It has been an incredible start back in Year 4!

We have begun our new writing topic by looking at the portal story ‘Shark Tank.’ The children really loved acting it out especially pretending to be the shark as it intimidates the main character. In Reading, we started our new class novel ‘The Boy who met the Whale’ by Nizrana Farook. We have already enjoyed finding out about the adventures of Razi and we are eagerly awaiting our next reading session to find out more.

On Friday, we were incredibly lucky to take part in a workshop with Leeds Beckett University students. It was all based around Room 17 (a project that the children were involved in last year.) The idea is that university students will take on board the children’s ideas to create films and pieces of art to help promote the brand.

This half term, we are designing and making night lights. Therefore, we are hoping to collect as many glass jars as possible. Please could you send jars into school but ensure that they are washed and dry, ready for the children to create their pieces. We are also hoping to create a large scale recycled piece of art so if you have any milk bottle tops at home we would love to have them.

As part of Internet Safety Day, we took part in an online lesson hosted by CBBC. We learnt all about scammers and how to avoid scams. The important take away was that we must always have a secure password.

On Wednesday, we undertook a Geography experiment to demonstrate the effect ice melting has on sea levels. We measure the water level every half an hour and realised that as the ice melted the water level rose. Following this, we plotted our results on a line graph.

On Thursday, we had a visit from Hull based author Phillipa Leathley. She talked all about her new book Inkbound. She gave us lots of insights into the life of an author and different activities we could do to spark our imaginations. She even gave us time to ask some really thoughtful questions.

This half term, we have been looking at the topic of electricity. We started by creating basic circuits and learnt about how the electricity flows through the circuit. We then explored what happened when their was a break in the circuit. Following on from this learning, we learnt about conductors and insulators we took part in an investigation that tested different materials and grouped them as conductors or insulators.

We began the week in our classroom and looked at the poem ‘Still I Rise’ by Maya Angelou. We discussed its meaning as well as its rhyme patterns and used this as a jumping off point to write our own version. In the afternoon, we continued to practice our samba piece in preparation for the celebration.

On Tuesday, we started the day by working on our dance with Miss Pratchett. It was amazing to see how much of the dance the children remembered from the previous week. We started to incorporate our performance poetry into the dance – which took a lot of focus.

During our time in the art studio, we worked on a piece of art in the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat. We used our knowledge from our portraits the previous week to create a wash on cardboard. We then added a black figure and used different coloured chalk pens to add detail to the design and write on our kennings about fears. We also designed, cut out a template and painted our very own birds for an amazing installation. We used the Maya Angelou poem ‘Still I Rise’ to help influence our bird designs. I am sure you will agree we did a fantastic job!

On Friday, we took part in our celebration. It was so great to see so many interested adults come to our celebration – which I know really pleased the children. They all really impressed combining all the different elements we have been working on.

We started the week by looking at the poem ‘Life Doesn’t Frighten me at all’ by Maya Angelou. We started by matching the poem’s lines with the artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiet and then arranged them in the order we thought they would be in. Following this, we started to learn the poem by doing different actions we worked on our voice projection and applying emphasis on certain lines. Throughout the rest of the day, we practised our samba piece as well as creating our own Jackson Pollock inspired pieces.

Miss Patchett worked with us to begin choreographing a dance performance. Again, we struggled to grasp some of the more complex dance movements but following some practice (at home as well) we ended Thursdays dance lesson much more confident. 

We also learnt about the poetry style known as kennings which combines two nouns per line to create some really imaginative pieces. We wrote poems about different fears we might have. 

On Thursday, we learnt all about street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. We looked specifically at his portrait style which used vibrant colours and unusual placement to create his pieces. We ended the week by creating a giant Jackson Pollock piece in the art studio. We got the chance to imitate his style by literally throwing paint at our canvas. We all really enjoyed it but hopefully it will dry by next week.

After undertaking an afternoon of filming, the children edited the clips to create an amazing movie about the Roman invasion of Britain.

The penultimate week of the first year 4 term has been another great one! Christmas twists on activities have started to creep in as well as the main filming for our Roman v Celts battle.

Our mathematical focus has switched to geometry this week, looking closely at what area is and how to measure it. The students have been been comparing the areas of shapes and creating their own Christmas themed shapes with specific areas! In writing, we have carried on our topic of instruction writing. We have written a set of instructions for making tortilla pizzas, linking to the practical roman cooking session we had last week. It has been great to break down the structures of writing instructions, including a gripping opening question to engage the reader, the importance of imperative verbs and adverbs, and how to add important and specific detail.

The time finally came for the Roman v Celt battle! Over the course of the week, the children filmed many different scenes linking to the Roman invasion of Britannia. The Romans showed great organisation in their legions and fought well and tactically against the barbaric, unorganised Celts. Next week, the children will be putting together their own film that captures the story of the Roman invasion, using the clips that we filmed this week.

On Monday, we had a visit from Sam the sound man. We learnt so many amazing things about sound from how echoes work to ways we could make our own instruments. We all really enjoyed the session and it really helped deepen our Science learning for this half term. A couple of cool facts we learnt were: hard materials produce more echoes, there is no sound in space and the bigger the object the lower the sound it will make. 

Throughout the week, we have been making tortilla pizzas with Mrs Connolly and Mrs Akoto. We practiced our cutting skills on our peppers to add toppings. We also had to keep checking on our pizzas when they went in the oven. As you can see by the pictures, we all enjoyed the tasting element of our sessions. 

Our TTrockstar of the week is Daniel and our Lexia legend is Joel.

In writing, we finished off our shared writing using a film called ‘Alma’ as inspiration. We began planning our final write. To start with we held a silent debate looking at 5 strange items that Mr Ash brought in including: a trumpet, a spooky King Lear poster and a projector. We had some amazing ideas and the children produced some incredible pieces.

On Thursday, we had amazing trip to Leeds Playhouse to watch ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.’ We all loved seeing a professional production of an iconic novel and the children and staff were both blown away by the amazing stage show. I was stopped on the way out by a group of fellow theatre goes who told me that they were really impressed by the children’s behaviour throughout the play.

Our TTrockstar of the week is Josiah and our Lexia legend is Ayra.