Hello,

We all hope you had a fantastic Christmas and a well deserved break! It was lovely to see all the children back in on Monday, keen to learn and get back into a school routine and what a great first week back it was!

The children have started a new topic called Island Hoppers which will take us through most of the Spring term. Here year 4 closely look at different islands, comparing places and studying volcanoes. In English the book we will be studying is Jemmy Button by Jennifer Uman and Valerio Vidali. It is a true story of a young Native boy from a tribe in South America who was invited to come to England in the hopes to be civilised, however though he was draped in all the finest clothing and experienced England’s greatest cultures, he felt a part of him was missing and Charles Darwin returned him home. This is a great English hook as we have been able to compare the different settings and use our inference skills to justify why Jemmy was feeling certain ways.

In Maths, Koalas and Kangaroos have been learning all about time. This weeks focus has been on o’clocks, half pasts, quarter past, quarter to and nearest 5 minutes. We have been really impressed with the children perseverance this week as Time is always a tricky concept to grasp. So keep up the good work Year 4.

This week children have been given their poetry competition books, where they are allowed to chose a poem to practise and then later [perform to the class. Alongside this they have been given their Spring reading passports. Altogether Year 4 had a very impressive number of children who completed the Autumn Term with oly a few off the winning class, so lets continue to encourage children with their home reading. The teachers at St Peters are always happy to help find books or articles for children to help them complete this.

As usual homework has been handed out and we expect children to bring this back on Friday 17th, we were very happy with the amount of children who brought back their homework after the Christmas break as we appreciate this time of the month is very busy.

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Miss Jackson-Nash, Miss Honeywell and Mrs Cairns