Welcome to Maple Class 23/24

Our teacher is Miss Jordan and we also have our wonderful teaching assistants, Miss Mills and Miss Dearlove on hand to help.

Our PE days for Term 2 are Tuesday (hockey) and Thursday (tag rugby).

Project homework is due in on Friday 8th December 2023.

Year 4 have been lucky enough to have the wonderful volunteers at Wallingford Museum teach us all about Wallingford Castle. We started with a session where we compared an ariel view of Wallingford and a map drawing of Wallingford Castle. This encouraged us to think about why the position of Wallingford Castle was important when it was in use. Then we labelled the different features of the castle that we could see on the Wallingford Castle map.

We then visited Wallingford Museum where we explored some artefacts from people who lived in the castle which gave us an insight into what their lives were like. We also looked at a very detailed model of Wallingford Castle, before actually going to see the ruins for ourselves in Castle Gardens.

We have explored several types of art so far this term, including graffiti and pop art inspired by Andy Warhol.

Following on from our learning about the digestive system parts, we have started to learn about different types of teeth and their functions. As part of this, we scientifically observed some animal skulls, paying close attention to their different types of teeth. We made predictions about what type of animal we thought each skull was, based on its teeth and diet.

In science, we have been learning about the digestive system. We began by drawing around eachother and labelling the different parts of the digestive system. We then learnt about how the different parts work through a very hands on experiment. Using a plastic bag to represent the stomach, we learnt about how acid (orange juice) breaks down food into smaller pieces. The food mixture then got passed through some tights which represented the intestines and we watched different nutrients passing through the walls of the intestines. Eventually the waste mixture got squeezed out of a paper cup at the end.

This term in Forest School, we had great fun as we did apple bobbing. We then dipped the apples in cinamon and toasted them around the fire.

To finish off our Rivers topic, Maple Class had a debate about the positive and negative effects of flooding. We used formal language to try and convince the other team off our argument.

Here is some of our amazing project homework linking to rivers!

Maple Class had a lovely time in the forest. We were able to build dens, play in the mud kitchen and have a go at lighting fires.

In geography, we have been doing some excellent learning about rivers. We began by locating the main rivers in the UK and the world on maps and then started to learn about the different parts of a river. We carried out research on the iPads about why rivers are important and then used all of our knowledge to create non-chronological reports about rivers. Our focus was on using technical vocabulary, as well as fronted adverbials to make our sentences varied. Finally, we went on to learn about the types of flooding and the impacts of flooding.

Take a look at some of our brilliant watercolour paintings, inspired by Claude Monet and the Impressionism movement.

Our science topic this term is all about investigating states of matter. We began by learning about what a solid, liquid and gas are and played a game where we had to act out what the particles look like in each state. In lesson 2, we focused on investigating gases and were exploring whether or not they weigh anything. To do this, we weighed some fizzy drinks, shook them to get rid of some of the gas and re-weighed them. We found that all of the gases did weigh something. 

For the first 3 terms of Year 4, we will be having brass lessons with Mr Browne and learning how to play the cornet. Our first lessons have been very successful and exciting! We have worked hard to get a buzz going on the mouth pieces and have learnt our first note - middle C.

In maths this term, our main focus is on place value. We have been challenging ourselves to become more familiar with 4-digit numbers. This has included using resources to make different multiples of thousands, as well as partitioning 4-digit numbers in a range of ways. We have also done lots of work with finding the intervals on different number lines up to 10,000.

In PE this term, we are playing netball. Our first lesson focused on protecting the ball when we catch it. The children said...

'This is to protect it from our opponents.'

In the following lessons, we have been learning how to shoot and mark other players.

We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to have an extra cricket lesson with a specialist coach. We played lots of games to practise key skills of catching, bowling and batting.

Our Take One Picture this term was the Burning of the Houses of Parliament by JMW Turner. We began by exploring this through writing, using expanded noun phrases and personification to bring our descriptive writing to life. Here were some examples of the sentences:

'As the flames grew, the ravaging fire contentedly melted the distressed bridge by licking it with its flaming tongue.'

'The helpless bridge crumbled and sobbed in fear of the fire.'

We did lots of artwork surrounding our TOP as well, recreating it with oil pastels. Finally we had a challenge where we built bridges and tested them to see how much weight they could hold.

Times Tables Support 

Recognition Awards

In the event of self-isolation or further lockdown

In the event of your child needing to self-isolate please use the links above that your child can do in any of the subjects. In the event of our class bubble isolating or a school closure lockdown, we will be using Teams online. Your child will need their username and password to access Teams.