Year 4

Welcome to Year 4's Blog

Autumn 1 

We have had a wonderful first half term at school. Everyone is so excited to be back! 

Here are some photos of an Re lesson.

We got into groups and created a drama about forgiveness and then performed it to each other!

Catholic Schools Week

Catholic schools week this year had the theme of 'The Light for our Journey'.

We did several activities during the week; we read our favourite scripture passages and shared them with each other, we watched the CAFOD assembly, we did a bible search following scripture references to work out what the passage was. 

Our current Our World topic is the rainforest. 

We have completed lots of learning already and are really enjoying it!

We held a class debate about the issue of deforestation in the rainforest. We were each given a different role (logger, pharmacist, conservationist, forest inhabitant, government official, environmental scientist, fast food restaurant owner or cattle farmer). We did some research and home and then got into two sides, for or against deforestation. Our debate was very successful and even though we all think deforestation is bad we were able to get into our role and debate the opposite view also!

Superhero Big write

We had a fabulous day in Year 4 celebrating our Superhero Big Writing achievements with superhero activities. As well as coming to school dressed as superheroes, we practiced our oracy skills by talking about and presenting the written work that we had enjoyed doing. We also made 3D models of superheroes using recycled materials. We are all writing superheroes.

Smashing Science Day

We had our first Smashing Science day of the year! What a fabulous day we had! 

In the morning we had a visit from TESLA and got the opportunity to ask lots of questions and see inside the cars.

Smashing Science Day Afternoon

We went to Ouzel Valley Park just behind our school for a parks trust session. We took part in a Discovery Walk around the session location, identifying habitat types, the animals that might live there and the threats that face them in the wild.

We also ‘became’ a food chain and learned how living things depend on each other. We look at how living things are adapted to suit their environment in different ways and understanding that all living things are linked together and nothing exists in isolation.

Finally, we had the chance to design our own microhabitat with natural materials for one of the endangered species that has found a home in Milton Keynes.

Rainforest Homework Projects

Over the last few weeks of term our homework was to create a project showing all your learning about the layers of the rainforest. All of the children who returned work did amazing! I was so impressed of their creations. Mrs Zamora and Mrs Smith had a walk round all of the projects and said they felt like they were in a museum! Fantastic work Year 4!! 

Autumn 2

We are very fortunate in Year 4 that we have a music teacher from Milton Keynes music service every Monday. We have been working on the African drums (the djembe) since September. Here are some videos from Lion class of our groups performing. 

Our World

For our rainforest Topic, we have recently completed a design and technology project of building our own tribal huts. 

We spent just over a week creating them each afternoon.

 First, we had to practise our cutting skills by cutting out shapes and ensuring we could cut precisely on the line. This was to prepare us for cutting out the nets of the shape accurately. We cut out nets of a cuboid and triangular prism for the base and roof of our huts. 

Next, we put straw onto the roof of our hut. We glued it onto pieces of card first and then stuck that onto our triangular prism. 

After that, we cut out corrugated cardboard and measured it to our sides. We stuck it onto each side and then painted it brown. 

After we had constructed our huts all together, we worked with our row to create a Shabono (tribal village). We used natural materials from outside to piece it all together. 

It was great teamwork!

Final day before Christmas

We had lots of fun activities on our final day before Christmas.

We rotated round four different stations:

1 - Armpit fudge

2 - Christmas Card for the old folks home

3 - Melting snowman biscuits

4 - Letters for the old folks home

Here are some pictures of the fun in lion class!

Spring 1

We spent all of spring one in lockdown and did our learning online! 

Spring 2

The first 2 weeks of spring 2 was in lockdown. We were so lucky that schools reopened just in time for British Science Week!

British Science Week - 10^th March 2021

Theme: Inventors, Inventions and Innovators

On the Wednesday of British Science Week we had a very busy day designing and engineering as well as learning about chemical engineering and how innovations help us to have new and varied products to eat and use.

Our focus for the week has been to investigate inventions, find out about different inventors and to understand how important innovation is.

Our first task was to learn about ‘bridges’ – how they are designed, constructed and used. We discovered that there are many different types of bridges – beam, suspension, girder and bascule to name a few. We also found out that bridges have existed for thousands of years and can be made from wood, stone, concrete and metal.

Our brief was to make a spaghetti bridge but first we had to create a design in groups. We came up with some fabulous bridge designs and enjoyed being designers and innovators of the future.

Once our designs were complete, we used our engineering skills to create spaghetti bridges with just spaghetti and sellotape. Did you know that bridge designers actually use this technique when designing bridges? They actually create their innovative bridges using spaghetti and test out the construction before going on to make the actual bridge.

It was a difficult task but we rose to the challenge and had a great time making our bridges.

Here are our designers and innovators of the future at work.

Maybe one day you will cross a bridge inspired by the innovators of St Bernadette’s!

British Science Week - 10^th March 2021

Theme: Inventors, Inventions and Innovators

We were very privileged on Wednesday to have an online workshop from Mr Parry, a chemical engineer from the company Unilever.

He told us about his company and the many products that they make – we have many of the items that Mr Parry and his team have helped to design in our cupboards at home.  Mr Parry told us that innovation is very important in his job.

To help us to understand our topic of ‘States of Matter’, Mr Parry gave us a demonstration of an experiment about density. He explained to us that the density of an object determines whether it will float or sink in another substance. An object will float if it is less dense than the liquid it is placed in. An object will sink if it is more dense (denser) than the liquid it is placed in. He used honey, milk, water, oil, washing up liquid and spirit to show us the denser the liquid, the lower it will sink.

English - Thursday 11th March 2021

This term in English we have been studying the book The Egyptian Cinderella. We did drama to act out the story in class!

Here are some pictures of our freeze frames.

1. Rhodopis was stolen by pirates in Greece and was taken to Egypt, where she got teased by the servant girls.

2. Her master bought her a pair of red slippers.

3. The pharaoh invited everyone to court.

4. Rhodopis stayed behind and was jealous of the servant girls.

5. A falcon, the God Horus, came and stole one of her shoes.

6. He dropped the shoe in the pharaoh’s lap.

7. The pharaoh wanted to marry the owner of the shoe.

8.  He tried it on every maiden in Egypt and found Rhodopis.

Ancient Egyptian Death Masks

Our topic for spring term has been Ancient Egypt. We did most of our learning online but got to create an exciting art project at school!

We used cardboard, paper mache and paint to make an Ancient Egyptian death mask. We used the ancient pharaoh Tutankhamun's death mask as our inspiration and then created our own design.

Here were the steps to making our death mask. 

1 - Draw design on paper and colour in.

2 - Cut out cardboard to correct shape.

3 - Stick mask and chin piece to cardboard.

4 - Begin paper mache - several layers needed beginning with newspaper and ending with white paper. 

5 - When dry, paint entire thing gold. 

6 - Add detail in paint

Easter Reflection

Year 4 are very fortunate to get to perform an Easter Reflection. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we could not invite in an audience so we practiced for several weeks and then videoed a final performance. 

The video performances can be found in our RE section of our school website below. 

Summer 1 

Our RE Topic in summer 1 is about Pentecost and is called New Life.

One of our first lessons was about the courage that the Holy Spirit gave Peter and John. They got arrested and still were preaching the Good News of Jesus. 

In groups we created a short sketch entitled 'Not afraid to speak out'. 

We created scenarios that we then had to show courage standing up for others.

Fundraising

In year 4 we are doing some charity work. We are supporting the Humanitas School in Ayensuako, southern Ghana. Each year group takes place in fund raising activities across the year to help the development of the school. You can find out more about Humanitas and the fabulous work they do here:  https://www.humanitascharity.org/education-matters 

In year 4 we have decided to do an art auction to raise funds!

2020 was named 'The Year of the Word' by The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. We have spent some time this year reflecting on God's Word and reading scripture. We each then chose our favourite scripture reference and created a small ornament with it imprinted on. 
 

Our art auction raised an amazing ______. 

Here are some of our ornaments. 

Science

Our current science topic is 'Sound'.

We have been learning all about vibrations, pitch, how sound travels along with lots more! One of our lessons was to create a tv show called 'The Science of Sound'. We worked in groups to explain how different sounds travel to our ears. 

Here are the videos from each group.

Our World - The Romans

Our summer Our World topic is the Romans. We have enjoyed learning about the Roman empire and their invasion and spread across a lot of the world. We have had a lot of fun learning about the Roman army and soldiers. We spent a few weeks making our own Roman shield using cardboard and paint. 

Out on the playground, both year 4 classes joined together to practice marching like the roman army and learning some different military manoeuvres and formations such as the tortoise, the spear and the circle. 

Healthy Communities Week

In May the whole school took part in healthy communities week. 

Year 4 had a really fun week for healthy communities’ week! We took part in an obstacle course – starting balancing along benches, then working with our team to get across an area of grass using hoops, crawling under an army net and finally putting together a jigsaw. We got the chance to do it twice and found it much easier the second time! In addition, we went to the small hall to visit the friendship mission. We then completed several of the activities; a chatterbox, a bookmark, a bracelet and a chain!

We spent some time discussing our mental health and learning strategies to use to support ourselves and our friends. One of our favourite activities was making a worry doll that we took home!

Later in the week we got the opportunity to have a live video call with three STEM professionals; a clinical scientist, a scrum analyst and a delivery executive. We learned lots about their areas of work and got to ask them questions! Over the week we learned about around 20 STEM careers. There are so many fantastic opportunities!!

Below are some photos of the obstacle course. 

Science - Sound

Pan Pipes

As part of our sound topic in science we are learning to recognise that vibrations from sounds travel through something to the ear, by exploring how high and low sounds are created. We explored different musical instruments and discussed how they change pitch. We are learning different ways to change the pitch of a sound and to do this we created our own set of pan pipes. We used paper straws, cut them to different lengths, flattened the ends and then assembled them together. We blew through the top part to hear the different pitch from each straw!