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Term 6

In Term 6, Year 4 will be exploring all the amazing things the Romans introduced to the United Kingdom . We will be learning about exciting new ideas that the Romans used to make everyday life easier. We will be experimenting with aqueducts, use maps to explore roads, create mosaic art pieces and create an invitation using only the Latin language.   

We will finish our enquiry by writing a non- chronological report on what we believe the most important entities the Romans have brought to the United Kingdom are. These reports will then be made digital using the google chromebooks. 

Aqueducts

Aqueducts were designed to keep Romans healthy. Channels were built over and under ground to bring in fresh water for drinking and bathing. They were also used to take out waste so the Romans were only left with clean, safe water. Using some guttering, we had a go at creating an aqueduct to transport water. We got pretty wet!

Barbara Hepworth

Our art focus in Term 6 was sculpting. We were given the artist and sculptor Barbara Hepworth to study. We analysed her work and created our own sculptures mimicking her style. 

Sports Day!

We enjoyed a great sports day this morning in the beautiful sunshine. First thing, we all did basketball shooting, skipping, speed bounce, tug of war, target throwing and distance running. We then finished off the morning with distance running, sprint and team sprint. Well done to everyone who took part and a special well done to More who came first!

wow!

To kick start our enquiry 'What have the Romans done for me?', Year 4 were visited by a Roman workshop. In the morning we became Roman soldiers and learned battle formations the Romans would have used to successfully invade Britain. We then became archaeologists and dug up authentic artefacts all the way from Norfolk. 

Finally, we looked at the Romanisation of Britain and what the Romans have left behind for us today. We were amazed to find out that the Romans brought us things such as; art, straight roads, new language, aqueducts, police and even stinging nettles. Have a look at how we got on. 

Challenge - What does it mean to belong?

Having come to the end of our Power of Reading text Jemmy Button, we created a piece of artwork that showed the two locations that Jemmy had spent time in. We then put a picture of Jemmy behind one of the locations to show where we thought he belonged. 

Gymnastics

This term, Year 4 have to pleasure of Bristol Rugby leading our indoor PE lessons. Their focus is to improve the kids knowledge and ability in gymnastics. Have a look at some new poses that we have learned in our first lesson: 

Charcoal Silhouettes

The strangers in our Power of Reading text Jemmy Button are always shown as silhouettes.First, we used tissue paper to help decorate our Georgian men and women. Once we had finished, we created our own silhouettes of Georgian men and women using charcoal. Can you tell what they are silhouettes of?

Term 5

In Term 5, Year 4 will be exploring the fascinating continent of South America and comparing it to the UK. We will be locating and plotting the major countries, cities, rivers and mountains before zooming into Tierra Del Fuego as we discover the life of Jemmy Button through our Power of Reading text.

After following Jemmy’s extraordinary encounters as an outsider in an unfamiliar land and his emotional return home, we will finish our enquiry What does it mean to belong? with a piece of artwork.

Wow!

We're about to start our new Power of Reading text Jemmy Button so we created some button artwork as our wow.

What does it mean to belong?

To help us along with our enquiry, we looked at the similarities and differences between the United Kingdom and South America. With the use of old and new technology, we were able to see clearly what it would be like to live in both places and what would be needed to feel a part of that place. 

Dodgeball!

This term's inter-house competition was dodgeball. Each house played each other once for a total of 5 minutes. The team with the most amount players remaining were declared the winners. 10 points were given for a win and 5 points for a draw. Here were the results: Cosham: 30 points 

                                                      Grace: 20 points

                                                      More: 10 points

                                                      Blackwell: 0 points.

Potato printing!

Our art focus in Term 5 was printing. We used potatoes! We started off trying out different repeated patterns before using our new found knowledge to create flowers and plants. Finally, we brought everything together to create a jungle scene.

Help us save the gorillas!

We've been learning how to write persuasively this week so we put our new skills to the test and created a campaign video to persuade people to help save gorillas. Did you know that there are only 880 mountain gorillas left in the wild? Unbelievable right?

Hot Food

As a part of guided reading, we looked at the poem 'Hot Food' by Michael Rosen. To immerse ourselves in the text, we practised the poem in small groups. We were able to learn the poems off by heart and perform them in front of our classmates. Performing in front of each other has helped to increase our confidence in speaking and in writing. 

Athletics challenge

4KA has been working on our fitness levels this year. We see the importance of being healthy and taking care of our bodies and so regularly push ourselves in PE. This week, we took part in various events usually found in athletics competitions. This practice was vital as we will be trying to secure places in the Year 5 athletics team next year. 

Isle of Tune

Today we looked at a piece of music production software called Isle of Tune (click on the link below if you want to have a go!) After exploring the software, we then learnt the names of the different music notes and had a go at  creating a road that played the tune Yankee Doodle! 

Skipping Challenge!

4KA took part in the annual 'House Skipping Challenge'. We were given 30 seconds to record as many skips as possible. To make sure it was fair, we attempted the challenge 3 times and then recorded our highest score to see how we did against the rest of the school. 

Easter service. 

4KA attended the Easter Service which was performed by class 4BG at St. Stephen's church. It was important for us to remember why Jesus died on the cross and why we celebrate this every year. Have a look at a few photos from the service: 

Celebration Time!

To kick start our WOW in RE, Year 4 had our very own party in the hall to celebrate how hard we have worked this term. We played many of the traditional party games whilst having a great time. Our aim throughout the next week, is to learn about how different religions celebrate important moments in their faith. We will also look at the importance of celebrating and any moments in our lives that we feel should be celebrated.

Here are some photos from the Year 4 party: 

Talk For Writing!

We have been using 'Talk For Writing' to help us with our writing. Using microphones that record our voice, we were able to read aloud our pieces of writing and have them be played back to us. It highlighted any strengths we may have or any areas we need to improve on. 

Crazy organisms!

In 4KA, we have been learning about all the organisms we have on our planet, including ourselves. We were set the challenge of creating our very own organism that would be fit for many different purposes. Our class favourite was the 'Sharkeetah'. This was a mix between a shark and a cheetah. We liked it because it would be a dangerous predator both on land and in water. Have a look at the other organisms we created: 

World Book Day!

What a surreal day! Despite the weather and only having half a day at school because of it, we still managed to enjoy ourselves on World Book Day.

We came dressed as some of our favourite characters and shared some passages from the books that had inspired our fantastic costumes.

As we have been reading the book Gorilla by Anthony Browne, we decided to do something related to this as our World Book Day activity. We were given an outline of a gorilla and we had to come up with a new adventure that him and Hannah could have gone on. We then 'dressed' our gorilla ready for that adventure! Check out some of our designs below!

Wow! 

To kick start our new enquiry, we went to the zoo to see the magnificent gorillas and take part in a workshop about food chains, fangs and molars. Here are some of the photos from today!

Term 3

This term, we will be learning about electricity, particularly focusing on: how electricity powers a lamp; which materials are conductors and what happens when you break a circuit. We shall be carrying out different investigations to solve these. Alongside the science, we shall be reading our Power of Reading text: The Iron Man and using what we learn about him to create a 3D model of the Iron Man with eyes that glow!

Digestive system!

Today, we embarked on learning about the digestive system. We brought it to life through an experiment! It was messy but it really helped us to think about the different parts of the digestive system. Here's us doing the experiment that can be found on the link below:

Wow - Pizza time!

We've managed to squeeze in another science enquiry this term! To finish off the term, we'll be answering the question: Where does my lunch go? To get us thinking, we all made pizzas and then thought about the pizza's journey through our bodies after we ate them. We're going to be looking at the role of teeth and how our digestive system works next.

Challenge - Robot heads!

4KA had a go at their challenge: To make a 3D model of Iron Man with eyes that glow. We took cardboard boxes and tin foil to create our masterpieces! Once we had the head ready to go, we used our knowledge of circuits to help bring our robots to life!

Readers Theater 

As a part of our power of reading, we took part in readers theater. It involved taking a section of the current text we have been using to help us with our writing and re-enacting the scene. Readers theater has helped inspire us to be more creative with our writing.

Conductors and insulators

As part of our enquiry this term, we carried out an investigation to identify whether the materials we had been given were conductors or insulators. Before we started, we set up and tested our circuits. After conducting our investigation, we wrote up our findings and thought about what other things we would like to test in the future. We want to know whether hair, paper and rubber are conductors or insulators.

Netball

For outdoor PE this term, we have been practising on improving our skills in netball. We started with the basics which included all the variations of passing within the game. Have a look at how we are getting on:

Wow!

After slowing revealing the beginning of Iron Man, we made robots out of junk in groups. In the afternoon, we watched the film Robots. 

Term 2

Life is like...

This term, our RE enquiry question is: Why do some people think life is a journey? What significant experiences mark this? To get us thinking, we created a wall of 'life is like'. Here are some of our bricks:

Challenge!

This term, we have been looking at gender equality between men and women who lived in Ancient Greece. Our challenge was to debate in the style of The House Of Commons. The class was divided into two teams. One team would debate that men and women should be equal whilst the other team would argue that men and women were not equal just as it was in Ancient Greece. Have a look at one of our debates: 

Bristol Rugby!

Year 4 have had their outdoor PE lessons delivered by experienced rugby players who are linked to Bristol Rugby club. We have learnt about the importance of teamwork and have also been improving all the skills needed succeed in a game of tag rugby. Have a look at one of our warm ups where we are playing life size naughts and crosses: 

Wow!

Having looked at gender equality issues today, we got ready to travel back in time to explore gender equality in Ancient Greece. To get us thinking about Greece now and in ancient times, we watched Hercules and tried some Greek food. 

Power of reading

For our power of reading text ' The Green Ship', we sailed through stormy seas and travelled all around the world. Once we were finished, we used descriptive language to help us reenact the trip and create list poems. Have a look at our incredible work. 

Roy Lichtenstein

This term, we were given the artist Roy Lichtenstein to study. We analysed his work and combined it with the knowledge we had about the effect of different brushes to produce self portraits mimicking his style.

The Green Ship

This term, Year 4 will be sailing away with The Green Ship as our Power of Reading text. To immerse ourselves in this wonderful story, we started off the term with our art unit. Our focus was to look at the effect of using different brushes. After trying out the many different brushes, we used what we had learnt to copy the illustration of the green ship, focusing on mimicking the style of Quentin Blake. This was a two step process. First, we selected the right brushes to create the background using a variety of greens that we mixed ourselves using just yellow and blue. Then, once the background had dried, we used fine liners to bring detail to our piece. We were most impressed with how closely they match the the Quentin Blake illustration!

 Term 1

RE Enquiry: "All places of worship are the same." What do you think?

This week, we started a brand new enquiry to find out what a place of worship was. We looked at both the Christian and Jewish place of worship in particular. We kick started the enquiry by thinking about what we thought was inside a church and a synagogue and why these objects were important.  We had the opportunity to visit St Stephen's church and The Bristol and West Progressive Synagogue. As a group, we looked at the comparisons between both the church and the synagogue and recreated them both through junk modelling. Have a look at our results: 

Challenge

As a part of our enquiry 'Why does it snow?', we were placed into groups and were given the task of creating a presentation to show to the rest of the class. The presentation would test our knowledge on what we have learnt so far including states of matter, the water cycle and types of cloud. Working collaboratively, each member of our group were assigned a different role and this helped us to produce very interesting and detailed presentations. Have a look at the results:

Bristol Basketball

4KA were lucky enough to take part in a basketball lesson led by players from the local basketball team 'Bristol Flyers'. We focused on learning new skills such as passing, dribbling, shooting and how to work as a team. Have a look what we learnt: 

The water cycle 

As a part of our enquiry 'Why does it snow?', we created our own water cycle showing the different stages of the water cycle. Here we are creating the water cycle in a bag. To finish, we filled our bags with water and watched different stages come to life. Have a look at our results: 

How long does it take a solid to melt?

As a class, we conducted an experiment to see how long it would take for different solids to melt. Using a candle as heat, we placed ice, butter and then chocolate over a flame. We then used stopwatches to record how quickly the different solids melted. Have a look at our experiment in action. 

Jigsaw

This week we started out new PSHE learning through Jigsaw. We started off by agreeing our Jigsaw charter- we all felt that only one person should talk at a time, listen to all views and feelings, take turns and respect everyone's privacy.

Although may of us know each other quite well we played 'Mingle Bingo' where we looked to find other people with similar interests. We then went on to calm ourselves through meditation. Finally, we talked about how it feels to be included and what it feels like to be excluded. Everyone agreed that we liked to be part of a group and included. As we shared our ideas we passed Jigsaw Jaz around. 

What do you think Ivan should do?

Part of deepening our understanding about our Power of Reading Text Ice Palace we put ourselves in the position of Ivan the main character. His dilemma was should he go and rescue his brother form Stajik or stay at home with his parents.

Suggestions to go were-

'You love your brother, go and find him',

'You are brave, it is the only thing to do'

 Suggestions to stay were:

'Starjik will get you as well if you follow'

'It's dangerous, stay safe at home with your mum and dad'

What would you do?

Fire building

We're starting the year by recapping how to write instructions in writing. We're going to be writing instructions on how to build a fire so today we went out and Mr Walters showed us how to safely build one. We then prepared our own mini fires using tinder and kindling (not forgetting to create a safe area first). After, we had some marshmallows around the fire and listened to the first part of our new Power of Reading text Ice Palace.

States of matter

We learnt about what matter is today and the three states of matter: Solids, liquids and gases.  After learning about their properties, we went outside and pretended to be particles in each one.

Wow!

We made fake snow in class today to kick start our new enquiry: Why does it snow?