Another amazing week here in Year 4.

In English, we have been looking at information texts.  In particular, we have been looking at information on polar bears.  This links to our class reader `The Polar Bear Explorers' Club' by Alex Bell.  

Throughout the week we have been reading about polar bears, gathering notes and yesterday, we began to organise our notes into boxes that we will write into paragraphs.

Polar bears are amazing creatures.  Did you know for  example -

• Polar bears have black skin and although their fur appears white, it is actually transparent.

• It is the largest carnivore (meat eater) that lives on land.

• Polar bears spend most of their time at sea.

• Scientists estimate that there are around 20000 polar bears.

• Polar bears have an excellent sense of smell, with the ability to detect seals nearly a mile away (1.6 km).

• Polar bears can reach speeds up to 40 kph (25 mph) on land and 10 kph (6 mph) in water.

Amazing, don't you think?

In Maths, we have been comparing and ordering decimal numbers.  Actually, all of our work on Place Value before Christmas, made it all quite easy.  We used the less than, greater than and equal signs -   >  < =.  The same rules apply as when we compare whole numbers. However, you need to be really careful with the value of each column.  So for example, 5.09 is less than 5.21 because the first number has zero in the tenths column.  We've found a really cool game where you compare decimals and draw in the correct sign.  Why not have a go yourself?  Here

This week we also spent some time in the ALPS.  We were identifying living and non-living things.  Take a look at our pictures.