Year 4

Welcome to Year 4.

Tenths on a masking tape Numberline!

We explored putting tenths on a numberline in Maths by creating number lines with masking tape. We created questions for others to answer based on what we had learnt in class.

Phunky Foods Workshop

We learnt about how important it is to regularly drink water to keep ourselves healthy during the Drain Your Drink workshop from Phunky Foods. We were challenged to 'drain our drink' each day and also learnt about which drinks were healthy for us and which drinks we should only drink occasionally.

Shakespeare Week in Y4

'Taming of the Shrew' 

Clara and the Freedom Quilt

We began this week by looking at Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad. We looked at definition of words to do with African American slavery so we were better able to understand the background of Clara and the Freedom Quilt.

We read the book and though about what life would have been like for Clara as a child slave. We also made our own paper quilt to use in our drama sessions.

We finished the week by beginning our drama. The children have become slaves and are divided up into cabin groups. they have spent a day doing their jobs and finished the day looking up at the North Star and dreaming of freedom. We wrote a paragraph about this to start our story which we will edit on Monday.

A HUGE THANK YOU TO FOSS FOR HELPING MAKE OUR UNDERGROUND TOPIC SO EXCITING. WE USED OUR FOSS RESOURCE MONEY TO BUY PLANTS FOR THE CHILDREN TO INVESTIGATE, INGREDIENTS TO MAKE EDIBLE SOIL TO HELP US REMEMBER THE LAYERS AND CAKES TO HELP US REMEMBER THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF ROCKS. THE CHILDREN HAVE REALLY ENJOYED ALL OF THESE SESSIONS.

We learnt all about the different layers of soil and created a soil profile in our Topic books. We also made edible soil! The bottom layer (Bedrock) is made of rainbow drops (to represent solid rocks). The Parent Material layer is made of broken up Digestives (to represent weathered rocks). The Subsoil is made up of crumbled chocolate cake (to represent the sand, silt and clay that has not been totally broken down). The Topsoil layer is made up of broken bits of chocolate and some wiggly worms (to represent the rich layer where nutrients for plants are found). The top layer (humus) are the jelly strawberries on top to represent the plants and leaves on top of the soil.

We also learnt about how soil is formed and wrote this out as The Story of Roger Rock!

We came back from playtime to find out that there had been a murder in the library. This was what we found. We had to decide whether the victim was alive when they were murdered. We knew from our work on plants in Year 2 that plants are living things.

We took apart plants and flowers to find the different parts. We labelled diagrams of flowers to show the different parts and wrote about the job they do. We found out more about the stigma and stamen in our lesson on pollination.

We learnt about how rocks are formed and compared these to cake to help us remember them! We learn about how each one was formed and how we would be able to identify the type of rock from its properties. We recorded this in our topic books as a report on rocks. We also classified rocks using a classification key and  did a scratch test to test the hardness of the rocks. 

Trip to Bootham Crescent

Year 4 recently visited Bootham Crescent as part of York City FC's Heritage Project. They had a tour of the ground and learnt about the History of the Club. They also got to meet some fans who showed us some great souvenirs. We are looking forward to seeing the new stadium later in the year. 

Den Building!

In our Whole Class Guided Reading Book 'Sky Song', the 'Fur Tribe' have a secret hideout called 'The Labyrinth' hidden amongst the trees. We used cardboard boxes and fabric to create our own hideout in the hall. Some Year 1s also got to explore the hideout.