We have taken part in lots of different writing workshops all based on poetry and rap! We even wrote and performed our own rap! 

This week we also started exploring play scripts so that the children can begin to write their own. They thoroughly enjoyed acting and performing the plays. 

This week, we have celebrated Anti-Bullying week by wearing odd socks and carrying out some 'top secret mission' work to put a stop to bullying. 

We have kicked-started our new History topic – Anglo-Saxons and are very much looking forward to our workshop. 

For Science day, we made catapults and looked at different objects to see which would make the best flying golden snitch! 

Later on in the week, they took part in another workshop focusing on their mental well-being and how healthy foods and exercise can help this. 

We immersed ourselves in ancient history in our recent Amazing Ancient Egyptians Workshop. We were invited to wear Ancient Egyptian-style clothing and became citizens of Ancient Egypt for the day. The morning was full of engaging activities, such as writing with inks on papyrus using hieroglyphics, sculpting canopic jars which were used in the process of mummification and even creating ancient Egyptian perfumes consisting of a ball of wax infused with fragrant herbs which was placed on the head to melt in the sun. We ended our day with a lavish feast and performances of dances and plays depicting Ancient Egyptian stories. We are looking forward to our Geography learning about the River Nile which will lead on perfectly from this!

In PSHE, we have continued our learning in our unit of 'celebrating differences'. We made clear classes to help us see clearly and not make assumptions or prejudgements about people just by how they look. 

We are very much looking forward to the festive fun in the next few weeks! 

We started off our DT by looking at how structures are made by using toothpicks and sweets. Children worked together to make the structure of a pavilion. In the next few weeks, we will be making our own pavilions based on a theme! Stay tuned to see the final outcome! 

Lastly, we filled the corridor with smells of oregano, olives and onions! We made Greek salads focusing on key skills such as chopping, grating and measuring! 

In Maths we have been learning about rounding and using this alongside our calculations to check for accuracy. We have been working towards mastery using maths equipment and a range of representations to represent, explain and prove our ideas.

To begin, in our unit of Literacy, we were visited by Timmy! We asked lots of questions and were very excited by our furry friend. We can not wait to see what else Autumn has in store for year 4! 

In preparation for our art workshop next week with Amanda Jewitt, we have been researching a number of artists and artwork linked to a theme – sealife. This has allowed us to learn that art is often used to raise awareness about important issues such as protecting the oceans.

We have been developing drawing skills, including the use of techniques such as hatching and shading as well as charcoal and drawing with an eraser to create realistic 3d drawings of compositions involving everyday items. We have also used collage techniques to begin to explore printing techniques and are looking forward to experimenting with wax resist techniques before designing and creating our final outcomes.

All Year 4 pupils have been busily practising and applying rapid recall of multiplication facts little and often throughout the week. The Year 4 team have been very impressed with the effort and enthusiasm shown towards this. Well done Year 4 and keep the great effort going! This will definitely support the upcoming Multiplication Tables check in June.

In Maths, we have been using our work on decimals and applying this to money. The children have used their rounding skills to estimate before calculating worded problems. We have had lots of discussions about the relevance of this and how it is useful in real life experiences. 

In Literacy, we have started to write a story based on the book called The Whale by Ethan and Vita Murrow. We started this unit by carrying out our own research about whales. We also had another experience day where we used items in a backpack to discover more about the main character in our story. Then, we made predictions about the choices she might make in the story.    

In computing, we have been animators and so far have investigated different types of animation and learnt about some features of animation programs, such as 'onion skinning' (a technique to see and work with several frames at once).

In music lessons, we have been appraising songs by the Beatles and accompanying these with singing and instruments. We are really looking forward to creating our own compositions linked to these songs.

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. 

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!

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

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.

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. 

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. 

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!

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!

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.

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!

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. 

In art, we have been using tints and shades to experiment with 3D effects. We used a grid to draw an apple and then used water colours to create our painting.   

In Science, we have been learning all about our teeth and the purpose of each type. It has been interesting finding out how our teeth change as we grow and when different teeth come through. 

In Geography, we have started our new topic - 'Peculiar Plants' and have enjoyed finding out about the different plants that grow around the world. We have found out that different plants are able to survive in different biomes. We discovered that the Darth Vader flower grows in Brazil, South America and Black Bat flower grows in China, Asia. 

We have also decorated a material square which we then put together to make a class tapestry. We thought about things that were linked to King Charles and royal family and used these to design our own squares. We are all looking forward to celebrating the coronation on Friday afternoon as a school.

At the end of last week, we were also lucky to work with the artist Amanda Jewitt and created some amazing artwork based on beetles. We started off by finding out about three different artists who focused on this as a subject. When Amanda came in, we worked on shade, tone, texture and proportion when creating our own artwork. This week, we have continued this work with some follow up tasks. 

At Roebuck we are artists. 

In Geography, we have found out about the Aswan High Dam which was built on the river Nile. It took ten years to build as it is so big. It was really interesting to find out the negative and positive impact this had on Egypt. We used all this information to make our own leaflets about the dam.  

During our Science and DT lessons, we have been researching different types of torches ready to design our own torches next week. We have also had a chance to experiment with wires, cells and bulbs to create a circuit that we will use in our torches. Our next step is to add a switch to our circuit so we can turn our torches on and off. 

In Year 4 we are creative! 

In addition to all of this, we have been enjoying experimenting with making music in computing, broadening our bank of strategies for mindfulness and have been refining our map work skills in Geography by completing puzzles and utilising digital reference tools such as Digimaps to answer true or false questions about the River Nile. 

We left our paper to dry over night and then carefully copied our scroll designs from our sketchbooks onto the paper we had made. Once we were happy with the design, we used water colour paint and poster paint to add colour to our designs. We thought carefully about the colours we used as we needed to take into consideration the colours that would have been available in Ancient Egypt times.

At Roebuck we are Egyptian scroll makers!

 We have also been challenged to use our history learning in Literacy and all planned and wrote our own playscripts with links to the Ancient Egyptians. We really enjoyed writing and bringing the playscripts to life and many of us managed to infuse them with a sense of humour which made our friends and teachers chuckle!

 In Art we have planned some fabulous Ancient Egyptian final designs and we are excited about creating our very own papyrus style paper to create these final designs on.

 In French we have been practising and mastering vocabulary for describing the family and can now add this to a conversation where we introduce ourselves and ask and tell someone about who is in our family. We are Linguists!