On Monday, we had a very exciting day getting completely immersed into the world of Vikings. We did Viking battleships, learning about the different types of Viking longships that they used to come over to Britain from Scandinavia. We also made Viking purses in DT, learning how to cut patterns and thread needles. Last but not least we had a Viking visitor who showed us Viking weapons, taught us how they went into battle and we even learned some of the language!
This afternoon we joined a workshop with Cressida Cowell the author of ‘How to train your Dragon’. We chatted about reading being a magical power, we heard some extracts from her new book and discussed how Writing is so much more than the mechanics!
She was incredibly engaging and gave the children lots of ideas for their own stories!
This week is mental health awareness week and we have been talking about ways we can keep our minds healthy and what we can do if we are not feeling brilliant.
We were writing our worries down then physically throwing them away while also talking about the importance of using the worry monster or talking to someone you trust if you have a worry.
In this writing unit we have been looking at how to write to give the reader information about a creature. Linking what we already know about the Blue Planet from our Geography, we have been creating our own creatures such as the Snanglerfish (has both features from an Anglerfish and a Snake). We want to give the reader information about its habitat, nutrition, appearance and any extra facts that are interesting.
Today, 4C researched bees. They are amazing!
We started with an AR (Augmented Reality) bee flying in our classroom
And here is a real bee feasting on a dead nettle:
The class then spent some time researching bees and they discovered some amazing things like:
Here is some of their reports:
Today Year 4 took part in a drama workshop with Arts People around our book ‘The Boy Who Met a Whale’. We played some drama games and discussed how performances like ‘War Horse’ and ‘The Life of Pi’ use animal movements to bring the performance to life. We managed to recreate a storm and had a go at using body movements to create Elephant Rock and the Whale from our novel.
Today, 4C have been investigating wind pollination, in particular how wind helps silver birch trees to produce new seed and new plants. We went out into the school grounds and had a closer look at some of the silver birch trees and took a small number of cuttings of their catkins and leaves. These we took back indoors to inspect more closely, to photograph and to draw. We also found some insects amongst the cuttings!
What do you think of the photos? (Click on the photos to see larger picture and start a slide show)
In Geography and as part of our ‘Blue Planet’ topic, we have been learning about the water cycle. We have learned about the processes of evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection. We then made our own mini water cycle systems and have made a giant version as seen in the pictures.
As this week is science week, we have not only been learning about plants and animals in our normal science lessons but have had extra experiment time! The first one we did was using our whiteboard pens and water. We drew figures on plates and poured water over them. Some of our figures rose up off the plate and floated on top because the surface tension of the water pulls the ink off the bowl.
Today, we learned about and celebrated the festival of Holi. We all got to try out dancing to the drums, try out playing them and had a boys v girls dance battle!
