Leicester's September Blog 2021

Now that we are settled into our brand new classroom, we have been busy with our first Christ Church Curriculum Safari - 'What's So Great About Ouse?'

English

In English, we started our writing by discussing what makes an effective setting description. We looked at how an author uses effective, ambitious noun phrases to force the reader to create an image in their mind. We emphasised the  senses, ensuring we told the reader what we could see, hear, smell or feel within a particular setting. Those who were particularly brave attempted to include taste (however this was challenging when developing an underwater setting).

Maths

As we do every year, we begun our maths learning by reviewing and building our understanding of place value. We moved onto using place value knowledge to partition and expand numbers to add and subtract. In Year 4, we have been adding and subtracting four digit numbers. We applied the same learning and skills developed in Year 3 but with larger numbers, emphasising the importance of exchanging and borrowing within written methods. 

Science

Our first unit is 'Animals, including humans' and we have been looking at the human digestive system. We have discussed which organs are involved in digestion and what their functions are. It was all going swimmingly until someone asked if the appendix was involved, to which I had to explain that even the world's leading scientists still have absolutely no idea what the function of the appendix is. We had great fun recreating the digestive system using water, orange juice, a zip lock bag, a banana, a cracker and the intestines (I mean a pair of tights). 

R.E.

In religious education we have been discussing what a Christian learns from the Creation story in the bible and how this would impact their beliefs. We had some interesting discussions as to whether all Christians should be vegetarians based on the information in the book of Genesis. 

CCCS

We have started our new butterfly by looking at the East Anglian Fens and The Northern Great Plains. We used these locations to discuss how landscape and natural resources determine how a locality is used. We also compared the similarities and differences between the regions, reasoning as to why the land has been used in the way it has been.