Square Root Day in Year 4
Square Root Day Today we took part in Square Root Day. Square Root Day is when both the day of the month and the month are the square root of the last two digits of the year. It's a milestone for lovers of numbers, logic, and patterns because 2025 is a perfect square year! Represented as 45245^2452 (since 45×45=202545 \times 45 = 202545×45=2025), this rare occurrence makes the year a special point of reflection and celebration for mathematics fans. The children took part in interactive games with Lottie and Nora then did some quick fire questions on square roots. We noticed that there is a pattern with the square numbers which read odd than an even, odd, even. So we can check if when we are multiplying numbers we have the correct answer. Patterns help us to predict what comes next. Following this the hosts did a Q and A and St Barnabas got a live question shout out and asked “ What inspired them to be a mathematician?” Another question asked by another school was “ Who invented the square root?” which turned out to be a school in Ancient Greece. The children loved sharing the session with other schools across the country and did so brilliantly!
Year 4 - Science: Creating Sound
In Year 4 this week, we began our new science topic, Sound. We learned about 3 main steps to creating sound: the source vibrates, which vibrates the air particles around it to create sound waves, and then these waves are received, for example, by a human ear. The children were put into groups to create presentations about what they had learned.
Whole School Celebration-Living Life to the Full- Afternoon Tea
The afternoon tea, organised by the Smart School Council and RotaKids, was a wonderful celebration of our school family living life to the fullest. There was a lovely selection of cakes and biscuits, some homemade by the RotaKids the day before and some bought in. The children enjoyed chatting, laughing, and drinking hot chocolate together. We're thrilled to share that the event raised an impressive £256, which will go directly towards supporting our school. A huge thank you to everyone who supported the event and to all the staff who helped make it happen. A special thank you to our friends from Darwen Rotary who came along to support too. We look forward to hosting many more in the future!
Year 4- Why did the Vikings come to Britain?
Today we started our new history unit - Vikings in Britain. We looked at reasons as to why the vikings invaded Britain, sequenced key events and then created a timeline. We worked in groups to mark the beginning and end of the Viking period from 793AD to 1066AD and then we worked and sorted through all of the events to ensure that they were in chronological order. Towards the end of the lesson, the children presented what they had found and shared key information about where the Vikings had come from, how they got to Britain and how things changed for the Anglo Saxons when they arrived.
Year 4 - English: Recapping Our Residential
Our first English lesson of the summer term was an “experience” session. We began by looking through some of the pictures from our trip to the Anderton Centre. We shared our memories and our favourite parts of the trip. We then worked in groups to write down these fond memories about 6 main areas: preparation, facilities, team games, archery, climbing and paddle boarding. All of this is in preparation for creating persuasive leaflets about visiting the Anderton Centre.
Year 4 - Linking Schools: Why Social Action?
As our Linking School project continues, the Year 4s have been considering things in their relationships, the school, the local area, the environment and the wider world that they care about. In today’s session, we listened to the Starfish Story and talked about how small, kind actions can have a big impact on others. We looked at the world around us and decided on some actions we could take to improve it. After sharing our ideas, we voted and decided that we would like to go on a class litter pick, and write to residents of a local care home. We will be carrying out our actions over the Summer Term.
Year 3- English- Generating questions for research
As part of our biographies topic, year three have been developing their research skills by generating questions about a famous celebrity. They then interviewed their friends to see if they could discover the answers using the text.
PSHE Online Safety in Year 4
As part of our online safety, we looked at the use of instagram and the positive and negative impact it has on our mental health. The children discussed reasons for why the social media platform has an age restriction of 13 years old and the importance of keeping safe online. As a class we agreed that the age restriction is definitely a huge positive. The children then went on to highlight their key reasons for their positives and negatives, using voice 21 strategies to agree and disagree with their peers.
Year 1 English- Capitalising Proper Nouns
This week in Year 1, our grammar focus has been to capitalise proper nouns. We have focused on capitalising the names of people, places, days of the week and months of the year in preparation for writing a recount. We have been using our microphones to encourage us to speak loudly and clearly as we orally repeat and/or construct sentences. We have also been using our Kung Fu Punctuation to support us with punctuating our sentences correctly.
Year 4's Presentation of Learning- Electricity
This morning our Year 4 class presented their recent learning in Science about Electricity. It was great to see the children projecting their knowledge with clear voices and they gave us several safety reminders such as not overloading sockets, not leaving devices charging overnight and not putting electrical utensils into toasters. Thank you Year 4 for sharing your learning with us and it has been great to see this learning in Science being used in your design and technology unit when making designing and making torches over the last few weeks. We are looking forward to learning even more about Science tomorrow in the Science Boffin Show!
Year 4 - English: Easter Poetry
This week, we began our poetry unit in English. Our topic is the Easter story, with our aim being to produce a piece of poetry, some of which will be displayed in the rose garden at Whitehall Park. We are only in the first stages at the moment; exploring poetry and working on our performance skills, but we had great fun creating and performing Kennings about Judas.
Working Walls in Year 4
We are really pleased with how well the children are accessing every toolkit in the classroom to support their learning, especially our working walls. Our English unit and class novel is The Firework Makers Daughter and the children have really got to grips with all stages of the unit starting with gathering content, grammar toolkit collection, scaffolded work and now moving onto their independent pieces which will include fronted adverbials, noun phrases and dialogue.