Friday 13th December 2024
Enrichment Week
We have loved Enrichment Week this week and all the amazing things we have done. On Monday, we got to take part in an African drumming workshop where we were able to play different notes to a rhythm. We were also able to keep to the beat of “I like chocolate, it is nice”.
On Tuesday, we had so much fun working with Adam Bushnell and seeing Jet the tortoise. We did some work on Anansi the Spider and used drama to act out the story of Anansi and the Sheep. We created our own poem about Anansi the Spider, which described him as both a hero and a prankster. And if that wasn’t enough, we also created our own comic strip where Anansi wanted to marry the great Monkey King’s daughter, but had to complete a series of impossible challenges to do so. These challenges included jumping over lava, swimming through a river full of crocodiles, and eating the world’s sourest sweet!
And finally, yesterday we designed our own African masks, which was tricky at first as we had to cut out and stick on different features. But we ended up with some amazing results.
Friday 6th December 2024
This week, we had an excellent time in Art using charcoal to aid our focus on light and dark tones. We crumbled up the charcoal, (which got very messy!) and then spread it across our page to create a dark background. We then used a rubber to sketch out the light parts of our observational drawing. We then went in with a stick of charcoal to create darker tones and add more detail. The children really took their time with the drawing and focused hard on creating the right shapes and tones with their rubber and the charcoal stick. We were all so impressed with the results!
Friday 29th November 2024
I am so proud of Africa class this week, as we are top of our school table for Doodle Tables with 77% of children in the green zone. Amazing work!
We started a new non-fiction book in Guided Reading this week, which links really nicely to the computing work we are doing on natural disasters. In Computing, we are working on designing our own sensor to detect when an extreme weather will happen. We had to come up with our own algorithm for an extreme weather of our choice.
Friday 22nd November
This week we had a great time visiting the newly refurbished Crawcrook Library. We loved matching emojis to the titles of well known stories and had the opportunity to choose our own books to read for a calm 10 minutes.
In Guided Reading, we used drama to act out some lines from the story The Wisp. We used freeze frames to stage a scenario to help us understand the language used in the text a little bit better.
Friday 8th November 2024
We have had a fantastic first week back after half term! In PE, we started a new topic on dance where we transformed ourselves into spies. We explored how spies might move and incorporated this into a dance routine. It was really tricky as we learnt to count to the music in order to keep in time.
Friday 11th October 2024
We are really loving learning how to play the trumpet in Africa class this year! We are still learning how to blow through the trumpet only using our lips, but it takes practice. We are also getting used to using our fingers to push down the valves at different times to play different notes. Africa class show excellent listening skills every week.
This week, in history, we learnt all about Roman forts and even managed to make our own model of one out of paper. It was amazing to see how much the children had learnt in their discussions.
Friday 4th October 2024
National Poetry Week
We have had a brilliant week this week writing our own poems following the theme of 'your voice counts'. We had a lovely morning this morning sharing our poems with Year 3! All of the children did really well working with people we wouldn't usually work with and some were super brave getting up in front of the whole class to perform their poems using our oracy skills.
Friday 27th September 2024
We had a great time this week in DT learning more about series and parallel circuits. We were set with the challenge of trying to make our own switch out of cardboard, split pins and a paper clip! There was a great amount of successful switches within the class and we did an amazing job at making both series and parallel circuits of our own!
Friday 13th September 2024
This week in Science we started our topic on electricity. We considered what electricity is and what life would be like if we didn't have it anymore! Then we were able to conduct an experiment to see if we could create our own static electricity using just a ruler and tissue paper. The children had a lot of fun, and were amazed when it worked!
Friday 6th September 2024
Welcome back! I hope everyone had an amazing summer holidays and feel well rested and ready for a new year. It has been so lovely, seeing all the children again and finding out about all the wonderful things they got up to over the summer.
We have had a fantastic first week in Africa class. I have been so proud of the children and how they have settled into Year 4, very grown up! This week we have spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a team, in DT, PSHE and our PE lessons. In DT on Monday, we worked in our pairs to build a bridge for a toy car to drive across. It was very difficult, but the children did such a brilliant job at communicating and working together to problem solve.
We have also been very creative this first week back as we designed our own doorway and thought about what we were excited for stepping into the "doorway of Year 4."