Year 4
Wednesday 24th April 2024
Thank you for all the fruit and vegetable packets that you sent in. This afternoon, the children were looking at the countries they came from in our Geography lesson in order to discuss how far some of our food travels to get to us. It will also lead into our DT lessons on seasonality and how we are able to get fruit and vegetables throughout the year because of the different countries we are able to get produce from. Children located the countries on a World map. Some of the grapes came from as far as India and South Africa and Chile!
Friday 19th April 2024
The children took part in Bikeability on Friday where they were learning things like: how to make themselves and their bike ready to ride, how to set off, slow down and stop, making good and frequent observations and communicating their intentions to others ie. signalling. They thoroughly enjoyed it and the gentlemen were very impressed with the children's efforts. Some children who could not ride at the start of the session, could do by the end. What a great day!
Thursday 28th March 2024
We designed and created our Anglo-Saxon brooches. The children discovered sticking the string on the lids was quite tricky and smoothing over the foil without tearing it. 🙂 (Thank you for the plastic lids)!
Friday 15th March 2024
As we have been classifying animals, yesterday we went bug hunting to look for invertebrates. Earlier in the week we had been trying to organise them by whether they were insects, could fly, could sting, had no legs, had a shell etc. It was fun to see them in their natural habitat.
Thursday 7th March 2024 - World Book Day
Tuesday 5th March 2024
In Science, we have been looking at classifying animals. We started by classifying sweets seeing if we could sort Dolly Mixtures by asking a variety of 'Yes/No' questions.
We then applied this knowledge to help us sort some of the vertebrate animals to establish some their differences such e.g. birds and mammals are warm-blooded but fish, reptiles and amphibians are cold-blooded.
Wednesday 14th February 2024
In History, we have been learning about when Christianity came to Britain during the Anglo-Saxon period and monks started teaching people how to read and write. They also wrote beautifully themselves and kept records of history. Some of the letters they used were very elaborate and detailed and became known as illuminated letters. We have been exploring these in our Art lessons and the children have been trying hard to create amazing letters themselves.
Thursday 8th February 2024
We recently combined our Geography learning with Computing. We have been looking at European capital cities in Geography and today the children were tasked with using a search engine to find a physical feature in those cities, specifically the main river.
Thursday 1st February 2024
Yesterday, the children continued their exploration of electric circuits in Science by seeing if they could add a switch. They learnt that turning a switch off breaks the circuit and stops the flow of electricity. They even tried creating some of their own switches.
Monday 29th January 2024
Year 4 had a great time visiting the Southend and Westcliff Synagogue. We discovered that the word ‘Synagogue’ is a Greek word and it means ‘House of Assembly’. We all learned a lot from Jeff and it was great to see the items we’d been learning about at school in real life. It was great fun trying on the different kippahs. We gasped when Jeff opened the Ark containing the beautiful Torah Scrolls! Our very own ‘Rabbi Brody’ went up on the bimah and stood where the real Rabbi would stand in front of the Ark and he even got to sit in the Rabbi’s chair!
This trip wrapped up the unit of RE nicely, which asked: ‘What can we learn from religions about what is right and wrong?’
Talk to your grown-ups about the trip. What was your favourite part? How many artefacts can you remember? What are they used for? Why are they used? Why do the males wear a kippah? Other words that might help: Ner Tamid (Eternal Light), yad, menorah, mezuzah, quill, Tallit/prayer shawl, Hebrew.
Friday 26th January 2024
We have started our new topic on Anglo Saxons and have been looking at chronology. At the start of our lesson this week, we did an activity to highlight the duration of some of the periods in British history (with one card representing roughly a century) and overlapped some of the cards to demonstrate that some of the periods happen alongside each other or rather do not change overnight (with the Romans taking some years to leave and the Anglo Saxons coming to Britain in groups for over a period of about 100 years.
Wednesday 17th January 2024
As part of our new Science topic on electricity, the children made simple circuits this afternoon. They were given a few components and were challenged with getting the bulb to light. They then added objects to the circuit (made from metal) to see if they would still enable the circuit to light.
Thursday 14th December 2023
This afternoon, we made Christingles and talked about the symbolism of the different parts that make it, discussing that Christians believe Jesus is the light of the world and that is represented by the candle, for instance.
In English, we have been reading 'A Christmas Carol' and discovering how Scrooge became a cantankerous, greedy man but had not always been that way. We have read about two of the ghosts who have visited him so far and some of the life lessons he has been learning. As a fun little activity, we decided to write down things we were grateful for and the children came up with some really lovely suggestions. Rather than just saying things like PlayStations (which they are of course allowed to be thankful for), they also said things like colours, a roof over their heads, being healthy, family, pets, food and seasons (to name just a few). It was a really lovely moment.
Tuesday 21st November 2024
In Science, we have been exploring pitch and what can make a pitch higher or lower. The children had an opportunity to make simple instruments to explore this further. Naturally, we have some rockstars emerging in Year 4!
Thursday 16th November 2023
This afternoon in Art, both classes started making their clay scarab beetles, which were significant creatures in Ancient Egypt. They designed them last week and began the making and decorating process today.
Tuesday 31st October 2023
This afternoon, in Science, we began our new topic on Sound. We were talking specifically about how sounds are made and how they travel. We demonstrated that they travel by vibrations using a tuning fork in water and used string telephones to see if the spoken messages would travel along the string to the person listening. In most cases, they did. The message even worked around a corner for one pair.
Tuesday 17th October 2023
Today, in English, we were looking in books all about Ancient Egypt, gathering facts to write an information text after half term. The children were able to choose what they researched: gods, the afterlife, farming, hieroglyphics and so on. If your child shows an interest in finding out more for themselves, perhaps they could find some books at their local library of interest.
Tuesday 10th October 2023
As part of our DT curriculum, the children made houmous this afternoon. We talked about hygiene and then followed a recipe requiring different skills. The vast majority of the children really enjoyed the taste of it on the pitta bread. (We made houmous as chickpeas were one of the food items grown in Ancient Egypt).
Friday 6th October 2023
As part of DT curriculum over the last few weeks, children have been designing, making and evaluating necklaces in the style of Ancient Egyptian collars.
Tuesday 3rd October 2023
As part of our Science curriculum, we have been learning about the water cycle. There are quite tricky parts to understand such as evaporation, condensation and precipitation so the children got to act out being a water droplet today using the 'Now Press Play' equipment at school. This is always fun to observe and the children love using the headphones.
Wednesday 20th September 2023
We are continuing to look at States of Matter in Science and this week we were exploring that when we heat materials they can turn into liquids or conversely, when we cool them, they can turn into solids. We decided to test this with chocolate. We discovered that the higher the temperature of water that a tray of chocolate was placed in, the quicker it turned from a solid into a liquid. By the end of the lesson, having placed the melted chocolate in the fridge, it had returned to a solid state.
Wednesday 13th September 2023
This week, in History, we have been looking at artefacts from Ancient Egypt and what questions we could ask about them. We also discussed the difference between primary and secondary sources of evidence.
Tuesday 12th September 2023
This week, in Science, we extended our understanding of solids, liquids and gases by exploring some of their properties. Marshall demonstrated that he could move his foot in water because it flows. We also looked at how liquids take the shape of the container they are in (the volume can stay the same whilst the shape changes). We discussed that not all solids are hard and that gases spread out to fill a room (can you guess what we used as an example?)
Tuesday 5th September 2023
The children in Year 4 have had a great couple of days back, it has been a pleasure seeing them.
We started out new topic in Science today about States of Matter. The children had some insightful ideas about how to compare materials. We discussed items which could be grouped in a variety of ways for instance baked beans which are in a solid tin with solid beans but in liquid tomato juice, or gravy which can be made from solid granules but becomes a liquid with the addition of water. The balloon is a solid object but full of gas. Salt and flour pour like a liquid but are made of small solid particles. There was a lot of great discussion.
