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Year 4 Blog

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  • Latest news in Year 4

    Published 15/03/24, by Andy Mari

    Last week, we were lucky enough to have an author visit. David Owen shared some of his books with us and spoke to us about his journey to becoming an author and his inspiration for writing his books.

    As part of World Book Day, we read a book called The Tower. Further to this, will delved deeper into the characters and had fun using drama to explore the conversations the children might have had with the tree man. We then went on to gather natural materials and created our own tree characters.  

    This week Year 4 started the week with a webinar session for British Science week. We enjoyed hearing from a STEM Ambassador, Liz Tinlin, who introduced us to how the planet has changed hugely over its long life and continues to change. We found out about the planet formation, surface erosion, plate tectonics, volcanoes, and even meteorite impacts. 

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  • Latest news in Year 4

    Published 02/03/24, by Andy Mari

    Year 4 have enjoyed settling back into school after the half term break.  In Literacy, we have been completing our letters to a famous author and have enjoyed learning about persuasive writing techniques. We are now looking forward to planning and writing letters to our chosen authors to see if we can persuade them to visit our school to further promote reading for enjoyment at home and school!

    In Art, we have been learning about how plants grown on the banks of the River Nile were used to make paper called Papyrus. We immersed ourselves in making our own 'Ancient Egyptian' style paper which we will then apply our designs to.

    We thoroughly enjoyed our Ancient Egyptians history workshop just before the half term break and launched into our new geography topic about the River Nile by looking at different types of maps which included the River Nile. We applied this to a team puzzle task which required us to identify features of the River Nile such as the delta, mouth and source and use this knowledge to piece together deconstructed maps. We are geographers!

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  • Busy time in Year 4

    Published 10/02/24, by Andy Mari

    This week in Year 4 we have been writing our own playscripts. Whilst in the Egyptian section of the British  museum, two mummies woke up and Year 4 had to decide what adventures they would have in Stevenage. Some chose for the chaos to commence in the bowling alley, Gravity and the cinema. We had great fun using the features of playscripts to write about our characters adventures.

    In art, we have continued to look at artwork and patterns from Ancient Egypt art. We have now started to design and plan our own scrolls based on the theme ‘ourselves’ We thought carefully about how to compose our designs and experimented with colours that we thought would work well together. We had to think carefully about the colours we picked as the Egyptians used mainly browns, reds, blues and yellows.

    As part of Safer internet day, we thought about the things that we need to do to make sure we are safe when using technology. Then, we listened to some raps about internet safety before we had a go at writing our own to share our messages. It was great fun thinking of the rhyming couplets and having a go at performing them in a rap style

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  • Ancient Egypt in Year 4

    Published 27/01/24, by Andy Mari

    In Year 4 we have started our new writing unit on playscripts and engaged enthusiastically in our experience day by taking a virtual tour of the setting of our playscript and performing the script to bring it to life. We are looking forward to developing our playscript writing skills and applying this to our own creations.

    We have had great fun exploring how sound is made and carried out investigations using cup and string telephones to see how the length and tension of the string affected the sound heard.

    We have enjoyed learning more about Ancient Egypt including how hieroglyphs were used in communication and applied this knowledge by creating our own cartouches.  We have been learning about Ancient Egyptian art and will be combining learning about the features and techniques to create our own Ancient Egyptian scrolls.

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  • Latest news in Year 4

    Published 16/01/24, by Andy Mari

    It has a busy start to the term in Year 4. In art, we have been getting creative and drawing and then painting our final pieces. We had to arrange five items to create a still life composition with a theme. We then looked carefully at this and sketched it out before using water colours to paint it. We used black and white to help create shades of our colours, which allowed us to achieve a 3D picture.  

    In Literacy, we are writing fantasy stories. We started the unit by exploring the main character in the story of Aladdin and watched clips from different versions of the story to inspire us. We have enjoyed developing our characters and building up the setting at the start of our stories.  

    Our new science unit is all about sound. This week we have been looking at different types of sounds and how they can be made. We’ve had fun trying to make sounds that fit certain criteria. For example, loud, high-pitched and continuous. 

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  • Latest news in Year 4

    Published 09/12/23, by Andy Mari

    It has been another busy week in Year 4. We have started a new art unit and have enjoyed getting creative and setting up our sketch books. We have also experimented with creating tints and shades using water colour paints. We learnt that you add white to a colour to make a tint and black to a colour to make a shade.  

    In Literacy, we have finished our balanced argument unit where we wrote our own independent piece about school uniform. We have now started a poetry unit which we are all enjoying writing about a small dragon that we have found in various different locations.  

    In science, we have been classifying different vertebrates. We got into home groups and then went off into our expert groups. Whilst in these expert groups, we learnt about the features of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Once we had learnt the facts, we then went back to our home groups and each expert taught their group. Then, we used this information to sort and classify different creatures according to their features. We really enjoyed learning in this way. 

     

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  • Latest news in Year 4

    Published 25/11/23, by Andy Mari

    Year 4 are continuing to enjoy the Maths No Problem lesson structure and have become so much more fluent with using manipulatives and finding a wider range of ways to represent and explain their reasoning to solve problems!

    We also embraced the opportunity to take part in Odd Socks Day. This event was a meaningful reminder of important messages about how to deal with bullying and have an anti-bullying mindset. In addition to this, we engaged in a very thought-provoking 'No Outsiders' workshop which helped us to consider how we treat one another and ways that we can communicate and interact even more positively together.

    We are really proud of our Pavilions which we made in our DT lessons! Our challenge was to design and build a secure and free standing structure which included cladding. We enjoyed using the glue guns independently to bring our structures to life and were also challenged to problem solve like designers in the real world when things did not work as we had planned in our designs. Mrs Jarman and Ms McAnuff were very impressed with the determination and resilience shown to overcome these challenges! Well done Year 4! We are architects!

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  • Building Pavillions in Year 4

    Published 11/11/23, by Andy Mari

    Year 4 have had a great time building their pavilions. They started by constructing the sides of their buildings and then used glue guns to make their three-dimensional structures. They thought carefully about the areas surrounding their pavilions and decorated their bases inline with their plans. Once these were complete, they started to add cladding to the outside of their design. This included using paper weaving and folding techniques. Some children even added moving doors and stairs to their designs. We were all really proud of our finished products. In Year 4, we are architects! 

     

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  • Latest News in Year 4

    Published 14/10/23, by Andy Mari

    Year 4 have shown plenty of enthusiasm during History lessons this half-term. In our recent lessons, we have been learning about the battle of Marathon. We debated about which factors led to the success of the Athenian army during this battle and completed a diamond nine chart to represent our conclusions. We have also enjoyed active learning tasks where we had to hunt like archaeologists for artefacts from the past and analyse the details on these to find information about Ancient Greek beliefs and Gods. 

    In recognition of Black History Month, we had a special assembly which inspired us to think meaningfully about celebrating and treating everyone equally. We then had an opportunity to make our voices heard through creating placards to contribute towards a whole school display which will remind all the important messages which we have shared.

    In Maths, we have continued our learning on number and place value. We enjoyed applying our rounding and estimating skills to everyday contexts such as rounding, estimating and calculating prices for items when shopping.

    In French, we have been improving our conversation skills by practising how to greet someone, introduce ourselves, ask and reply about how someone is feeling, as well as asking and responding about how old we are. We are linguists!

     

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  • Float in Year 4

    Published 29/09/23, by Andy Mari

    It has been another busy week in Year 4. After finishing our 'Feast' stories, we have started a new literacy unit based on a book called 'Float.' On Monday, we had an experience day where we had to make an origami boat. Mrs Jarman and Ms McAnuff picked a hard design that none of us had tried to make before. We thought about our feelings as we were making it and discussed the vocabulary. It started off quite easy but gradually got harder and some of us felt very overwhelmed. However, we persevered, and we were very proud of our achievements at the end on the lesson. 

    Cedar class were lucky enough to work with Trestle theatre group. During the session, we used masks to get into character and explore different emotions. It was great to see the class developing their acting skills and getting into character. We have been able to borrow the masks so hopefully other children in school will get a chance to work with them in the future. 

    In Science, Year 4 have been investigating melting. They have planned and carried out an experiment to investigating how quickly ice melts when it is placed in different places.

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  • Welcome back to Year 4!

    Published 14/09/23, by Andy Mari

    Year 4 pupils have made a positive start to the new academic year. In Design Technology lessons we have been investigating how to construct and reinforce pavillion structures. We had lots of fun using sweets and toothpicks to create our designs and are looking forward to bringing our own designs to life using similar methods.

    We also had a super time during the recent skipping workshops. We enjoyed learning lots of new tricks and skills and were amazed to see the record-breaking skills performed by the workshop leader, Pete Thompson.

    We have been captivated by the story 'Feast' which we have been learning in Literacy. We were thrilled to be visited by Mrs Green's family's therapy dog Timmy for our experience day. This gave us a real life opportunity to make observations and develop our vocabulary which we are now putting to good use in our own narrative writing.  Thank you Mrs Green! We are architects and authors!

     

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  • Science in Year 4

    Published 06/07/23, by Andy Mari

    It has been a busy week in Year 4. In Science, we started investigating how drinks affect our teeth. We placed egg shell, which we used to represent teeth, in five different liquids: coffee, tea, cola, orange squash and water. We were shocked by the results! The squash started to eat away at the egg shell straight away! We found out that the squash caused the most damage to the 'teeth' as the outer shell was eaten away and it became squidgy. The coffee stained the 'teeth' the most although the cola and tea also stained the shell. We looked at the ingredients in the squash and realised that as well as sugar, it also contained citric acid which we concluded would have been one of the reasons for our results. 

    We had the pleasure of watching the Year 6 production this week which was amazing. There were lots of great costumes and we loved all the songs and acting. Well done Year 6.  

    In Computing this week, we have been exploring the program 2Calculate to make number games and have used a timer and the spinner tool which was fun.  

    It was second time luck for our sports day! We had a great time competing in our houses and having a picnic with our friends and family. 

     

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