, which is different to bullying. We agreed that it is important to work towards ending both of these at school and the strategies that can be used to achieve this. Odd socks day on Monday gave us the opportunity to explore how we are all individuals and this should be celebrated, and the children designed their own pair of odd socks. On Tuesday we learned about what being a bystander means and how to be an 'upstander'- someone who stands up for others. On Wednesday the children had an anti-bullying workshop, on Thursday they acted out scenarios and gave one another advice about how to seek help in different situations.

In maths the children ended off the addition and subtraction unit for this term by working on subtracting four digit numbers when more than one exchange is involved. We then moved on to our next unit- multiplication and division, exploring the effect of multiplying a number by 0 and 1, and dividing a number by 1 and by itself, eg. 8 divided by 8. We are having a big push on times tables in the coming weeks and homework will be related to learning them by rote, not necessarily a worksheet or written work. We will be working on conceptual understanding of times tables and the relationship between multiplication and division in class. Please support your child by encouraging them to practise every day in order to embed this knowledge.

In English the children spent time proof reading their news reports and making meaningful edits using their green pen, such as correcting lack of capital letters, punctuation, and better vocabulary choices. This is a skill that needs a lot of support and practice, and the children should do this for all their written work, including homework. The children did a comprehension called ‘Wizard’s List of Jobs.’ We focused on how to answer questions and what makes a good answer. The children used their editing skills to upscale their answers. In creative writing the children wrote a piece focusing on creating atmosphere based on an example from Roald Dahl’s book, The BFG. We focused on using similes, strong verbs and starting their sentences in different ways. The children were also introduced to using the technique of ‘magic of three’ within their writing and they managed this so well!

The children began this week’s session of PSHE by joining in with a whole class emotion boogie! They danced in response to the teacher’s instructions, ‘boogie happy,’ ‘boogie scared’, ‘boogie frustrated.’ This helped the children to think about how emotion feels in our bodies. They then worked hard in small groups on their ‘Emotion Thermometers’ focusing on; happy, sad, angry and scared. They took each feeling in turn and used their vocabulary cards to place emotional vocabulary on the thermometer starting with the smallest feeling at the bottom, to the biggest at the top. They spent time building and sharing new emotional vocabulary with one another- something we would love to encourage at home. The children ended the session thinking about the differences between a thought, feeling and a body clue. 

In spelling this week we learned words with the prefix inter, which means means between, among or within. You can find the word list below. This week’s common exception words are busy, business and calendar.

interact

interfere

intercity

international

intermediate 

internet

intergalactic

interrupt

intervene

interlude

Next week, on Wednesday 23rd November, we will be going on our outing to Cadbury World! This involves an earlier drop off and a later pickup. An email reminding you of all the details will be sent next week.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 Team

Shabbaton Update

The children have had the most amazing day so far. After arriving and some time to organise themselves, the children created their own ballot for Friday night supper and Shabbat packs, consisting of candle holders, a kiddush cup, challah cover, havdalah candle, besamim and a havdalah card, with a special bag to keep everything safe in. The children enjoyed their packed lunches and had some time playing outside and getting some fresh air. 
Enjoy the photos, see you after Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom!

Friday 11th November 2022

Year 4 have worked hard and produced some wonderful work this week. On Monday, the children had an assembly about Remembrance Day. We had a quick discussion about what they learned from the assembly in class, and later the children produced some beautiful artwork using newspaper headlines and crepe paper to create a poppy. Have a look at the photos below!

In maths we worked on subtraction of two numbers with up to four digits using the column method, with calculations represented in different ways, including one and two step worded problems, bar models and part whole models. 

In English the children wrote wonderful newspaper reports using their plan made last week. The children finally had the opportunity to complete a creative writing piece which they started a few weeks ago and have been desperate to finish.

The spelling rule we learned this week concerned words with 2 syllables when a suffix is added such as ed, er, ing and the consonant at the end of the root word is doubled.

forgetting 

forgotten 

beginning 

beginner 

preferred 

preferring 

occurred 

occurring 

forbidden 

committed

Common exception words: breath, breathe, build

Spelling homework has been set this week, however there will not be any maths homework set, as the children might not have enough time to complete this due to the Shabbaton.

This week the children had their very first ‘Heads Up Kids’ session, a PSHE programme about how we feel and how we get on with others. Collaboratively, the children helped create a set of class rules to ensure they take care of one another during these sessions and the Heads Up space is one where everybody feels happy, safe and respected. The children used string to create a class spider web to help them explore the idea of connectedness. They began their Heads Up Kids Journey thinking about themselves as part of a team- a whole class connected together. The children focused on positive thinking, remembering the things that make them feel good, something we all too often forget to acknowledge in ourselves. We can’t wait until our next session.

In science the children watched a clip teaching them about the structure of a tooth. We had an in depth discussion about this and then used our new knowledge to label a tooth including words such as crown, enamel, dentin, pulp and root. 

Shabbat Shalom, see you for Havdallah!

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 4th November 2022

This week was ‘Faces of Israel Week’, and we had such a brilliant time learning about the Jews of Iran and Persian culture and traditions. We had an assembly on Monday to launch the week, and Mrs Goldfarb told all the children about life in Iran when she lived there. In class we had a lesson about the history of the country and why Iranian Jews left at different times, particularly after the revolution. The children also had an art lesson about Persian rugs, how these became a symbol of status, and they even designed their own. You can find out more about this fantastic week on the Ivrit blog.

In maths the children revisited addition using the column method. They recapped the importance of place value and lining up the columns correctly, as well as the concept of exchanges when adding or subtracting in each column requires it. They added a variety of 4 digit numbers, represented in different ways including bar models and worded problems, with exchanges taking place in different columns.

English lessons involved finishing our amazing plans for our news reports on Charlie finding the fifth golden ticket, as well as a comprehension about a deciphering a school report. In creative writing our work was based on our Faces of Israel learning, about a central character having to leave their homeland.

In science we learnt about how to keep our teeth healthy and the children designed their own leaflets showcasing all their learning.

The spelling rule we learned this week was adding the suffixes -er, -ing, and -ed, when the root word stays the same and the consonant at the end of the word is not doubled. 

Word list: gardener 

gardening 

limited 

limiting 

offering 

offered 

benefited 

benefiting 

focused 

Focusing

Common exception words: believe, bicycle

Please point out these words when reading and see if your child can make their own sentences using them.

Only one week to go until our Shabbaton! We are looking forward.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies 10th Cheshvan - 3rd November

Our preparations for the Shabbaton have continued this week.  We have created our very own board games to play on Shabbat and are so excited to be able to share them with our friends next week! We have also learned lots of info about challah, in addition to what we have already learned about Shabbat candles and Kiddush.  

We also spent some time learning about the Jews of Iran/Persia as part of our Faces of Israel project.  We were amazed to learn that there have been Jews living in Iran since Biblical times, and that Mordechai and Esther are buried in Iran. 

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom, and looking forward to seeing you all at havdalah next Motsei Shabbat!

Mrs Hill

Friday 28th October 2022

We have loved having a full week at school! The children have been working very hard throughout the assessments and are to be commended for their efforts.

In maths the children have been using their understanding of place value to add and subtract multiples of 10, 100 and 1000. We have noticed that some calculations involving this are easy, such as 1,272 + 300, and other calculations are tricky, such as 1,743 + 400. This is because the thousands boundary has been crossed (or in other cases the tens or hundreds boundary). On Thursdays the children have been learning how to tell the time. Please encourage this at home (using an analogue clock) discussing what time it is. Utilise opportunities to discuss durations of time, such as ‘if the show starts at 3.30 and lasts for an hour and a half, what time will it finish?’, or ‘if you started your homework at 10.35 and finished it at 11 o’clock how long did it take?’ These are very helpful as well as being a crucial life skill.

In English we are preparing to write a newspaper article about Charlie being the fifth and final finder of a Golden Ticket. We revisited the work we did on newspaper report features and made a plan for our own newspaper article.

Today we began our new geography unit- rainforests. The children were really interested to learn some key facts, such as that rainforests take up only 6% of the earth’s surface, but contain about 50% of the world’s trees, plants and animals. We touched upon the threat to the world’s rainforests, which we will go into more detail on later in the unit. In science we recapped the different names of the teeth and their function. The children then needed to place each type of tooth inside a mouth in the correct order. They also completed a fun crossword.

Thank you to those who have sent in their forms for the Shabbaton. Please do send the form in as soon as possible if you have not.

Please can we remind parents to make sure that their child and any others that they are collecting have told the teacher that is dismissing them that they are leaving. This will ensure that we know who has left and who is still in the teacher's care. In addition, let us (class teachers) know if your child is being taken by someone who is not the person who collects them on a regular basis. Even if it is another parent from the school we need to know that they have permission to go with them. Please do this in good time before the end of the day.

Many thanks for your support with this.

Next week is ‘Faces of Israel’ week, and the topic this year is Iranian Jews. We are looking forward to teaching the children about this rich culture and the history of Jewish people making aliyah from Iran/Persia to Israel.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies 3^rd Cheshvan – 28^th October

This week we have started preparing for our Shabbaton in earnest.  We have learnt lots about Kiddush and Shabbat candles, and have finished drafting our Shabbat board games.  In Parashah we learnt about Noach and questioned who were worse, the people living in the time before the Flood or those who built the Tower of Bavel.

The children should all be preparing their Dvar Torah at home, in preparation for the Shabbaton in just two weeks’ time.  We are hugely excited and have lots more to learn before we reach our exciting Shabbat!

Shabbat Shalom and have a lovely weekend

Jewish Studies 21st October - 26th Tishrei 5783

Welcome back to school - I hope you all had a beautiful Sukkot and an enjoyable half term break.

This week we have been focussing on Briat HaOlam - The Creation of the World, in line with our Parashah of Bereishit.  We looked at what HaShem created on each day and made our Creation crafts.

We have also been discussing our upcoming Shabbaton (letter to follow with full info next week) and the preparation we will be doing for it, to ensure we make the most of the occasion.  Besides learning about Shabbat, this will include writing a Dvar Torah to read on Shabbat, creating a Shabbat-friendly game, and making lots of items to use on Shabbat itself.  

I wish you all Shabbat Shalom and a lovely weekend.

Friday 21st October 2022

We hope you had a wonderful Succot break, it has been such a pleasure catching up with the children this week and hearing about their holidays.

It has been only a short week back at school but we have hit the ground running. In science we started our new topic, learning all about our teeth! We learnt about incisors, molars and canines. The children explored their own mouths using mirrors. They needed to identify the different teeth and name them! We also learnt about the job of each tooth in the digestive process through a guided writing activity.

In creative writing the children wrote their own stories with a moral/lesson to learn. We read a story linked to Succot, about a boy who didn’t have his own lulav and etrog. The children wrote really well as they focussed on story structure and interesting vocabulary. 

In maths we began our addition and subtraction unit and used all the place value understanding from our last unit to add and subtract ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. The children hypothesised when more than one place value column will change as the result of a calculation, and then proved this using diagrams and written explanations.

We had a fun practical history lesson at the end of the week, in which we made Mayan hot chocolate! The children examined really cacao beans and then had a go at crushing them to discard the shells. They mixed cocoa powder (the bitter kind!), a pinch of cinnamon and a pinch of chili powder (the mild kind!) and mixed this with some warm milk. Using 2 cups, the children poured the chocolate mixture back and forth between them to make it frothy, just as the ancient Maya would have done. The taste test proved this to be quite unlike the sweet chocolate we enjoy today!

Next week is assessment week for English and maths. The papers will be split up and carried out over the week so as to alleviate any pressure the children might feel. Please join us in reassuring the children that these assessments are helpful to give targeted teaching and support, rather than make a judgement on them. These papers are sent off for marking and the standardised score will be shared with parents as usual at parents evening.

We are looking forward to a full week with the children next week!

Please encourage the children to continue using Doodle Maths at home on a regular basis, as well as Doodle Tables. Next week homework will be set on Wednesday (spelling) and Friday (maths).

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 21st October 2022

We hope you had a wonderful Succot break, it has been such a pleasure catching up with the children this week and hearing about their holidays.

It has been only a short week back at school but we have hit the ground running. In science we started our new topic, learning all about our teeth! We learnt about incisors, molars and canines. The children explored their own mouths using mirrors. They needed to identify the different teeth and name them! We also learnt about the job of each tooth in the digestive process through a guided writing activity.

In creative writing the children wrote their own stories with a moral/lesson to learn. We read a story linked to Succot, about a boy who didn’t have his own lulav and etrog. The children wrote really well as they focussed on story structure and interesting vocabulary. 

In maths we began our addition and subtraction unit and used all the place value understanding from our last unit to add and subtract ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. The children hypothesised when more than one place value column will change as the result of a calculation, and then proved this using diagrams and written explanations.

We had a fun practical history lesson at the end of the week, in which we made Mayan hot chocolate! The children examined really cacao beans and then had a go at crushing them to discard the shells. They mixed cocoa powder (the bitter kind!), a pinch of cinnamon and a pinch of chili powder (the mild kind!) and mixed this with some warm milk. Using 2 cups, the children poured the chocolate mixture back and forth between them to make it frothy, just as the ancient Maya would have done. The taste test proved this to be quite unlike the sweet chocolate we enjoy today! We hope you enjoy looking at the photos of this activity below.

Next week is assessment week for English and maths. The papers will be split up and carried out over the week so as to alleviate any pressure the children might feel. Please join us in reassuring the children that these assessments are helpful to give targeted teaching and support, rather than make a judgement on them. These papers are sent off for marking and the standardised score will be shared with parents as usual at parents evening.

We are looking forward to a full week with the children next week!

Please encourage the children to continue using Doodle Maths at home on a regular basis, as well as Doodle Tables. Next week homework will be set on Wednesday (spelling) and Friday (maths).

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies 30th September - 5th Tishrei 5783

Firstly, I wish you all shanah tovah umevorechet, and good and blessed year ahead.

This week we have learnt about and performed the mitzvah of Tashlich, paying a visit to Mutton Brook, the stream which runs alongside the playground. We learnt that throwing bread into the water is not part of tashlich, and in fact should not happen for a few different reasons.

We have continued to create our Tishrei calendars, looking at all the special events that happen within the month and plotting them on our calendar and also learning about the 5 "no's" of Yom Kippur. 

I wish you all Shabbat Shalom, and a meaningful and easy fast.

Mrs Hill

Friday 30th September 2022

Shana Tova! We hope that everyone enjoyed a meaningful Rosh Hashanah.

We can hardly believe that it is already the end of September, the first month of the school year has simply flown by! We have many exciting things planned for the coming weeks at school and after Succot.

This week in maths, the children continued to develop their understanding of numbers up to 10,000. They used the symbols less than <, greater than > and equal to = to compare numbers, carefully examining the digits in each place value column and using their understanding of this to order them in either ascending or descending order.

In English the children read and discussed chapters 7 and 8 of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In this chapter they continued to see that Roald Dahl is very playful with language and creates magical sounding chocolate bars like: 

WONKA’S WHIPPLE-SCRUMPTIOUS FUDGEMALLOW DELIGHT. 

They were challenged to play around with words to come up with different names for chocolate bars or sweets of their own invention.

In science the children carried out an experiment to show how food is digested through our bodies and becomes poo! We crushed up crackers and bananas in a zip lock (representing our stomachs) and then we squeezed this into some stockings (representing our small intestine). Finally the children enjoyed pushing out the final chunks into a bowl representing our poo!

Next week we are pleased to finally have another Monday at school! Tuesday is Erev Yom Kippur, an email will be sent today with a timetable and information about remote lessons taking place in the morning.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies - 26th Elul - 23rd September

It may have been a short week, but it has also been incredibly full!  We talked about the differences between the Jewish new year and the secular new year, with the children identifying a number of differences in both actions and emotions.  They understood that they major difference is that our Jewish New Year focuses on the need to do Teshuvah and to try to be an even better 'me' in the new year.  

We hugely enjoyed the Shofar Workshop, in which we learnt so much about the shofar, including how one is made, and from which animals the horns can and also can not be used.  Rabbi Simon, who was running the workshop, even showed us how you can blow a watering can as if it was a shofar! 

I wish everyone a healthy, happy and successful 5783 - have a beautiful Shabbat and Yom Tov, and my warmest good wishes to you and all your lovely family for a Shanah Tovah uMevorechet!

Mrs Hill

Friday 23rd September 2022

We really enjoyed seeing many parents at the Meet the Teacher evening on Tuesday, thank you to those who were able to come. 

In maths this week the children will found 1, 10, 100, or 1,000 more or less than a given number. Then, building on previous learning of number lines to 1,000, the children moved on to look at number lines to 10,000. They then labelled, identified and found missing values on blank or partially completed number lines. Using real-life scales, such as rulers and measuring jugs, can be helpful to look at at home to reinforce this learning. We discussed working out the value at the midpoint of an interval, eg. the value in the middle of 2,000 and 3,000 would be 2,500. 

In English we continued to make our way steadily through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We looked a little deeper at the newspaper article at the end of chapter 4 and the start of chapter 5. We delved a little deeper and talked about the purpose of newspaper reports, discussing the difference between facts and opinions, and learned about the features of newspaper reports, such as: headlines, photographs, captions, an introductory paragraph with the 5 Ws (who, what, why, when, where), written in third person and past tense. Another interesting feature of a newspaper report is the use of quotes from witnesses in inverted commas. The children looked at an example of a newspaper report and identified the features highlighting these using different colours. This will help them later in the unit, when the children will write their own newspaper report. In guided reading, we read and discussed chapters 5 and 6 of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The children drew labelled character sketches of the new characters introduced in these chapters, Augutus Gloop and Veruca Salt, using evidence from the text and powerful adjectives to describe them.

We missed our spelling lesson this week as it takes place on Monday, so in our practice time, the children went over the spellings of words using patterns we have learned so far, the common exception words and topic words we have learned about. They also spent some time looking in their English books and practising the words that have been corrected in their written work.

In history we enjoyed learning about the history of chocolate and completed the timelines we started last week.

In science we had loads of fun drawing our digestive system on aprons! The children worked hard to draw each part of our digestive system carefully and accurately.

We have really enjoyed our first few weeks with the children. Although we will now have some disrupted weeks at school, Rosh Hashanah and the other chaggim are a special time for us all, and we hope that all the children enjoy celebrating with family and friends.

We wish you a Shana Tova, and we will see the children on Wednesday.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Friday 16th September 2022

In English this week the children recapped what similes are and spent some time finding some examples in chapters 1 and 2 of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They created some new similes to describe Charlie and then wrote a detailed character description using them. The piece also included nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. We looked at a WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) to magpie ideas and aspire to. In creative writing the children wrote their own fantasy setting descriptions. We read Roald Dahl’s description of the chocolate factory and used this to enhance their writing and ideas. Some ideas they came up with included pizza, jewellery and emoji factory! The children read and discussed chapters 3 and 4 in guided reading, and next week we will be focussing on chapters 5 and 6 if the children would like to read ahead. 

The spelling we worked on was words ending in -sure (see spelling homework for more details and a list of words), the topic words chocolate, dialogue and column, and common exception words accident, accidentally, actual and actually. Please ensure that children are practising them. Thank you!

In history we began exploring the history of chocolate! The children worked in groups to order the timeline of the history of chocolate, and then began to make a timeline in their topic book.

Our maths lessons centred around the skill of partitioning numbers. Once the children had mastered partitioning into thousands, hundreds, tens and ones (e.g. 3,576 = 3 thousands, 5 hundreds, 7 tens and 6 ones, or in the expanded form, 3,000+500+70+6) the class moved on to flexible partitioning, splitting up numbers in different ways, e.g. 3,576 = 2,000 + 1,400 + 160 + 16. Place value counters and base 10 were used to support the children’s understanding of this, and for extra challenge, values were exchanged and then redistributed, eg. 100 was exchanged for 10 tens, with each 10 in different parts.

In science we recapped facts about our digestive system. The children remembered an incredible amount and answered questions confidently from an information text. 

English and maths homework were both set this week, but because of the Bank Holiday on Monday, English homework should be brought in on Tuesday, and Maths homework on Wednesday. Next week, English homework will be set on Wednesday, but no maths on Friday because of Rosh Hashanah.

On Tuesday evening we are looking forward to seeing you all at the ‘Meet the Teacher’ evening. Slides used will be emailed to all parents after the evening.

It has been wonderful being able to catch up with many parents on the phone last week, if you have not yet received a phone call from us please do not worry, we are making our way through the list and look forward to speaking with you.

Wishing you all a Shabbat Shalom and an enjoyable long weekend,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team

Jewish Studies  20^th Elul – 16^th September

Year 4 have really impressed me this week with their thirst for knowledge and their excellent questions. We spent time discussing that the new Jewish year, 5783, represents 5,783 years since the end of the creation of the world.  We used our best gematria skills to work out what the new year will be in Hebrew letters.

We have been creating a Tishrei calendar, showing all the special days in the month of Tishrei, and noting down what we do different on each of those days.

Today we thoroughly enjoyed a special Zoom session with a bee keeper at Quince Farm in Devon.  We saw close-up the bees in their hives and we learnt so much about the honey making process, all in preparation for Rosh Hashanah, so that we can eat our way to having a sweet new year!

Shabbat Shalom and have a lovely (long) weekend,

Mrs Hill

Jewish Studies 13^th Elul - 9^th September

Welcome back!  It has been so, so lovely to see all the children back at school and to hear all about their wonderful summer holidays. The children have made an excellent start to Year 4, overflowing with enthusiasm and excitement for their Jewish learning.

This week we have mostly focused on reviewing our general knowledge, looking at the letters of the aleph bet, gematria, months of the year etc.  Also, in preparation for our Chumash learning, we have reviewed the family tree of our forefathers and foremothers.  This year we will be learning Parashat Toledot, which tells of the birth of Yaakov and Esav, and looks at the rivalry between them. Next week we will begin learning about Rosh Hashanah – watch this space.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom and a lovely weekend.

Mrs Hill

Friday 9th September 2022

We have had such a brilliant first week at school and have loved getting to know the children a little better. We look forward to seeing all of you at the Meet the Teacher evening on 20th September.

On Monday we had a ‘settling in’ day. The children wrote wonderful poems and have spent the week redrafting them for our very first display. The children all gathered together for whole-school tefilah and it felt very special to be all together in the hall again.

In English this week we introduced the text we will be working on in class this term, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We read the first 2 chapters and discussed them thoroughly in guided reading. The children also completed a comprehension based on these chapters. If you have a copy of the story at home, feel free to send it in so that your child can follow along with. A PDF version of the text is on Google Classroom. In creative writing we discussed what makes a good friend and the children wrote their own recipe for a perfect friendship. They came up with some creative and original ideas such as a dollop of love, a splash of kindness and a spoonful of honesty!

In maths we began our place value unit by introducing the thousands column. Important knowledge consolidated this week includes that:

1000= 1000 ones

1000= 100 tens

1000= 10 hundreds

After this, the children moved on to representing numbers up to 10,000 in different ways, using place value counters, base 10, place value charts and a Gattegno chart.

The children had their first computing lesson, where they were introduced to the school’s computing code of conduct. The children all understood the importance of this, and each point was discussed to make sure that they understood everything. The children made folders for Year 3 and Year 4 so that they can organise their work.

In science we learnt about the key parts of our digestive system. The children labelled and described what happens to food as we eat it. 

New vocabulary: salivary glands, oesophagus, small and large intestines

The spelling rule learned this week is words with the suffix -ous, for example various, curious and poisonous. We have a spelling lesson on Mondays and practise throughout the week. Please encourage the children to practise at home as well. English homework, which is spellings based, is set on Wednesday each week and is due by Monday. Maths homework is set on Friday and is due by Tuesday.

If there are any reading folders with reading journals and/or school reading books at home, please send them in as soon as possible so that we can get our reading systems set up. Reading is still a key focus in Year 4, so please do keep reading with your children.

There are many exciting things in the pipeline for this term and beyond.

Here’s to a fantastic year!

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Collins, Mrs Kanzen and the Year 4 team