Beech Tree Class Blog 2023-2024
Beech Tree Blog
Weekly Update-26/9/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
Year 4 had a fantastic trip out this week. For the day, they were living the life of Vikings at the Danelaw Centre for Living History, near York. Throughout the day, the children learnt to guard their village from Anglo-Saxons, grind flour, make bread, create their own pottery...and much more. The children were absolutely fantastic, they had good manners, they were keen and enthusiastic during every activity and they had lots of fun. We were very proud with how they represented the school. Well done!
Below is the link to the Year 4 trip page, where you'll see lots of photos of the children enjoying all the different activities.
https://www.ruffordparkprimary.org.uk/classes/year4beech/y4-murton-park-trip-2025
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)
Weekly Update-19/9/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, in our writing, we have started our unit of work on character descriptions. The focus of this work revolves around the story of Beowulf. Together, as a class, we have read and discussed the story and watched a video depicting the story as well. The children really enjoyed the story and have chosen to Grendel as the character to focus on for their character description. Once the class had chosen their character, we looked at a WAGOLL character description and identified lots of the features that appeared within it. The following lesson, we banked as many adjectives and descriptive phrases as possible to describe Grendel. We then followed that up with a lesson where the children used all those ideas that they had generated and created exciting, expanded noun phrases with prepositional phrases to go with them. The children have really enjoyed this unit of work so far and are excited to work on their character description of Grendel. We have also focused on using a and an correctly within sentences.
In reading, we have focused on the second chapter of our class novel and practised using our retrieval skills to pick answers out of the text and summarising skills to mention all the main events of the second chapter in four sentences or less.
In maths, we have been focusing on finding 1,10, 100 or 1000 more or less than a number and we have also been focusing on using number lines to 10,000 and understanding the calculations required to work out what each increment is worth on a number line. We have also been using those skills to help with estimating on number lines to 10,000
In art, our unit of work is on British Art this half term and our first two-part lesson focused on illustration skills and telling a story through a piece of art. The children watched a video about the story of The Monkey and The Crocodile, which would be the focus of the illustration. We discussed what the story was all about and the children were tasked with creating one illustration that could be associate immediately with a part of the story. We discussed all the steps and skills involved with producing accurate illustration and the children produced some lovely pieces of work and listened and followed the steps given to them.
In history, our first lesson focused on the chronology of different historical events and people that the children have previously learnt about, identifying them on the timeline, understanding that different periods in history could have been occurring at the same time and placing where the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings fit in within that timeline.
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)
Weekly Update-12/9/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, in our writing, we have continued our work on recapping and practising using different punctuation. This week we have focused on using commas for lists, question marks and exclamation marks.
In reading, we have focused on the first chapter of our class novel and practised using our retrieval skills to pick answers out of the text.
In maths, we have been focusing on representing the value of digits in four digit numbers in a variety of ways and comparing and ordering numbers to 10,000, with a big focus on understanding the meaning of all the mathematical vocabulary involved with it e.g ascending and descending.
In science, we have been focusing on the functions of the skeleton and the different roles that different bones have e.g protecting vital, internal organs.
The children also attended their first swimming session this week, which they all really enjoyed and it was lovely to see!
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)