Year 4

Year 4

Welcome to the Brilliant Badgers!

Welcome to Year 4 - the Brilliant Badgers!

Links

Spring 2

Brilliant Badgers Year 4 2019-2020

Science - Sound

As part of our Sound learning in Science, we made representations of the human ear in order to understand better how sound travels and causes the ear drum to vibrate. It seemed like a simple practical, but actually turned out to be quite tricky.

Art - Sketching

We looked at work by Monet today and thought about how it made us feel. We then used a small section of the water lilies picture to then complete our own sketch of this famous masterpiece. They all turned out differently but in the style of Monet and we were very surprised by how amazing they all looked.

World Book Day

For World Book Day, we looked at the author Andy Griffiths, author of the Treehouse series. We imagined what our treehouses would look like. To do this we thought what our favourite things are and included them in our treehouse drawings. Then we wrote a short description of our creations.

Spring 1

History - Ancient Egypt

The double-page spreads that we produced about Tutankhamun allowed us to practise our research skills as well as give us the freedom to show our creativity in how we chose to present our findings. Don’t they look lovely?

We had a wonderful time when Cleopatra came to visit us and teach us all about ancient Egypt and Egyptian life. We learnt lots more and really enjoyed the lovely practically experiences that we had to ensure we will remember our learning.

We checked on the progress of our mummified tomatoes this week. We discussed their change in colour, texture and smell and how these changes were happening.

Literacy - Diary Entry

We finished our class model of a diary entry, from the point of view of Howard Carter, in order to link it to our History topic. Next step is to imagine we are famous archaeologists discovering other famous pharaohs!

Numeracy - Reasoning Skills

We are enjoying being able to vote on numeracy questions in order to improve our reasoning skills. We get to vote, before discussing the answer at the end of the lesson and discovering if we are correct!

History - Ancient Egypt

We have created homework projects related to Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Egyptians. We have all worked very hard. We have created powerpoints, models, pictures, leaflets and more!

We have learnt about mummification as part of our history topic. To help us to understand this fascinating process, we have mummified tomatoes! We have made predictions and will be checking on them throughout the rest of our time in Year 4 to see how they change.

As part of our history topic, we started to create Egyptian tombs this week. We need to ensure that we include 6 key aspects: a mummy, a coffin, a sarcophagus, four canopic jars, valuables for the afterlife and hieroglyphs to decorate the tomb walls.

Now are tombs are complete - we have enjoyed the challenge and the chance to be creative with a small team.

This week we have been working on creating death masks using pastels and paint. They are nearly finished and they already look amazing! We can’t wait to finish them!

Today, we started researching and producing double page spreads about Tutankhamun. We are enjoying being able to use the laptops and books to find out more out this pharaoh, as we had heard of him, but didn’t know a lot about him. We have been surprised to discover how young he was when he died!

Numeracy - Factors, Multiples and Products

We have been working hard to understand and apply our new mathematical vocabulary of products, factors and multiples. We had to use our knowledge of factors in order to complete problems and create the product required. Initially, we thought this was easy. After a while, we realised that the problems were more tricky than we had first realised. We worked so hard at this, Mrs Maynard is very proud of us!

Numeracy - Division

We investigated how to divide by 10 and 100 this morning with Mrs Millican, which involved decimals! We worked really hard but thoroughly enjoyed it!

History - Ancient Egypt

As part of our ancient Egyptian learning we looked at hieroglyphics today and wrote our names! It was fun but also quite tricky drawing some of the hieroglyphics - we are glad we don’t have to write like that all the time!

Literacy - historical story

We have finished our class sentence stacking story about an archaeologist who discovers a cartouche with a difference! We are now planning our independent writing to use the skills we have learnt and applying them independently.

Spelling Shed

We have had our first go at Spelling Shed this afternoon - we love it! We were all really engaged and enthusiastic about it - what a great way for us to improve our spelling skills while having fun!

Geography and D&T - Modrock Mountains

We finished our Mockrock Mountains this week. We had to work hard mixed paints to create the colours we desired, before painting our mountains, keeping in mind the geographical features. This meant we had to use excellent teamwork. Once they were dry, if we were having snow on our mountains, we used chalk to add some extra detail to the snowy areas. Don’t our finished mountains look amazing!

Autumn 2

ICT - How email is sent

We learnt how email is sent across the internet. We learnt how an email is sent to a server before being broken down into small packets of data and being transferred across the internet through routers. Once the packets of data reach the server of the recipient the packets of data are reordered and stored ready for the person who the email was sent to. It was fun acting this process out!

Geography - Europe and The Alps

Take a look at our amazing Europe and the Alps homework projects!

We thought about features of mountains when creating our silhouettes of mountains for our calendars. Don’t they look wonderful!

We have created double page spreads to show off our learning and research skills in our Europe and the Alps topic. Aren’t they amazing!

We are now learning about addition and subtraction in maths this term, and learning how to correctly use the column method after using practical ways of understanding how to add and subtract.

Our main guided reading focus is "The Butterfly Lion" by Michael Morpurgo. We are really enjoying this story and using our VIPERS reading skills to think more deeply about the text. We are reading The Witches by Roald Dahl as our class novel, and are really engrossed in the story.

Our science topic is states of matter - we thought about deciding if items were solid, liquid or a gas. It was lots of fun!

As part of our States of Matter learning, we investigated if we could slow down or speed up the melting of ice cubes! We learnt how to use a thermometer and recorded our findings. We discovered different teams found different materials were more effective - as we had wrapped the cups differently. However, within our teams we ensured we had conducted a fair test so we could compare our own results.

We have been writing a poem about mountains to link with our geography topic. Take a look at our sentence stacking display, we have all come up with some great ideas! We are currently writing our own poems including the aspects we have covered - personification, alliteration, similes and rhyme, where possible. As a class we have been coming up with our own success criteria before writing our own independent pieces, in order to encourage us to focus on the writing skills we have been covering during our class sentence stacking lessons.

We are learning about Geography this term - in particular Europe and the Alps. We have researched why people might want to visit the Alps using the internet. We are now enjoying start to create a double page spread to show off our knowledge!

We are creating mountain models using Modrock, trying to include the feature of mountains that we have recently learnt about.

Autumn 1

We have started to learn about the Romans, think about electricity and alarms and have even begun to write our first story together. Our first topic in maths is place value, which includes many aspects such as rounding and Roman numerals. Currently, in our reading lessons, we are discussing The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe - the children are really enjoying this classic tale and the old-fashioned vocabulary it uses.

The photos below show us investigating whether materials will conduct electricity. We made predictions on whether the materials would be conductors or insulators before testing the material to see if we were correct.

Our collaborative class art is now complete - see the photos below that gives you an idea of how we created it, along with an image of our masterpiece!

We were lucky enough to have a visit from Frances Durkin, the author of The Histronauts series of children's books! The children had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed learning about different aspects of Roman life from a real life historian. The children enjoyed discovering the Latin for "beware of the dog" and what a Glilarium was used for.