Year 1 found a box in their classroom. There were animal footprints around the box! We realised that they were the footprints of an elephant, a camel, a lion and a frog. A message on the box said that the box had come from the zoo. Inside the box, there was a book called ‘Dear Zoo’. We figured out that the zoo had tried to send us some pets. We talked about whether or not an elephant, camel, lion and frog would make a good pet
This half term, we will be learning about Ernest Shackleton and his expedition to the South Pole. To learn about a polar expedition and the things you might require, we took part in outdoor learning. Dotted around the outdoor classroom were cards with two items to choose between. The children had to decide which item they would take with them on an expedition and why.
Back in the Autumn term, year 4 wrote some kennings poems, which we entered into a competition. Our kennings were about Roman Gladiators. Today, the published books arrived with our poems inside!
To finish our ‘Electrify’ topic this half term, we made ‘Iron Men’ with flashing LED lights for eyes. The children used their knowledge about complete circuits to make the eyes. Some even included a home made switch in their circuit so they could make the eyes flash.
This term in year 4, we are learning about electricity in Science. Last week, we started by exploring what a complete circuit would look like and what is required to make a bulb light up.
This week, we used our complete circuits to test if materials were insulators or conductors. Our topic this half term is ‘Electrify’, linked with our book ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes. Later in the term, we will be using our electricity knowledge to create our own Iron Men with headlamp eyes!
This week in Outdoor Learning, each year 4 class has written a poem about winter.
Year 4 have started the new term to an incredible beginning. We began the week by exploring our focus for this half term, The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. In Writing, we have discovered figurative language such as alliteration, similes, metaphors and onomatopoeia. We have found examples of this in The Iron Man and created our own examples to write short poems about the Iron Man.
In Art, we explored sketching techniques and practiced hatching, contour hatching, cross hatching and smudging. Our final piece, is a chalk drawing of The Iron Man. See some examples of our work below!
This week we started to read the book Meerkat Mail. We met Sunny the Meerkat who lives in the Kalahari desert. The children found out about meerkats, where they live, what they eat and how they survive in the desert. We also received a post card from Sunny. Sunny told them about his habitat and the children wrote down some of the things they learnt from the postcard. We also found out about the Jewish Creation Story and about the importance of Shabbat, which is the Jewish day of rest.
All of this half term we have focused our learning around the storybook of ‘Lost and found’ by Oliver Jeffers. We have been creating story maps, fact files and even our own books based on what we can remember from the story. The children have worked really hard to memorize and recreate the story in their writing with a focus on the three parts of the story (beginning, middle and end).
Last week, year 4 made Roman catapults. We worked hard in our talk partner pairs and learned lots of new skills including using a junior hacksaw and hot glue guns safely. When they were complete we tried them out!
