Year 4 - Apple & Dogwood

Please can your child practise these at home using the spelling stageies in the document below. Children are used to using these strategies in class and can be as creative as they like to practise these. 

It has been a really busy week in year 4! The children have been enjoying music lessons with Will our music teacher from Bristol Beacon. We listened to pieces of music and then recorded our own musical compositions. Check out our photos to find out more. We have also been busy creating our watercolour and oil pastel pictures inspired by Matisse ready for Art on the Hill.

Caerleon Trip

On Wednesday 9th October, Year 4 visited Caerleon to learn about the Romans. We took part in a workshop and dressed up as a Roman soldier with a tunic, shield and sword. Later, we visited the barracks and studied primary and secondary resources in the National Roman Legion museum. Outside we visited the amphitheatre and the Roman Baths.

What a fantastic trip!

This week we have been connecting to nature through our 'Spirituality morning'. We went for a mindfulness walk around Victoria Park and foraged for beautiful things to inspire some art work. We then used different resources to create a piece of artwork. See below some of our artists at work!

How does the volume liquid in a bottle affect how successfully it can be flipped?

Children explored the question above independently in small groups, selecting the equipment they would need and deciding how best to record the data they gathered. This was completely independent and used as a formative assessment opportunity to inform future investigations. The adults in the room challenged children with questions in order to develop the skill of accurately and systematically recording data.

This week we have been using paper mache to create mountian ranges. We used our knowldge of different features of different fomations such as vocanic and glaical formations. We then used paint to show vegitation lines and the different zones of a mountian. 

This week we had a visit from Avon Fire and Rescue. We learnt about different hazards in water such as rubbish, polution, currents and no lifeguards. We leant about the 'float to live' technique to help you if you got into danger in water. We then used our knowledge to create informative posters. 

Welcome back to our penultimate term, we hope you all had a lovely Easter break. For those of you who celebrated Eid in the holidays, Eid Mubarik! 

This term is another busy one. The children will be learning all about electritcy in Science, mountians in Topic and study 'The Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Peet' in English. Term 5 is our final term swimming too. 

THAT'S A WRAP! This week we have put our hearts and souls into our year 3/4 production of Al-la-la-laddin. We were proud to showcase our acting and singing skills to parents and carers as well as our school comminity. What a way to end the term!! 

This week we have been celebrating World Book Day. This is one of our favourite days of the year. We create 'reading rivers' to show everything we've read in the last 24. We were very surprised to realise we had read a lot even if it didn't seem like it on the surface. See below some of our costumes!

This week we have been diving further into the world of Ancient Greek Myths. We have been exploring the story of Theseus and the Minotaur through role play and even had mask . 

This week we visited our local Mosque. This was a great opportunity for us to recognise similarities and differences between religions. Some of our class mates were even brave enough to recite some of the Quran. See below some photos of our visit.

Welcome to Term 3, we hope you had a restful half term and wonderful Christmas Holidays. It has been lovely catching up with the children. This term we are learning about the Romans, what they did for Britian and focusing our English work around the book 'Thieves of Ostia'.

PPA will be on Wednesday afternoon and will be covered by:

Mr Jones- RE

Mrs H - Art/DT

PE will be on Monday Afternoons (swimming) and Tuesday morning (OUTDOOR).

Swimming kit:

On swimming days, children will need to bring their swimwear and a towel into school in a named bag.  For boys, this will include swimming trunks or shorts (not longer than knee length). Girls should wear a one-piece costume.  Children with hair that is shoulder length or longer should bring a swim-hat or hair-band. Children may bring goggles if they use them normally and no earrings or jewellery should be worn in the pool.

We will be walking to and from the lessons and therefore children will need a raincoat and appropriate shoes.

Reading

We ask that children read at home 4 times per week, for around 10 minutes each time. This can be signed by an adult in their reading record. Please feel free to ask if you need any support. 

Timestable Rock Stars

Children can use their timestable rock star logins to practise their times tables. We suggest practising around 3 times per week for around 10 minutes. Please speak to a teacher if you need login details.

This week both Year 4 classess have completed their computing days. We used SAMs LABs to program lights, motors and buttons to create a nightlight. We thought carefully about the breif to ensure it was suitable for it's purpose. Children also worked hard when having to debug the programe to solve any problems. 

Lights, camera, action! This week we have been lucky enough to be involved in the Briish Animation Awards. We watched some short clips and voted on our favourite one and were filmed giving feedback. Some of us were also interivewed and asked to share more detail about what we liked about the amination and why. Our clips will be shown at the British Animation Award ceremony in front of 450 people!

This week we got messy in Science!! We used house hold items to represent the digestive system. We even added brown paint to the mushed up food for a realistic effect. Check out some of our awesome facial experssions in the photos below!

During our trip to Caerleon, we experienced what medicine would be like for rich Roman girls and boys. Our visit included visiting real Roman bath ruins where Romans would socialise and relax. We also got the chance to look at lots of real Roman artefacts (primary sources), including a 2000 year old Roman Skeleton and try on replica Roman armour (secondary source).

Immersion Crime Scene investigating– 04.1.24

There had been murder within the school grounds. We were tasked to investigate evidence left behind and come up with a theory of who the victim and murder could be. Lots of our theories included a murdered animal and a Roman connection. See below some picture from our investigation. 

This week has been full of Christmas celebrations. We've enjoyed our annual church service at St Mary Redcliffe Church, Christmas dinner, a Panto adn of course our AWESOME Christmas party. We wish all our families a safe and happy holidays and are looking forward to seeing the children return in 2024!!

This week we have been getting into the festive spirit- forest School style! We created our own Christmas trees using natural materials we found in forest school. The children were very creative and each tree was very unique! 

This Friday marked the start of advent. We spent the day off timetable learning about the importance of advent for Christians. We reminded ourselves of what the advent wreath represents, made our own wreath, create our own advent calendar of joy and looked at how advent is celebrated around the world. Only 24 sleeps until Christmas!!

This week in our science lesson we visited Windmill City Farm. This was a great opportunity for us to consolidate our learning. We saw decomposers in action breaking down the hay into soil ready to be used again. We also revisited our learning around  classification vertebrates and invertebrate. Of course, it wouldn't be a trip to the farm without feeding and stroking the animals!

We had a visit from the Explorer Dome team. This was a amazing immersive experience which took us to different habitats around the world. We looked in detail about how animals have adapted to their environments, how they protect themselves from predators and how every ecosystem is connected and depends on each living thing. This explorer dome was definitely a memorable experience!

We explored a ships log that has been washed up on a beach. We used our oracy skills to discuss and infer from the evidence who it could have belonged to and what is was. We then learnt it was a type of journal written from a boy’s point of view when travelling around the world on a boat called ‘Peggy Sue’. We used drama to explore what life would be like on-board the Peggy Sue.

We are very happy to welcome you all to Year 4. It has been brilliant to see well the children have settled back into school and are very excited for all the fantastic topics we have coming up this year!

Teachers

4 Apple- Miss Stone

4 Dogwood - Mrs Prince

LSAs- Mrs Clarke, Mrs Abbas, Mrs Redfern and Mrs Timmons. 

PPA will be on Thursday afternon and will be covered by:

Mr Jones- RE

Mrs H - Art/DT

PE will be on Monday Afternoons (swimming) and Wednesday morning (outdoors).

Swimming kit:

On swimming days, children will need to bring their swimwear and a towel into school in a named bag.  For boys, this will include swimming trunks or shorts (not longer than knee length). Girls should wear a one-piece costume.  Children with hair that is shoulder length or longer should bring a swim-hat or hair-band. Children may bring goggles if they use them normally and no earrings or jewellery should be worn in the pool.

We will be walking to and from the lessons and therefore children will need a raincoat and appropriate shoes.

On Wednesdays, Children will need to come into school wearing their PE kit. This includes:

• Plain white t-shirt
• Black shorts or joggers
• Plain black trainers or daps
• School jumper if needed

Reading

We ask that children read at home 4 times per week, for around 10 minutes each time. This can be signed by an adult in their reading record. Please feel free to ask if you need any support. 

Timestable Rock Stars

Children can use their timestable rock star logins to practise their times tables. We suggest practising around 3 times per week for around 10 minutes. Please speak to a teacher if you need login details.

During our English immersion lessons we have looked at the textured illustrations in our new text ‘The Village that Vanished’. We focused on layering paper to mirror the textures used by the illustrator. We also made African drums and some of us made ornaments inspired by African masks. We thought carefully about the straight lines used to create lots of patterns in African tribal art.  

In this weeks Science lesson we used stop motion to create food chains. We thought about food chains in different habitats and used labels for the procurers and consumers. 

English Immersion lessons:

We visited forest school to create mini tribal villages. This was linked to our book ‘The Village That Vanished.’ We thought about the traditional way African tribes build their structures and mimicked these in our own structures.We also listened to African tribe music to inspire our own African styled music. We discussed similarities between different pieces and used our discussion to inform our compositions. The brief was a campfire song.

Welcome to Term 2, we hope you had a wonderful Christmas break. It has been lovely catching up with children and hearing about their time with loved ones. This term we will be reading Thieves oof Ostia in English and learning about what the Romans did for Britian in our History topic. 

PPA will be on Wednesday afternoon and will be covered by:

Mr Jones- RE

Mrs H - Art/DT

PE will be on Monday Afternoons (swimming) and Tuesday morning (OUTDOOR PE).

Swimming kit:

On swimming days, children will need to bring their swimwear and a towel into school in a named bag.  For boys, this will include swimming trunks or shorts (not longer than knee length). Girls should wear a one-piece costume.  Children with hair that is shoulder length or longer should bring a swim-hat or hair-band. Children may bring goggles if they use them normally and no earrings or jewellery should be worn in the pool.

We will be walking to and from the lessons and therefore children will need a raincoat and appropriate shoes.

Reading

We ask that children read at home 4 times per week, for around 10 minutes each time. This can be signed by an adult in their reading record. Please feel free to ask if you need any support. 

Timestable Rock Stars

Children can use their timestable rock star logins to practise their times tables. We suggest practising around 3 times per week for around 10 minutes. Please speak to a teacher if you need login details.

This week we have started our Black history topic focussing on the many different cuisines in Bristol. We used the iPads to research restaurants and take aways across the city. Using our data we created a tally chart and bar graph. Later we visited our local supermarket ASDA to price check ingredients to make samosas. Check back here next week to see photos of our samosas! In PE we have been learning how to play tag rugby focussing on the skills of passing, scoring a try and dodging a defender. In teams we played small sided games and took turns to keep score.

We are lucky  enough to be treated by Mrs Abbas with some homemade Sambusas. These were made from halal mince, cumin, coriander, garlic, onion and tortilla wraps. There was also vegetation options. Mrs Abbas told us about her culture, background and what brought her to the UK. The Sambusas were a huge hit and children even wanted seconds.

Week 7

This week we have been learning how to create and run a program using the Spheros!