Crisp, cold and clear mornings have been a welcome start to our day’s this week. With the exception of Monday morning, where our first day of the half term started with the most glorious rainbow arching over the school field. I did look in the tree house but some pesky wood imp must have scurried away with the pot of gold before I got there- a shame really as we could have used the bounty to restock our ever growing class library. Especially as we are now coming to the end of our current class novel: How to Train your dragon.
We are still immensely enjoying the the events on the isle of Berk as Hiccup begins to realise his potential and become the hero we all predicted he could be. This week the children re-wrote a chapter of the story where two seadragonous giganticus maximus clash in a bloody battle to the death - or not! We discovered that Cressida Cowell is a master of tension and intrigue as she used a cliffhanger and descriptive Tit bits to hold our interest. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the chance to write about this bloody and gory death-match as we explored the use of fronted adverbials to help build tension. We were genuinely blown away by the efforts and resulting quality of everyone’s work. We invite you in to have a read of your child’s literary creation. All the children really enjoy reading these high quality texts and we encourage you to share the joy with them by listening to or reading with them everyday. I’m sure you will see what clever little critics your bright sparks are these days. We have ramped up the difficulty in maths this half term and have kicked it off with subtracting 3 and 4 digit numbers. We have explored the use of a vertical column method to arrive at an answer using the mind twisting exchange method. You may remember it as borrowing from a column on the left to complete a subtraction but as I always tell the children: “it’s more like a theft because that column ain’t getting it back!!” This concept is always very tricky for this age group and we have been using lots of hands-on resources to help them fully grasp the concept. We are confident their understanding is there and we are now at the stage where repetition of the skill is needed to help cement the procedure. Feel free to show them how you learnt it at school and ask them if there are any differences to how they arrive at an answer. Enjoy your weekends and see you all next week. Mr. Frewin and Miss Barton
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WOW! How have we arrived at half term already? Its been a rather unsettled end of term but Hawthorn have not let that get in the way of their learning! The class enjoyed a rare visit from Mr. Finch this week who kindly took an English session on Wednesday, the children enjoyed sharing there love of 'How to train a dragon'. We also enjoyed writing our fond memories of Miss Rowe in a celebration Poem as a present for her leavers assembly. Enjoy your new adventure Miss Rowe! We will miss you lots. In Art this term, firstly we enjoyed creating mosaic picture of a landscape of the children's choice. With the classes passion for Dragons we created dragon eyes using pastels! The children, as a class voted for their favourite 5 pictures of each piece of work. They were all amazing, I'm glad it wasn't my decision! After spending the term exploring google slides. Hawthorn class were set the challenge to create a slide show on their new learning form our history lesson on the Romans. These are still in creation stage so hopefully we'll be able to share them with you soon.
In Maths, we have been looking at adding 4 digit numbers to 4 digit number first with no exchange then set the challenge of exchanging. The class worked hard and persevered with the challenge. Can they show you how to work out 3425+4767=? In PE, we have been working hard to learn the skills needed to participate in a netball tournament. It was really good to see there hardwork pay off with an end of term tournament. Well done to the blue team who won all 3 of their games. The whole class played well and demonstrate great sportsmanship. Well done Hawthorn! That concludes our learning for this half term. We wish you all a well deserved restful half term. See you all on 1st November. The end of another week and a step closer to half term. We are so proud of each and everyone of Hawthorn class and the hard they show in all of their work. This week, we have continued to enjoy the story of 'How to Train a Dragon'. In English, the class have been tasked with writing a scene from How to train your Dragon, including correctly punctuated speech. To help inform our writing we planned and acted out our scenes in the hall. It is a real pleasure doing drama with this class- they are such a great bunch of thespians. The drama activities certainly helped as everyone produced some excellent writing this week. In Maths, we have been practising adding 3 and 4 digits with the added challenging of crossing over 10 and 100. All of Hawthorn took this challenge on head first and demonstrated a good understanding.
In RE, we have been exploring the 'Trinity'. This weeks, lesson we gained the understanding of what a Gospel is. We looked at Matthew 3:13-17, The Baptism of Jesus and looked at what the children understood the water, the voice and the dove meant. We also explored the Romans religious beliefs from Paganism to Polytheism. We looked at the different Roman Gods and what they were in charged of. The children were amazing at recollecting their knowledge of Greek Gods from Year 3 and matching the Greek God to the same roles. We look forward to more amazing learning next week! Well Done Hawthorn What a topsy turvy week we have had? The Indian summer appears to have finally but sadly come to an end and the usual wet, Dartmoor, torrential battering has commenced. Let's pray it won't be as consistently persistent as it was last year.
With the weather being as it is, the children have been splitting their time in and out of the building (with more ins than outs than we would like). This always creates a charged atmosphere resulting in a range of reactions- strong bonds have been formed, stretched and broken over the last week and we hope that we can settle down into a more stable state next week. (Can you tell I'm busy refining our current states of matter topic in science?) Speaking of science, the class have made an excellent start looking at different states of matter and have shown a good understanding of the characteristics of each state. We have had a few interesting discussions: are there more than 3 states? (Without a search on Google can you think of the 4th?) Are all liquids compressible? And why is there a half blown up balloon in the corner of the classroom? Good questions with intriguing answers which we look forward to unearthing over the coming weeks. Maths- We have set the learning environment up differently this year with multiple activities and resources on hand for the children to explore. Maths has been enjoyed by all with every student relishing the chance to work more independently. This week we have worked well to compare 4 - digit numbers and to get our heads around subtracting from that tricky 0 digit and adding to a 9 digit. With the help of little cubes, cuboids and place value charts we all seem to have a better understanding. English- Our focus is reading this year. We want to be reading more in class with the children also reading more at home. You will have received your child's reading journal this weekend which we strongly urge you to engage with wholeheartedly. I am personally over the moon that this is a school focus as one of my greatest joys as a teacher is to dance, skip and act out a text with the children I am teaching. We are reading Empire's End as our class novel. This is a story about a Lybian-Roman family sent to Britain. It is a challenging read for the class tackling issues of patriarchy and slavery during the height of the Roman empire. Although fairly demanding the children are enthused and engaged with the text and enjoying being transported back to ancient Rome. During our English sessions, we have chosen to read How to train your Dragon, which the class are very excited about. Many of them have seen the film and are excited to make comparisons between the screen and the page. This week we also looked at the beautiful picture book Tell me a Dragon to spark the classes interest in these wonderous mythical beasts! They wrote and illustrated beautiful poems about their own imagined dragons. After the enthusiasm shown for these initial sessions I am sure this new topic will be enjoyed by all over the next two weeks. Have a lovely but (if you trust the forecast) wet weekend, Mr Frewin and Miss Barton Wow! I have been blown away by Hawthorns English writing this week. They have worked super hard to not only produce some fantastic balanced arguments about whether 'Faustalus was a good or bad man?' They discussed reasons for both sides of the argument, they were then left to write their own arguments. It was a rather split classroom in their answers. We then went on to write their own version of Romulus and Remus with the challenge of adding in fronted adverbials and adjectives. I can not wait to get back in next week to read the finished stories. Maths- we've continued exploring place value of numbers. We've partitioned numbers... looking at a given number and seeing how many thousands, hundreds, tens and ones are in the number. Eg. 3214 has 3 thousands, 2 hundres, 1 ten and 4 ones. Art- the children have started work on their own collages. Will share our progress next week. History- Our discovery of the Romans continues..... this week, we have explored the Invasion of Britain. We learnt about the well organised, trained and practised Roman soldiers to the more chaotic style of the Celts (British). Can the children tell you what the Romans wore in battle? What about the Celts? We roleplayed one of the Roman armies learnt battle formations. Can the children tell you what this formation is called? I am excited for another week of learning with Hawthorn.
Have a lovely weekend. Hello Hawthorn!
It has been brilliant hearing each and every summer adventure. Although now possibly a distant memory! We look forward to a new year and new term, this term we are stepping back in time to explore the Romans. We look forward to sharing our new facts as many of the children already are. My favourite of the week- 'Yuck! They all had baths together, can you imagine the brown water and smell!' We went on to discuss whether all meeting at Chagford swimming pool for a bath was a good or bad thing! This week in English, we have explored the story of Romulus and Remus. The children wow'd Mr Frewin with their acting out of the story and have worked hard to re-write the opening paragraph to add more detail for the reader. Maths we are looking at place value, exploring the concept of rounding to the nearest 10 and 100. Learning the rhyme '1-4 drop to the floor and 5- 9 climb the vine'. The class have settled so well into the new routines of year 4 and we look forward to sharing our Year 4 adventure with you. Welcome back for the new year here in Hawthorn Class. We will use this space to tell you what we have been up to and to share pictures of our learning.
We have had some beautiful, if slightly scorching weather here in Chagford recently - and what better way to make the most of this then starting swimming lessons and cricket?! The children have already had 2 swimming sessions and I have to say, I was very impressed by this week's behaviour. The class conducted themselves very sensibly on the walk down to the pool, listened carefully to the instructors and had a lovely time. We know that you'll do us proud and be just as respectful and welcoming to our cricket coach over the coming weeks.
The class have also been writing some very powerful poetry with important messages about the environment. So far, we've studied the poem 'There's a Rang-Tan in my Bedroom' - a poem published alongside Greenpeace, which tells the story of deforestation in Borneo from the orang-utan's point of view. This had a real impact on the children, and now we will be researching more about deforestation in line with our topic all about Brazil, before writing our own poems that will be narrated by Brazilian animals. Some rather frustrating news - I have been asked to self-isolate by the NHS test and trace scheme. Thankfully, we have had no symptoms of Covid-19 so there is no cause for alarm and no need for anyone else to self-isolate. However, it means that I will be away until Monday 28th June. The children will receive work that is planned by me so they do not miss out on our Summer Term activities. I will very much look forward to seeing everyone once the isolation has finished! Stay healthy! Mrs Robertson |
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