Year 4 have shown plenty of enthusiasm during History lessons this half-term. In our recent lessons, we have been learning about the battle of Marathon. We debated about which factors led to the success of the Athenian army during this battle and completed a diamond nine chart to represent our conclusions. We have also enjoyed active learning tasks where we had to hunt like archaeologists for artefacts from the past and analyse the details on these to find information about Ancient Greek beliefs and Gods. 

In recognition of Black History Month, we had a special assembly which inspired us to think meaningfully about celebrating and treating everyone equally. We then had an opportunity to make our voices heard through creating placards to contribute towards a whole school display which will remind all the important messages which we have shared.

In Maths, we have continued our learning on number and place value. We enjoyed applying our rounding and estimating skills to everyday contexts such as rounding, estimating and calculating prices for items when shopping.

In French, we have been improving our conversation skills by practising how to greet someone, introduce ourselves, ask and reply about how someone is feeling, as well as asking and responding about how old we are. We are linguists!

Year 4 pupils have made a positive start to the new academic year. In Design Technology lessons we have been investigating how to construct and reinforce pavillion structures. We had lots of fun using sweets and toothpicks to create our designs and are looking forward to bringing our own designs to life using similar methods.

We also had a super time during the recent skipping workshops. We enjoyed learning lots of new tricks and skills and were amazed to see the record-breaking skills performed by the workshop leader, Pete Thompson.

We have been captivated by the story 'Feast' which we have been learning in Literacy. We were thrilled to be visited by Mrs Green's family's therapy dog Timmy for our experience day. This gave us a real life opportunity to make observations and develop our vocabulary which we are now putting to good use in our own narrative writing.  Thank you Mrs Green! We are architects and authors!

Year 4 have had a busy start to the half term. We have been having one last push to learn our times tables facts ready for our MTC test over the next few weeks. 

In art, we have been using tints and shades to experiment with 3D effects. We used a grid to draw an apple and then used water colours to create our painting.   

In Science, we have been learning all about our teeth and the purpose of each type. It has been interesting finding out how our teeth change as we grow and when different teeth come through. 

In Geography, we have started our new topic - 'Peculiar Plants' and have enjoyed finding out about the different plants that grow around the world. We have found out that different plants are able to survive in different biomes. We discovered that the Darth Vader flower grows in Brazil, South America and Black Bat flower grows in China, Asia. 

It has been another busy week in Year 4. In Literacy, we have really enjoyed being creative and writing poems based on the poem The River by Valerie Bloom. This poem is full of metaphors and rhyme so it has been a fun challenge to think of rhyming couplets and metaphors that work for each stanza.  

In Geography, we have found out about the Aswan High Dam which was built on the river Nile. It took ten years to build as it is so big. It was really interesting to find out the negative and positive impact this had on Egypt. We used all this information to make our own leaflets about the dam.  

During our Science and DT lessons, we have been researching different types of torches ready to design our own torches next week. We have also had a chance to experiment with wires, cells and bulbs to create a circuit that we will use in our torches. Our next step is to add a switch to our circuit so we can turn our torches on and off. 

In Year 4 we are creative! 

It has been a busy start to the half term in Year 4. Last half term, we did lots of work investigating  the style, pattern and characteristics of Ancient Egyptian art. This week we started making our own scrolls by creating a modern-day version of papyrus style paper. We did this by dipping strips of brown paper in watered down PVA glue. After removing most of the glue, we laid the paper in a vertical direction. We then repeated the process but this time placed the paper in a horizontal direction. We had to make sure the strips overlapped so that we created a solid surface. It was a messy process but great fun.

We left our paper to dry over night and then carefully copied our scroll designs from our sketchbooks onto the paper we had made. Once we were happy with the design, we used water colour paint and poster paint to add colour to our designs. We thought carefully about the colours we used as we needed to take into consideration the colours that would have been available in Ancient Egypt times.

At Roebuck we are Egyptian scroll makers!

It has been another busy week in Year 4!  During science, we have been finding out how sounds travel. We carried out experiments to explore this. One included using string telephones which allowed us to find out that when the string was tight the sound travelled better. 

In PSHE, we have started our Brain Buddies sessions during which we started talking about our emotions and how we can deal with them. We focused on 'emotion surfing’ which focuses on using waves to think about our emotions. The wave will be high, but it won’t last - the emotion will pass. We used the words - It’s okay. It will pass. I’m okay - to focus our minds and help.   

In our Computing sessions, we created two dimensional shapes using Logo commands.  

On Wednesday, we were lucky enough to take part in a workshop run by North Hertfordshire College. The session had a Frozen theme and had a focus on saving the environment and the importance of keeping fit. We all had a great time completing the activities.  

Another fun afternoon involved each class becoming detectives. Our task was to find out how Tutankhamun died. We knew that he was 19 when he died but there were three different theories as to how he died - accident, illness or murder! We enjoyed using the evidence and making connections between them before coming up with conclusions.  

In Year 4, we are detectives!