25/3- Necessary Evils

​Just like having to drive a petrol/diesel car across Dartmoor; taking out a mortgage to buy a house or taking 10 days off school/work when you’re feeling absolutely fine but you’ve seen a red line- we have to do termly summative assessments to check on our progress. This week has been a week full of these necessary evils.
 
We have put in maximum effort to show off what we have been learning. The reading assessment took the most effort and highlighted we need to work on our reading stamina.
 
So expect to see us doing lots more independent reading over the next few weeks and months.
 
If you don’t know your child’s accelerated reader login please let us know and we will get another one sent out to you so that comprehension skills can be practised at home. We are planning to send home another reading record, as they pretty much all got way laid after about a month last time we handed them out.
 
We also did a maths assessment which most of us seemed to enjoy! We have made great progress with our timestables but we still need a bit more practice with our multi- step arithmetic questions. So parents, if you are feeling particularly mathsy have a go at working out questions such as:
 
3456 - ????? = 1827 + 200
 
These types of questions will be the focus for the next couple of weeks leading up to Easter, where you may have to start from the right-hand side of an equation (little hint there!)
 
It’s not all been silence, sharp pencils and scratched heads.
 
On Monday, a large proportion of the class accompanied Mr Frewin to Sleeker’s farm for the final round of the tri-series Dartmoor school’s cross country. The year 3/4 team did the school very proud indeed. The official results have not been published yet, but by Mr Frewin’s reckoning the year 4 team finished in a runner up position with the boys team winning their gender category.
 
A special mention needs to go to Max and Bruno who placed first and second in each race of the series. For all his efforts, Bruno couldn’t quite catch Max who always looked like he had an extra gear. Another special mention must go to Joe Thorne and Kit who both placed in the top ten at each round- well done boys. The girls dug in very deep at this last round, especially as they negotiated the energy sapping hills. Lily took on a Samaritan’s role and dropped further back this week to run with and help motivate her teammates Grace and Molly- it was the perfect display of teamwork. Aly, feeling a bit more racey, got her head down for what we think was a top ten finish. Well done girls!
 
After slogging through our reading assessment on Tuesday morning we took advantage of the nice weather and took the classroom outside to feel the full force of our celestial mother: the sun. We made a human model of the solar system and learnt about the planets different masses and orbit speeds. With this new information the class worked in pairs to create an informative poster about our solar system. To help with their poster’s content, Mr. Frewin hid some information scrolls within the school grounds for the pairs to find and use. These posters were then finished off in class on Wednesday.
 
Mr Frewin also started to read one of his favourite novels: Varjak Paw to us and so far we are thoroughly enjoying it.
 
Enjoy the weather, get outside and have a lovely weekend.
 
Mr Frewin and Mr Evemy