Wolborough C of E Nursery and Primary School

Brunel - Year 4

Brunel bulletin

Here are Brunel Class expectations:

• School starts at 8.55am with a maths or spelling task so please can you ensure that your child is in school at this time
• Children must have the correct PE kit in school every day. If this comes into school on the first day of term in a labelled bag then it can be left on their peg until home for washing at half term. We may do PE at any time so it is useful if their kit is in school at all times.
• Please can your child read to a grown up at least 4 times a week? Reading is an important part of the curriculum / homework and we have found that children that read regularly at home progress further. Please can reading books and reading record books be kept in a school book bag. Book bags are expected to be in school every day. Reading record books will be checked on a Monday morning.
• Spellings will be sent home to learn weekly and there will be topic homework set. More information about this will follow in the new term.
• Children will be given TT Rockstar and Spelling Shed challenges weekly to do online.
• The school day ends at 3.20pm so please can children be picked up promptly on the junior playground.

Thank you for your support with the above. Please feel free to come and see me if you have any questions at all. Mr Tones

During this half term Brunel class have been busy!

In the first few weeks we focussed on our health and wellbeing and looked at different food types, keeping a balanced diet, the different types of teeth, mental health and appearance as well as the importance of exercise for our bodies. 

This term’s topic is peace, so we have looked at different ways in which we can find peace and focused on this in our English as well. In English, we have studied the text ‘Silver Buttons’ by Bob Graham; the story is all about being mindful of everyone and showing that everyone is living their own lives at the same time. We have learnt all about adverbial phrases, fronted adverbials and prepositions (as well as how to correctly punctuate these of course). At the start of next term we will each make a book with watercolour artwork (as we have been practising this already) with our own stories inspired by ‘Silver Buttons’.

In maths this half term some things that we have done include consolidating our understanding of place value (containing rounding up to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000), learning the formal written methods for addition and subtraction as well as problem solving.

After looking at the Hindu faith, we experienced aspects of the Hindu festival Divali. We made Diva lamps out of clay to remind us of the lights used to guide Rama and Sita home in the Divali story. We also made some traditional Divali sweets and rangoli patterns (some pictures of these are below). This half term we have also learned about some Christian beliefs about how God might send messages. We are also learning all about St. Nicholas Day on a trip out to Buckfast Abbey. 

In English we finished our books based on the text ‘Silver Buttons’ by Bob Graham and they have turned out beautifully! We have also been looking at how to write biographies and have been looking at the features of a biography and researching people such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Usain Bolt in order to write a biography about them. 

In maths we have been focussing on multiplication and have been solving problems, learning about the bar model as well as starting to look at formal methods of multiplication. We will also be looking at shape this half term. 

We have been enjoying developing our netball skills in PE and have really improved in accuracy and game play (such as moving to find space). 

It is fair to say that we are all looking forward to the joys of this festive season.

After a well earned rest over the Christmas holiday, we have come back with great attitudes. 

This term, our topic as a school is respect. In Brunel, we are looking at this in the context of our environment and have been inspired by the BBC documentary Seven Worlds, One Planet. As with Globe Class, we have been focussing on South America with a focus on geography and the rainforest. 

We have covered a wide range of geographical learning including continents, oceans, time zones, climate zones, hemispheres, longitude and latitude, as well as more specific geography of South America. It has been really nice to see some of the places that we have looked at in our class book we are reading which is Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. 

I think it is fair to say that all the children have really enjoyed learning about rainforests (especially the Amazon Rainforest). We have looked at habitats, layers, animals and creatures that live there (we even made our own set of top trumps using the research that we had done). It has been really nice linking this to our English where we have been working on our persuasive writing based on the book The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. We finished this unit by writing letters to the woodcutter persuading him not to cut down this beautiful tree (which is in the Amazon Rainforest). 

In maths we have been looing further at our understanding of place value, negative numbers, Roman numerals, column addition and subtraction with reasoning and problem solving using these (to name only a few things we have been working on!). In the second part of the term we will delve into fractions, decimals, converting different units of measure and developing our multiplication skills. 

PE this term has had us focussing on our gymnastics skills. All the children have engaged really well with this and it was noticed by a PE specialist who taught a gymnastics lesson recently and said 'it is amazing to see a whole class with so much focus and ambition in gymnastics'. Some children will even be going to represent the school in a gymnastics competition later this term.

Exciting things are still yet to come this term with a trip to the Eden project to help consolidate and help our learning of the rainforest (and have some fun of course!) as well as two exciting texts to look at fable writing amongst other things.