As we progress ever closer to Holy Week, it is important that as Christians we use this remaining time in Lent to continue to be reflective of our selves and our ability to be forgiving to all others. This spirit of self reflection and forgiveness can be harnessed by all Catholics by regularly receiving the Sacrament of the Eucharist at Mass each week or through the Sacrament of Reconciliation by going to Confession.
A wonderful group of our Year 4 children captured this spirit at the Catholic Primary Lenten Liturgy on Tuesday. The 13 children that came performed so beautifully that some of the audience were moved to tears! The theme of our scene was the washing of the disciples feet at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday. The children presented themselves so respectfully and behaved so well throughout the service that the staff at Our Lady’s could not have been more proud.
This was the week that we finally got to go and watch the Gangsta Granny performance! The class of Year 4 had a marvelous time watching our beloved class book and some of our favourite fictional characters being brought to life live on stage. Once again Year 4 really rose to the occasion and represented their school at the Grand Theatre very well indeed.
We have been using the story of Gangsta Granny in partnership with the ‘Knotted Project’ theatre group that help us with our ‘Tales Retold’ workshop on Monday mornings. Joining it with our resilience framework, we have used scenes and characters from Gangsta Granny to help ourselves become more resilient individuals. We have also used it to improve our Drama and acting skills, increasing our confidence, teamwork and expression. Year 4 have come a long way in these skills since September!
In Maths this week, Year 4 have continued looking at how to calculate the area of a shape. We have focused the past few days on exploring how to form and calculate the area of a rectilinear shape. We have also spent time learning how to compare different shapes based on their area. Our greater than and less than symbols came in really handy during our comparison investigations!
In English, Year 4 have started the process of writing their persuasive letters. As a class we are using all of the features we have learnt that make a piece of writing persuasive such as; rhetorical questions, repetition, imperative verbs and expanded noun phrases, in our writing. Our main goal is to incorporate our current Science topic into our writing and write a letter to our local Member of Parliament explaining to him of our concern of the danger our environment is in at the moment and to try and persuade him to do more to promote renewable and sustainable ways of generating electricity such as; solar, wind and hydro power. We started the introduction for our letters this week, informing the reader of our purpose and using rhetorical questions to get the reader thinking. We hope to soon have lots of freshly sealed envelopes on their way to our local MP!
In Topic we spent our last Anglo-Saxon/Vikings lesson exploring the Battle of Hastings. We decided to incorporate our Drama skills into the lesson and retell the story through freeze frames. The class were split into four groups and each group was given a different section of the story we had gone through together. Each group then had to create a dramatic frozen scene representing their section of the story. The first scene showed us Harold and the Anglo-Saxons defending the English line well. The second showed the Anglo-Saxon’s fatal mistake in breaking their line to chase after retreating Normans. The third scene showed us William the Conqueror’s Norman cavalry coming in and dominating the English. Finally, the last scene represented poor Harold getting an arrow in his eye and the Anglo-Saxon’s defeat by the Norman invaders.
Congratulations to our award winners this week:
Golden Award - Ola.
Writing Award - Zak.
Maths Award - Hallie.
Thank you from everyone in Year 4.
