Mrs Dani Read
The Hummingbirds team is made up of Mrs Dani Read (Monday- Thursday) and Mrs Parsons who teaches on a Friday. The wonderful Mrs Francis and Mrs Wetherman also work in our class to help us with our learning. In Hummingbirds, we love to learn and have lots of fun while we’re at it! We work hard in all of our endeavours and take pride in our achievements, working with each other in a kind, caring and collaborative manner. We have the same 3 rules throughout the school which makes it easy for us to follow them. They are: keep safe, use your values and be the best that you can be." We learn about and practice these rules every day.
Mrs Dai Parsons
In Hummingbird Class we explore spelling rules and patterns each week. These help us to become independent spellers and to produce writing of a higher quality. We also have a times table focus each half term to develop our fluency of the multiplication facts up to the 12 times table in preparation for the times table check in Year 4. We learn each times table in order, out of order and then the matching division fact to help us develop a strong understanding of these mathematical facts. Reading is another key skill and we aim to read every day. Hummingbirds are a competitive bunch and we aim to win the half termly school reading competition each time! We really enjoy echo reading as a class, where the teacher reads a sentence and then we read it back. It really helps us to hear how the teacher uses her voice in different sentences and we like discussing interesting words and phrases too. In Year 4, we will also start to experience a little bit of homework to get us ready for middle school!
In Hummingbird Class we continue to develop our understanding of the 5 R’s – Resilience, Reasoning, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflectiveness - and how they help us to use the power of a growth mindset. We know that mistakes help us to learn and we use resilience to overcome challenges. We try to be resourceful learners, using what we know to help us solve problems as well as taking responsibility for our learning and the learning of our classmates. Most importantly, we learn that making mistakes is an essential and unavoidable step towards learning and improving ourselves. ‘Mistakes are good - make lots of them!’ is one of our class rules!
In Year 4 will be studying the impact the ancient Romans had on Britain. We will also be exploring Ancient Greece and comparing what we learn to other cultures and time periods. We will be learning about electricity in Science, exploring circuits as well as continuing to develop our knowledge of plants and animals including humans and their habitats. We are especially looking forward to our residential trip to Grafham Water where we will be having a go at lots of exciting activities on and off the water! And this year sees the return of our Young Voices trip where the children have the opportunity to sing as part of a large school choir at the O2!