This week in Year 4 we have been writing our own playscripts. Whilst in the Egyptian section of the British  museum, two mummies woke up and Year 4 had to decide what adventures they would have in Stevenage. Some chose for the chaos to commence in the bowling alley, Gravity and the cinema. We had great fun using the features of playscripts to write about our characters adventures.

In art, we have continued to look at artwork and patterns from Ancient Egypt art. We have now started to design and plan our own scrolls based on the theme ‘ourselves’ We thought carefully about how to compose our designs and experimented with colours that we thought would work well together. We had to think carefully about the colours we picked as the Egyptians used mainly browns, reds, blues and yellows.

As part of Safer internet day, we thought about the things that we need to do to make sure we are safe when using technology. Then, we listened to some raps about internet safety before we had a go at writing our own to share our messages. It was great fun thinking of the rhyming couplets and having a go at performing them in a rap style

It has a busy start to the term in Year 4. In art, we have been getting creative and drawing and then painting our final pieces. We had to arrange five items to create a still life composition with a theme. We then looked carefully at this and sketched it out before using water colours to paint it. We used black and white to help create shades of our colours, which allowed us to achieve a 3D picture.  

In Literacy, we are writing fantasy stories. We started the unit by exploring the main character in the story of Aladdin and watched clips from different versions of the story to inspire us. We have enjoyed developing our characters and building up the setting at the start of our stories.  

Our new science unit is all about sound. This week we have been looking at different types of sounds and how they can be made. We’ve had fun trying to make sounds that fit certain criteria. For example, loud, high-pitched and continuous. 

Year 4 are continuing to enjoy the Maths No Problem lesson structure and have become so much more fluent with using manipulatives and finding a wider range of ways to represent and explain their reasoning to solve problems!

We also embraced the opportunity to take part in Odd Socks Day. This event was a meaningful reminder of important messages about how to deal with bullying and have an anti-bullying mindset. In addition to this, we engaged in a very thought-provoking 'No Outsiders' workshop which helped us to consider how we treat one another and ways that we can communicate and interact even more positively together.

We are really proud of our Pavilions which we made in our DT lessons! Our challenge was to design and build a secure and free standing structure which included cladding. We enjoyed using the glue guns independently to bring our structures to life and were also challenged to problem solve like designers in the real world when things did not work as we had planned in our designs. Mrs Jarman and Ms McAnuff were very impressed with the determination and resilience shown to overcome these challenges! Well done Year 4! We are architects!

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.