Writing
In Grammar this week, we recapped the different types of fronted adverbials (time, place, reason and manner) to help us to use a wide range in our writing. Stingrays were very good at identifying and distinguishing between the different types, I was very impressed!
In Writing this week, we continued to prepare for our independent write, (our biography on Nelson Mandela or Rosa Parks). On Tuesday, we focused upon the skill of using conjunctions in writing to add detail. We learnt how conjunctions are important to use in biographies because they give us additional information to help us to truly understand the person in which the biography is about. On Wednesday, we focused upon punctuating our sentences using a wider range of punctuation (capital letters, full stops, question marks, apostrophes, commas and brackets). We even learnt how to use single quotation marks to directly quote someone in writing. Stingrays sometimes struggle to remember their punctuation in their independent writes, so this lesson really helped us to embed our knowledge. On Thursday, we planned our independent write, gathering facts and sorting them into chronological order. On Friday, we completed our independent writes. I am really looking forward to reading these as Y4 Stingrays have shown great interest in the life and achievements of Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela, and have shown fantastic attitudes in their writing lessons this week!
Maths
In Arithmetic this week, we have focused upon the the terms 'difference' and 'sum', these are two words that trip us up in tests. We learned that to find the difference between two numbers we needed to subtract the smaller number from the larger number. Once we had built up our fluency in finding the difference, we then focussed upon finding the sum of numbers. When finding the sum, we learned that this meant to add the two numbers together. This skill helped us later on in the week in Maths when we moved onto our next topic of 'Statistics'.
In Maths this week we have completed our Y4 topic of Fractions. This week, we focused upon subtracting fractions from a whole and mixed numbers. We struggled with this at first, however after completing another lesson on this skill we built our confidence in this area. We shall continue to build our fluency of adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers next week in Arithmetic. On Friday, we began to do some work on Statistics. We looked at pictograms and bar charts and began to interpret and compare graphical data.
History
In History this week, we continued with our topic entitled 'The Roman Empire'. This week we learnt all about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii. Y4 were absolutely captivated by what had happened in Pompeii in the year 79 and their interest was shown in the diary entries they wrote from the perspective of a citizen living in Pompeii during the huge eruption. Y4 could not believe the impact the eruption had in Pompeii and through reading Pliny's letter (a piece of evidence that has allowed Historians to develop a good understanding of the eruption) we were able to understand the significance of what had happened.
