This week, we had the pleasure of working with not one but two professional dance companies. On Monday, we were joined by the amazing Leeds based company Phoenix Dance. They showcased their skills and we even joined them in a collaborative piece. 

On Thursday, we were joined by a group of dancers from Mexico. We demonstrated our arts fortnight dance and they reciprocated by showcasing their own dance specifically choreographed for their UK visit.  

I was absolutely gutted that I missed the art celebration due to illness.

However, I did have the pleasure of seeing all the class grow in confidence and skill throughout the two week experience. It was lovely to return back to work on Monday to hear just how amazing the performance had been and how the children’s art work had wowed parents and staff alike. 

During our Art sessions, we learnt so many skills. Firstly, we learnt all about self portraits. Mrs Housam gave us some top tips (who knew our eyes were in the middle of our heads!) We used this to create our own iron man portraits ready for us to print. We created our tiles using polystyrene and we etched in our designs using pencils. Finally, we repeated our patterns onto our art work. Mrs Housam and I were both blown away by the quality of the artwork produced. 

In Writing, all the children impressed us with their amazing skills. We used our model text to help inspire our own story about a child’s adventure in a strange scrapyard. A special shout out goes to Sameer, Georgia S and Hattie – whose writing was made into their own storybook using Gemini Storybook. If you managed to take a picture of your child’s writing, you too could make their story into an illustrated masterpiece. 

Finally, the dance came together over the course of the fortnight. It was a real pleasure to see the children’s professionalism and confidence as they danced to one of my favourite songs. 

Wow – what an amazing week we have had!

We started the week by learning our model text called the wasteland. We then undertake a number of different writing activities and we collaborated extremely well with our talk partners. We also looked at the poem Silver by Walter De La Mer. We discovered that the poem is in iambic pentameter which means it works really well with hip hop music. We really enjoyed warming up by creating our own rap lines. 

On Tuesday, Mrs Fox worked with us to begin choreographing a dance performance. Initially, we struggled to grasp some of the more complex dance movements but following some practice we ended this week’s dance lessons much more confident. In Art, we drew figures using wooden statues. We learnt all about the importance of proportion and used this knowledge to create our own ‘Iron Man’ drawing on black card.  I think you will agree they are incredible!

On Thursday, we looked at self portraits in preparation for our next art piece. We also had the pleasure of cooking with Mrs Elliott. We made tortilla pizzas and it was lovely to see the smiling faces of the children as they devoured their culinary creations. Next week, our art celebration will take place on Friday 14th November at 1:30pm. 

Our Design and Technology sessions ended with us all painting our shields with a base colour and then adding our patterns using chalk pens. I was really impressed with the skill each child showed and the overall finished products. 

During October, we celebrated Black History Month. We discussed the reasons why it is such an important part of our learning as well as gaining an understanding of when and why it was originally created. We looked at a number of people who have helped shape British history some of which we already knew.

We started the week by taking part in a Roman workshop led by master storyteller Matthew Bellwood. We acted out different Roman scenes from battling in the amphitheatres to then taking a walk down a Roman high street. The experience really helped consolidate a lot of our previous learning as well as teaching us so many intriguing facts. 

This week, we have focused a lot of our time and energy into making Celtic shields. We learnt that the Celts were a group of tribes that lived across northern Europe and Britain. We started the week by looking at different Celt shields and talked about the difference between them and Roman shields. We then created a design drawing from our inspiration. We noticed that some of our designs were a little too intricate so we had a go at redesigning our shields in preparation for building them. 

The building stage saw us draw out the outline of our shields and cut them out using scissors. We then created shield bosses (the middle part of a shield) by stacking cardboard and glueing it on – which made a relief. Next week, we will complete the painting of our shields. 

On Tuesday, we welcomed Reverend Sharon into our class. She spoke to us all about the life of a reverend and what she does in her working life. The children asked some incredibly thoughtful but most importantly respectful questions. 

On Wednesday, we continued our Roots and Roots project by walking into the woods. We were greeted by the soft sounds of music as we met professional musician Ford. We then ventured further into the forest and took part in more creative tasks. One group explored the different trees we could see and wrote an amazing poem and the other group created a dance to represent the autumnal leaves falling to the ground.

In Science, we explored the digestive system, learning about the different organs involved and their specific roles. One of the highlights was an experiment where we made our own “poo”, simulating the process of digestion and mimicking how each organ contributes to breaking down food. It was a fun and messy way to understand how our bodies work.

In English, this week we wrote our warning story. The children did an excellent job of transposing their work from plans to finished pieces. We were blown away by the quality and their use of everything we have been working on. In Maths, we finished our place value topic by looking at rounding to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000.

On Wednesday, we had a fantastic History afternoon. We learnt all about Roman soldiers and the power of the Roman army. We learnt by taking part in our first retrieval relay – which both staff and children enjoyed. Following this, we used our retrieval skills once more to label a Roman soldier.

Finally, we ended the week by being crowned Year 4 TTrockstar champions – which is down to the children’s exceptional work ethic.

It has been another tremendous week in Year 4!

During our Writing sessions, we constructed our shared writing plans. The children had some amazing ideas and all the teachers are really looking forward to reading their work. In Maths, we continued to explore place value by using a variety of manipulatives from place value counters to base ten. The children all worked really hard and showed great resilience when flexibly partitioning numbers.

In our Science learning in class we began an experiment looking at the effect different drinks have on our teeth. We put a boiled egg in a glass of milk, water, Diet Coke and coke to mimic the effect they have on our teeth. We made some observations about their colour. The plan is to observe them after the weekend, hopefully our classrooms don’t smell too bad!