Beech Class 
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Take a look at the wonderful learning that has been happening in our class!
We loved dressing up as our favourite book characters for World Book Day!
What is your favourite book to read?
We had a great time designing and baking our yummy biscuits. We worked through a process of evaluating our method; deciding what we found easy and more challenging and what we might to next time to improve. They were delicious! A huge thank you to the kitchen for baking them in their ovens :)
We had a visit from 'Hands on Science' who delivered a practical workshop on electrical currents. We learned about the components in a circuit. WE explored what can happen if there are too many volts or too many components.
What do you think would happen to a bulb in a circuit with 5 cells?
Why do you think that?
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We have really enjoyed studying and writing our own poems based on things that we love! We were inspired by Joshua Seigal's 'Addicted to Chicken' poem and wrote our own poems before looking at how to best perform our spoken word. We practised changing the pitch and tone of our voice, using gestures and body language and utilising hesitation for emphasis.
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We were lucky enough to have a visit from a team of local bee keepers. They brought in lots of fascinating things to show us like honeycomb, replica bees and beekeeping clothing. We also had the opportunity to taste some local prize winning honey, which was delicious! It was such a fascinating visit and all the more enjoyable because the children were encouraged to be curious and ask lots of questions. Over half term, we received a lovely email from Ruxley beekeepers praising the children for their enthusiasm and exemplary behaviour so well done to Beech Class for being such a credit to Birkbeck!
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Please see our Spring term overview below
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Wow what a fun filled few weeks we have had. We were so lucky to have not one but two school trips! Firstly we visited the National Portrait Gallery. It was so great being able to see the works of David Hockney and the vast amount of different styles he explored. The children had a go at creating some of their own art during our visit.
As part of our Humanities topic on ancient Egypt, we went to the British Museum. It was so useful to see so many different artefacts in one place. What an amazing collection of excavated items. The children loved exploring the range of different everyday items and making inferences on how ancient Egyptian people might have lived their lives.
We have had so much fun in DT creating out final pavilions. We have worked on the stability of our structures, reinforcing our corners and using a range of techniques to make our pavilions aesthetically pleasing!
We found it so fun exploring area in maths. We used cubes to find the area of a range of 2D shapes. After that, we looked at counting the squares to find the area of a shape and compared the areas of different shapes.
We have been looking at the Disney short 'La Luna' in class and writing our own endings to the story. The class have worked brilliantly and impressed Mrs Sands so much during their recent editing lesson where they worked so well in pairs to edit and improve their independent writing. I am so looking forward to reading them all!
We were very lucky to have a visit from Charlotte Moore who worked with us on an orienteering lesson around our own school grounds. The children worked so well in their teams and communicated brilliantly to locate the different markers. We used a point and return method where the team were required to return back to their base after successfully finding their location. We then had to work as a team to unscramble the letters to spell out a word. It was so much fun!
In science, we were able to put all of our learning about electricity and circuits into practice. We created our own circuits and then investigated what would happen to the bulb if we added more cells to the circuit. We worked in small groups and recorded our investigations and findings.
Star & Leaner: Beech Class- for excellent behaviour during our visit to the National Portrait Gallery.
Star: George - for consistently demonstrating ready, respectful and safe.
Learner: Isabella - for excellent writing including the use of dialogue.
Star: Ashley- for consistently demonstrating ready, respectful and safe.
Learner: Improved his English with varied vocabulary and the quantity of writing has improved. 
Enjoy the Christmas break! We can't wait to see what we get up to next term...
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It's BARVEMBER! All month in November, schools around the country focus on using the bar model to solve a whole range of problems. We have been doing this in our maths and the children are now super confident with the method. If you have a problem and you don't have all the information a bar model is a great method to help you to visualise the problem! We have been exploring multiplication and working hard on our times tables. We have been rolling our numbers and looking at patterns in between the tables. We have also been learning strategies to help us when we get stuck on a multiplication.
Can you solve this problem using the bar model:
Mrs Sands has 121 boxes of pencils. She shares them equally between 11 classes. How many boxes of pencils does each class get?
Beech class have loved learning about Tutankhamun and putting their summer homework to great use with all the amazing facts they found. We have been using our work on non-chronological reports focused on Seti I to look at the language features of non fiction writing. We have focused on using fronted adverbials to say where, when or how and using both coordinating and subordinating conjunctions to create complex sentences. We have been doing some fantastic planning and are now ready to write our own reports of Tutankhamun and are itching like scarab beetles to get started!
This term we have been learning all about electricity in our Science lessons. We learnt how to put various components together to make a complete circuit and then explored which materials are good conductors or insulators. We also used an online circuit builder to experiment with switches and cells in series. Here's the link if you want to have another go at home:
Last week, we investigated static electricity and had great fun rubbing balloons on our jumpers and then placing them above our heads to see if our hair stood up on end!
We have really enjoyed learning new skills in PE this half term. We have worked on our control, speed and positioning in hockey to dribble and pass the ball to a partner and on our own. Beech class had fantastic control and were even able to increase their speed and move with the ball with great confidence. Excellent work Beech class!
In DT we have had so much fun studying the structures of pavilions and enjoyed exploring the stability of different shape structures. After looking at and reviewing existing pavilions we have now designed some of our own and can't wait to start constructing them... but will everything go to plan or will we need to make some design changes?
Well done to our Stars and Learners of the week:
Star: Ben- for managing his emotions really well
Learner: Isabella - For excellent improvement in her confidence with column addition
Star: Emmeline - for growing in confidence in the classroom and increasingly sharing her ideas.
Learner: Henry - for an excellent retelling of Cinderella in writing.
Star: Laicee - for always showing ready, respectful and safe
Learner: Henry - for giving 100% effort in his writing
Star: Tianna - for challenging herself to work independently
Learner: Harriet- for editing her writing well and varying her sentence starters
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Beech class have been working really hard on writing their own Cinderella narratives after studying 'The Egyptian Cinderella' by Shirley Climo. They have looked at using expanded noun phrases to provide additional description for the reader and how to use and punctuate direct speech to move the story forward. We have worked hard on looking at using subordinate clauses to vary our writing too.
In history we have loved learning all about how the Egyptian civilisation utilised the river Nile and used their hierarchy to establish a successful society with thriving agricultural knowledge and leadership. We used our geographical map skills to plot the discoveries of various tombs on maps of the Kings Valley.
In art we have studied and analysed narrative paintings and enjoyed creating our own. We have focused on the social injustice which can be conveyed through artwork such as gender and race inequality, wealth and social class hierarchy.
We have been securing our understanding of addition and subtraction using a range of methods including the column methods, number lines and using various manipulatives to support our understanding.
Well done to our Stars and Learners of the week:
Star: Oscar - for excellent focus and effort
Learner: Albie - for using his phonics to write sentences independently
Star: Ella - for having an excellent understanding of expectations
Learner: Alice - for fantastic focus and producing great writing in English
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Wow! What a wonderful start to the term we have had! We had so much fun sharing the incredible efforts of our summer homework task. It was so great to see the effort that everyone has put in to present their learning of the ancient Egyptians. Some people created artwork, power points, books, crafts and so much more. We have now put these fantastic pieces up in our classroom and on display to share with the rest of the school. We even created our own mini-museum to share our findings.
We have also been working really hard on securing our knowledge of number; using base 10 and place value counters to help us to really build a strong foundation for place value (this will really help us later when we come to calculating!)
We have loved reading Varjak Paw as our class read and cannot wait to see what those Mesopotamian blue's get up to next.
We have explored The Egyptian Cinderella and used our writing lenses to create some really super writing. We have worked hard on vocabulary choices and sentence structure to make sure our sentences make sense and are punctuated correctly.
In our art lessons we have been studying narrative paintings by a range of artists one that we were particularly interested in was Peter Brueghel. We found it really interested to point out all the different people captured in the painting and discussing how people's lives are different and how this can be portrayed in artwork. We are really looking forward to creating some of our own narrative artwork in the upcoming weeks.
Who can you find in the painting?
Well done to our Stars and Learners of the week:
Star: Laila for consistently being recognised for the schools values.
Learner: George for fantastic effort in maths.
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Welcome to Year 4 Beech Class!
Please see below a presentation of all the learning that will be exploring during the Autumn term.
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