Year 4 - Vicious Vikings

It has been lovely to welcome the children back to school and hear their holiday stories. We have such an exciting final term to look forward to, where we will be transported back in time to learn all about the Viking era for our main topic.

There will also be celebrations aplenty! With the Coronation of King Charles III imminent, we are looking forward to celebrating in style in the lead up to the bank holiday weekend with an abundance of fun activities for the children to enjoy! We will also be celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Windrush generation in the second half of the term.

In English this half term, we will be exploring Narrative Poetry before the children compose their own Narrative poem where they turn into a fearless Viking Warrior on a brutal mission to raid and conquer Lindisfarne. Next, they will create Kennings - riddle-like phrases used by Viking and Anglo-Saxon poets so watch out for helmet-bearers, opponent-crushers and raven-feeders!

This focus on poetry leads us nicely into our preparation for the English Speaking Board exam in June where the children will have the opportunity to showcase their speaking and listening skills.

Our Guided Reading book this term is ‘How to train your Dragon’ by Cressida Cowell which the children have already really engaged with, using their inference skills to interpret the features of the front cover. Will Hiccup Horrendous Haddock win the day?

In Maths, we have been busy using our measuring skills in different contexts since we have returned to school. The children have loved the practical element of the lessons, where they have been able to measure long jumps as part of our outdoor learning, and various objects using the appropriate unit of measurement. We are continuing to link this topic with the four operations, place value and decimals in order to consolidate learning and deepen understanding. Next, Year 4 will be learning about area, perimeter and time.

We have started our ‘Moving and Growing’ Science topic with a bang! The next few weeks are all about the skeleton; the bones within our body, their functions and what we’d be like without it! For our first lesson we drew around each other and put our interpretation of the human skeleton onto the large sheets - actually Year 4 were very impressive and the images they created did represent the structure of the skeleton really well. We are looking forward to learning more about this topic and hope to learn the ‘Dem bones…’ song to support our understanding. Apologies in advance for this!

In Humanities, the Vikings is our topic for this term and we’re hoping to organise a trip to support our pupils’ understanding in June so watch this space. We’ve already learnt about who the Vikings are, where they came from and why they invaded Linisfarne (also known as Holy Island). We will be learning about how the Vikings conducted themselves; how they made longboats and why they were such fierce warriors. As part of this learning - we may even contemplate re-enacting a Viking raid! Shields, helmets and stamina will certainly be required! Good luck Year 4 - we hope that you have fun.