In Guided Reading, we are reading our third book by Anthony Browne. First, we made predictions about the story then we discussed the similarities and the differences of the dads from all three books.

Which was book was your favourite and why?

We are planning a story based on a dream an orangutan has about being set free into the rainforests and being reunited with his family after enduring years in captivity. Please ask your child about their and get them to retell it to you.

This week, we started reading another book by Anthony Browne called 'Gorilla'. We looked at the front cover and made predictions about what might happen.

During Term 2 P4 have been working towards completing the Whack That Percussion! module. This involves using tuned and untuned percussion instruments to play different rhythms. The children had to work together and discuss a structure in order to perform the piece as a class.

We have been revising the division facts for the 10, 5, 2, 4, 8 and 3 times table. We have also used the BIKIAK strategy 'Because I Know I Also Know' to help calculate larger division calculations. At the start of the week, we looked at division with exchanging. We practically shared larger numbers and then exchanged the tens into ones. Then we moved onto finding remainders.

We have realised that knowing our times tables help us with our division! Please continue to practise these at home.

This week, we started our diary unit. We looked at the features of a diary. Why don't you try and write a short diary entry each day?

Our new topic is multiplication and division. We have been showing different ways to represent both operations. We will be learning our 3,4 and 8 times table and the corresponding division facts. Please can you help your child to practise these and encourage them to use Times Table Rockstars everyday.

Thank you to all the parents who were able to come and join us for our first P4H Exit Point. We hope you enjoyed it!

On Tuesday 14th December at 1.20pm P4H will be having their Exit Point for the Oman Unit. The exit point will be located OUTSIDE of the P4L classroom. The children are looking forward to sharing their learning with you.

Our exciting new text is The Bear and the Piano. We studied the front cover and discussed what we could see and what we thought might be happening and then made predictions about the story. Please click the link and watch with your child. Enjoy!

This week we have been completing our research projects on Dhofar. We are looking forward to sharing our learning with our parents in the Exit Point next week.

We are enjoying visiting the Library on Monday afternoons. Please can you ensure that all books are returned on this day.

As part of our Oman unit in IPC, we have been researching the location, flora and fauna in the Dhofar region. We have been using the chromebooks to find information to place on Google Slides. In the process, we have learnt many new IT skills such as pasting a picture, adding text and lines as well as thinking about the presentation of the slides.

We have learnt the method for formal column addition.

We learnt that you start on the RIGHT hand column and work left.

We moved through the differentiated steps of no bridging, bridging ones, bridging tens and then bridging ten and ones.

Some of us moved onto word problems and logic and reasoning. We had to use the formal column ethod and check our answers.

Today we said goodbye to our friend, Samiq. We will miss him so much but wish him and his family all the very best in their next adventure.

Continuing our topic on addition, we have now moved onto using the expanded method. We have used this method to bridge ones and tens using 3 digit numbers. Ask your child to explain how they would work out the following questions:

125 + 134 = 234 + 147= 138 + 281 = 289 + 235 =

We have edited and improved our character descriptions to ensure our work includes similes, adventurous adjectives, a range of sentence starters, conjunctions and correct punctuation. Using our best, joined up handwriting, we have published our work for our class display.

This week saw P4 using all of the skills we have been learning over the last few weeks to create our final art masterpieces - our Omani doors. They will soon be displayed outside our classroom for people to admire!

We have been learning a new strategy to add two 2 or 3 digits numbers. By partitioning the second number we can then add the hundreds, tens and ones separately. Some of us have been using the inverse to check our calculations.

We used the same strategy for subtraction as well.

This strategy can be used for any number of digits.

We also looked at more efficient strategies i.e. for adding 9. By adding 10 and taking 1 away it is much quicker. We also applied this to other numbers i.e. + 79, we can add 80 and take 1 away.

For subtraction we can follow the same strategy; to take away 9 we can take away 10 + 1

You can use this strategy at home to try these calculations.

56 + 45 = 74 - 47 =

134 + 69 = 156 - 89=

376 + 189 = 437 - 249=

We have been using a thesaurus to find adjectives to describe Miss Hardbroom. Next week, we will be writing a character description. Ask your child to describe her appearance and personality. You could even watch some of 'The Worst Witch' episodes and discuss more of the characters.

We have continued to work on numbers this week in Maths and have been increasing the number of digits we add and subtract from a 3 digit number. We are still reinforcing the use of prior strategies such as number bonds, partitioning and using number lines to help solve the problems. Here is a website you can use to look at the different strategies for mental maths.

Using a thesaurus has helped us to find lots more interesting and adventurous adjectives to describe characters such as The Twits, The BFG and The Big Bad Wolf. Next week, we will be writing character descriptions based on the book The Worst Witch.

We have been adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers and 1 digit numbers using bridging 10. Here is a short video explaining the strategy with smaller numbers. Knowing our number bonds to 10 with rapid recall has really helped with this. Please continue to practice these with your child.

We watched the trailer for the cartoon 'The Night Zookeeper'. We answered questions about the characters. We looked at the observable and non observable (personality) characteristics of the characters. Then we drew our own new character and wrote a description.

Could you make up another character, draw a picture and write a description?

We identified adverbs within sentences - many of them end in the suffix -ly. We found that adverbs can show us HOW, WHEN, WHERE or WHY. We discussed adverbs of MANNER and TIME.

We discussed sensory language that could be used in the recount and made a list. We began our diary entry with when, what and where. We described the cyclone and how we felt about what had happened. We read our diary entries aloud, which helped us edit our work.

We are practising our Maths Passport targets every day. We look at strategies that can be used and we are trying to get faster!

We investigated place value this week. We looked at the largest and smallest numbers we could make from digit cards. We also investigated a logical way to find all possible 3 digit numbers combinations from 3 and 4 digit cards.

Here is a copy of the book 'The Great Kapok Tree'. Please click the video for the text and story being read aloud.

This week we are continuing our learning on place value, revisiting 2 digit numbers and moving onto 3 digit numbers. Today we looked at different ways of representing numbers including visually. We had to take a number and show the value of each digit, draw the number using diennes or counters, write a partition calculation and draw a whole / part model. We also wrote the number on words.

This week we have been revising counting in 100's, 50's, 4's and 8's. We learnt to fill in missing number sequences by identifying the jumps as well as using BIKIAK (Because I Know I Also Know) to count in 40's and 80's. The children have been reintroduced o the 'spice' levels and have also been solving word and logic / reasoning problems.

We began our Art lessons this week. We looked closely at a picture of a rainforest and learnt about the artist. We learnt how to sketch and shade from darker to light.

We looked at speech verbs and how they can give us a clue about how the character is speaking.

We thought about the animals in 'The Great Kapok Tree' and looked at the speech verbs used.

As a class we thought of speech verbs for Miss Liz's cat, Jasper. Then we thought of what he might say and wrote it as direct speech using the correct punctuation.

We then did the same for other animal characters within the story.

There have been many requests for reading books to be kept at home and returned on a Sunday. The P4 teachers are happy to facilitate this request.

Spelling sheets should be returned on a Thursday. The children will complete the THURSDAY part of the 'Look, Cover, Write and Check' when they arrive at school on a Thursday morning.