There have been some great highlights this week.  The introduction of a competition to entertain an audience by reading a poem, whether this is your own or already written, is not as important as delivering your poem with panache! Please watch Michael Rosen's clip on how to perform and entertain. Poems need to be ready for the 5th June and we can't wait to hear your favourite.   In Year 4, this week we have been especially blown away by the progress the children have made in their writing.  Perhaps they were excited by the events in Whale Boy when the whale tipped Michael out the boat and he had the amazing experience of swimming with the whale.  The whale was gentle, and tenderly returned Michael to the boat.  Writing as Michael, the children described how the whale 'created vibrations under the little, wooden fishing boat' and the 'priceless moment' as Michael brushed his hand along the 'slippery skin of the whale.'   Lessons in history were jiggled around this week to make the best use of the Ancient Egyptian artefact box from County. These artefact boxes are little treasure chests full of replicas from this period.  We made this even more exciting by recreating the tunnel from Tutankhamun's tomb and placing the artefacts at the end of the darkened tunnel for the children to discover, draw and make inferences about the Ancient Egyptians.  Clutching their torch and with the background music of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the children crawled down the tunnel in their 30 seconds before poisonous gases could be released (we didn't attempt to replicate that!).  The ideas around the artefacts were insightful and clearly revealed that the children have already shown a great interest in our new topic.  We all felt totally immersed in this time period but also had a really exciting afternoon.   Times tables continue to be a focus in Year 4 with the children enjoying some new games in the classroom.  Please do ask them to play Rock, Paper,  Scissors as a multiplication game with you.  The children's scores continue to improve and we hope they are really proud of the progress they are making which has been particularly helpful today as they converted hours to minutes.   Perhaps the children could calculate the cooking time for the family meal this weekend? 

Have a super weekend from the Year 4 team.