Bancroft Year 4

Welcome to Bancroft class!

Teacher: Miss Childs

TA: Mrs. Gunn

Bronwyn Bancroft is an aboriginal artist, who writes and illustrates children's books. So far, Bancroft have created stories using aboriginal symbols and have used aboriginal art patterns to decorate hand prints. 

Important information

Homework

Spellings-weekly-sent home on Friday and the children will be tested on the following Friday.

Times tables-weekly- children will be tested on Fridays. To improve times tables, children should be playing at least 3 games of 'garage' on times tables rockstars everyday. 

Maths and English homework-sent out on Friday and should be completed and returned for the following Tuesday (should not take longer than 30 minutes to complete.) 

Maths and English homework will usually be related to the work covered in class and should be completed neatly and in pencil, please.

Reading

In order to make good progress, children should read for at least 20 minutes every day.

Books-once children finish a book, if they are reading a book where there is a quiz available on Accelerated Reader, then they should complete the quiz in school before choosing a new book. Reading books should be brought into school every day and then taken home at the end of the day.

Children should bring Reading Records into school on Fridays for checking (your child may write their comment in the book after reading and parents should sign the books at least once a week). 

PE is on Wednesdays after February half term until the Easter holiday.

Swimming is on Mondays.

PE kit should be named and left in school. Children should have trainers for outdoor PE.

Children need to take out earrings themselves for PE and swimming.

Children to bring book bags in every day, please.

Topics we are covering 2019-2020

Urban Pioneers-Autumn 1

Gods and Mortals-Autumn 2

Misty Mountains-Spring 1

Mighty Metals-Spring 2

1066-Summer 1

Road Trip USA-Summer 2

Safer internet day

Safer internet day 2020 focussed on identity. We completed activities around what is safe to share about your identity and discussed whether it is good or bad that we can create a different identity online than who we are. We also created avatars of ourselves that showed how we would like to be identified online and that this could look like us or look completely different!

NSPCC Number day

We based our number day activities on the book ‘A Place for Zero’ which was about finding a purpose of the number zero. We realised zero was used as a place holder, it can be multiplied with any number to produce zero and it can be added to any number without changing the value. From this we, played countdown with a random selection of numbers to get to zero using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We also made a poster based on the challenging question: Using the 4 operations, what would you get if you input: 2 and 7; 25 and 7; 254 and 27; 254 and 274; 2545 and 27?

Skills builder

Our challenge day focussed on making pop-up greeting cards. Bancroft had to decide in their teams which type of greeting card they would like to create, design them individually and then combine them with other ideas of team members to create the final design. They then created their greetings cards using a production line, to make sure it was fair that everyone had a job to do.

Misty Mountains

As part of our topic, we have learnt about different types of volcanoes (shield, composite, lava domes and cinder cones). We then made volcanoes in groups, painted them and then created an eruption using vinegar, food colouring, washing up liquid and bicarbonate of soda. The children really enjoyed making their volcanoes!

Gods and Mortals

For our Gods and Mortals topic, we have been exploring the world of Ancient Greece. So far, the children have thoroughly enjoyed learning about this time period. We began by comparing ancient and modern Greece, identifying the city states and key geographical features. Using this knowledge, we further researched the most important kingdoms of the Ancient Greek empire, such as Athens and Sparta. The children produced a wonderful and detailed fact file on these kingdoms. Using their research from homework, we created a character description of a Greek god or goddess, including plenty of descriptive features. This is a piece of work they were really proud of! At the moment, we are writing an invitation to the Ancient Olympic games. The children have tried hard to include persuasive language to make their writing more interesting. These will be displayed in our classrooms. In art, we spent time designing and sketching an amphora (Greek vase), which shows a part of Greek life. We will be using our designs to create a clay model of these vases.

Urban Pioneers - Autumn 1

LKS2 enjoyed getting stuck into the graffiti workshop!