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St Stephen's C of E Junior School

'Learning to change the World' 'Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God' - Micah 6:8
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4BD

Welcome to our class web page where you can find out about our amazing learning journey. You will find

information about our activities, examples of our work and comments from us! Please visit often to see our learning journey develop.

Contact us!

We have our own 4BD email! If you would like to contact us, please do so with the secure form below- we will be checking it regularly. We welcome your comments and suggestions.

Key Information:

4BD have indoor PE on a Wednesday and outdoor PE on a Monday. 

4BD's entrance and exit point is through the classroom door leading onto the playground. At the end of the day, children will be realeased from the coloured spots on the upper  part of the playground.

4BD Rights Respecting Class Charter

Year 4 Overview 2021-22

Term 6

Enquiry question: What is energy? Sustainable Development Goal 7

The term we are continuing with our Enquiry on energy and  we will be exploring the different forms of energy that there are, how it is produced, how it is used and also finding out about differences in energy production across the world. Our ambition is going to be to create 'knowledge organisers' to answer the question. These are a different and personalised way to help us remember the information we have discovered. We have also been discovering about life in Roman times following our fantastic trip to the Roman Baths in Bath.

Article 3-Best interest of the child

 

This morning, we have been learning about Road Safety. We have learnt how to cross the road safely as a pedestrian and also about the 6 different types of pedestrian crossings. Then we had two different workshops which have introduced bile safety and and car safety. We have learnt that if we are under the age of 12  years old or 135 cm we should all use a booster seat when in a car. We have learnt about the importance of wearing a helmet when cycling to protect our brain in case of an accident. We have really enjoyed learning about all the different ways to keep safe around roads.

Term 5

Enquiry question: What is energy? Sustainable Development Goal 7

This term we will be exploring the different forms of energy that there are, how it is produced, how it is used and also finding out about differences in energy production across the world. Our ambition is going to be to create 'knowledge organisers' to answer the question. These are a different and personalised way to help us remember the information we have discovered.

 

Enquiry Overview: What effect does palm oil have on the world? - Sustainable Development Goal 15

 

 

We are continuing our enquiry from term 4 with the question 'What effect does palm oil have on the world?' This term, we will be planning, designing and making our orangutan puppets to sell to raise awareness for the effect palm oil has on orangutans. We will also be writing letters to Bristol Zoo explaining what have done and why we have raised the money. Keep an eye on our class page to stay updated with the amazing things we are going to be doing.

Being Historians: Roman Shield Making. Article 6: Life, survival and development.

What an incredible day we had beginning our exploration of the Romans.

How do we know they were here? When were they here? Why were they such successful invaders?

We found out about some of their battle strategies- sometimes winning battles against armies ten times larger.

After looking at designs for shields, our Romans made their own and then tested them against some champion javelin throwers. 

Being athletes -Article 28 Access to education.

 

During our outdoor P.E lessons this term with the sports coach we are learning how to play cricket. Our first session started by warming up our bodies as bears and crabs and then we had lots of time practising how to throw the ball over arm. We had to point one arm in the direction we would like to throw the ball and then with the other arm throw over our head to try and aim in to the hoop. We worked as a team to rotate practising our skills. 

 

R.E Day

 

To start term 5 we had a R.E day where we created stained glass windows based on the Easter story. We planned our designs based around the events on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We then learned how to make a collage with tissue paper and how we can turn this in to a stained glass window using a polly pocket. We made sure we used black paper as the outline to make our pictures stand out. 

Term 4

Enquiry Overview: What effect does palm oil have on the world? - Sustainable Development Goal 15

 

Our new enquiry this term will be 'What effect does palm oil have on the world?' This term, we will be learning about climates and biomes, how they could change over time and the effect that this has on our rainforests. We will also be learning about living things and their habitats, classification and life cycles of different types of animals. We will be planning, designing and making our orangutan puppets to sell to raise awareness for the effect palm oil has on orangutans. We will also be writing letters to Bristol Zoo explaining what have done and why we have raised the money. Keep an eye on our class page to stay updated with the amazing things we are going to be doing.

Being athletes -Article 28 Access to education.

 

During our outdoor P.E lessons this term with Mr Gill we have been learning how to play hockey. We have learnt how to hold the sticks, how to pass and how to mark our opponent. We have had lots of fun practising these skills in a game in small groups and can not wait to play a big class game and learn more skills.

Being athletes -Article 28 Access to education.

 

During our indoor P.E lessons this term we are focusing on dance. We are creating a dance based on circles and counting in 8 beats. We have learned a chorus and made our own parts with our partners so far. We cannot wait to finish the dance and put it to music. 

Maths day -Around the world

 

We learned about different types of methods to solve Maths problems. We learned that in Japan they use origami for space science. We had a go at creating a origami dog following an online video. We thought it was tricky and challenging but we succeeded.

In the afternoon, we chose two activities.  One of them were from a country  called Iran ,where they use tessellation for making floor tiles. The other activity was from Sweden where they make paper hearts with basket weave for decorations. We really enjoyed both of these activities and some of us even had a go at both!

We love Maths Day!

No Pens Day!

 

Today was no pens day. We started the day by recapping the four strands of Oracy so that we could use them in every lesson. When we were writers, we learned how to use speech in our writing and the correct punctuation.  Being mathemeticians, we learned how to use our oracy skills to answer problem solving questions linked to equivalent fractions. When we were readers, we looked at a poem by our favourite poet Michael Rosen. We performed his poem 'Chocolate' and tried to add some actions to it. We have really enjoyed using all of our oracy skills today!

Term 3

 

 

Over the course of this term, Year 4 will be looking at protest. What does this mean? Why do people protest? What do they protest about and why is it such an important right.

There have many high profile protests in Bristol including important historical ones such as the Bristol Bus Boycott in the 1960's. This lead to national change and we want to take inspiration from this knowing that each and every one of us is able to make a difference by campaigning for change and being change makers.

Chinese New Year!

We were so lucky to have a special chinese dance workshop to celebrate Chinese New Year this week. We used parasols and a Chinese dragon to create a fun dance routine learning about traditions and rituals which are followed by those in the Chinese community. We had so much fun!

Chinese dragon dance

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Being a Mathematician- Article 17 Access to Information

 

As part of our Maths day,  all of our learning was based around animals and maths. We have created a fact sheet about animals' poos equivalent in fruit using data from a website.Then we put them in order from biggest to smallest.

During our workshop, we had to order different animals from lightest in weight to heaviest. We have discovered some very interesting facts! We did an investigation that involved teeth and fractions. We had to count how many teeth we have altogether and what fraction of that are incisors, canines and molars. We then compared the teeth of a tiger and a cow and worked out what fractions of their teeth are incisors,canines and molars. 

 

After the workshop, we read some very interesting facts about animal waste and have answered some comprehension questions linked to this. We were so excited that we wanted to find even more facsinating facts.

In the afternoon, we made no-bake cookies and used our fact files from earlier to make different animals' waste products out of the cookies. Who knew poo could taste so good!

Being athletes -Article 28 Access to education.

 

During our outdoor P.E lessons this term we are learning the techniques for netball. We have been practising a chest pass, chest bounce pass and today we learned what we need to do when our feet land. We learned that we are only able to move one foot and pivot around on that spot. We first practised moving with our feet then turning around to throw the ball to our team. 

No Pens Day

Being athletes -Article 28 Access to education.

 

During our lesson, we learnt how to use our coordination skills to use opposite hands to opposite feet. Then it was made even trickier by trying to reach behind as well as in front. The last thing was to reach under twice. This was just the warm up!

On the balance beams we learnt that if 'we look where we want to go', use good posture and straight feet then we will be able to balance properly using great coordination.

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Coordination

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Balancing on the beam

Being a Historian- Article 13 Freedom of speech

 

As part of our ‘engage’ for our new Enquiry ‘How can one person make a difference?’ 

We have been learning about Martin Luther King and his famous speech  ‘I have a dream’. This week, we watched a lot of videos about peaceful protests and the effects these had on our world. We were inspired by Greta Thunberg and Martin Luther King to learn and perform this iconic speech.

 

I have a dream

Term 2

This term, Year 4 will be continuing our enquiry "How can we change farming so there is enough food for everyone?"  We will be historians and geographers as well as scientists in order to conclude our enquiry.  We are going  to be delving deep into the world of the Anglo-Saxons and why farming was such an important aspect of their everyday lives and how it has impacted on our lives today. To finish our enquiry, we will be creating window boxes to help those who don't have gardens but will still be able to grow their own fruit and vegetables to use in their home recipes.

Term 2 Shining Star

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Being an athlete.

Article 31: You have the right to play and relax by doing things like sport, art, music and drama.

Today, the focus was improvement. We were supported to take part in agility challenges by our Year 6s and sports coaches. The aim in each activity was to show improvement through practise. The activities ranges from throwing, to shuttle runs, to balancing to speed bounce. Lots of red faces around by the end of the session and the coaches were impressed with our determination to improve.

Being a…… mathematician!

Article 28 You have the right to education.

We started off our space themed maths day by realising that we had already experienced and used maths in many different ways- it was only just past 9am! Following on form that, we then had an amazing workshop lead by Lilly who shared with use The Golden thread in maths and how maths is integral in many, many different jobs.

In reading, we learnt about the space race and the first moon landings. All the answers to the comprehension questions involved maths. The main part of our day was taken up with looking at nets and then designed and built rockets. Once they had been completed, we then tested which rocket travelled the furthest by measuring the distance they travelled- maths again.

Being an artist

Article 31: You have the right to play and relax by doing things like sport, art, music and drama.

Today, we learnt about Romare Beraden who was an African-American artist, author and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils and collage. We focused on collage for the day.

We started off by exploring how to create effects and shapes using pieces of coloured paper, phots and newspaper cuttings. The next step was to create a collage in the style of Bearden. Our final creation was based on an Anglo Saxon settlement.

Term 1 

This term, we are going focus on the Sustainable Development Goal - Zero Hunger. As a planet, it is our aim to achieve zero hunger by 2030. We are going to become scientists and understand how our digestive system works, how our teeth help us to chew, grind and tear our food ready for digestion and look at different food chains within the animal kingdom. We are also going to become historians, delving deep into the world of the Anglo-Saxons and why farming was such an important aspect of their everyday lives and how it has impacted on our lives today. To finish our enquiry, we will be creating window boxes to help those who don't have gardens but will still be able to grow their own fruit and vegetables to use in their home recipes. 

Farmer's Week: Article 27: The right to nutritious food

In week 6, we took part in Farmer's Week. We started by exploring what was meant by 'Farmer's market' and the term, 'Field to Fork'. We used this to help us order the stages of food production - from cow to yogurt; sow to sausage and bee to honey.

 

Next, we split into groups. One group was led by our resident gardener - Mr Evans in the allotment distributing and raking compost and planting seeds. In the other session, we were joined by visitors from The Travelling Kitchen who taught us how to make cous cous salad and feta fritters.

 

At the end of the day we got to taste the things Year 4 had made and share them with our parents and carers. We've had a great week being farmers and look forward to tasting more of our school-grown produce!

National Poetry Day: Article 31 - Rest, play, culture, arts.

What a fantastic day we have had! It started by a visiting poet coming in and amazing us with his poetry. He taught us about action poetry which was great fun. We spent the day learning a poem off by heart to perform later in the day. We used actions to help us and thought carefully about how to use our oracy skills to help with the performance. 

Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg

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Playpod Fun! -

Article 31: Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

In Week 3, we were finally allowed to play with our wonderful playpod equipment! We were able to experiment and have fun with a wide range of new and exciting junk that the PTA kindly sorted out for us. 

Exploring the library -

Article 31: Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

We were excited to explore the library and choose a book to read and share. Lots of the books have been gifted to the school by parents and supporters of the school which makes our library a very special place. The books have been carefully selected and indexed by theme: from Earth and Beyond to Influential People. It will be open for lunchtimes from now on.

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