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Miss Goddard, Mrs Parker, Miss Hardy, Miss Thomas

Welcome to Year 4!

Got a question? Contact us via our class email address where we can help answer your queries. Year4@stmarksce.org.uk

Key Messages Slides September 2021

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Year4

We’ve been busy in Year 4!

What a busy first day back we have had in Year 4. Not only have we been swimming, but we also made erupting volcanoes to start off our Quivers, Quakes, Eruptions and Shakes topic.

The day started off with our very first swimming session. The children were all brilliant, and showed all of the learning behaviours. The first lesson began with a mini assessment of what the children already knew, and then they began straight away with their lessons.
Either side of swimming, the children were set the task of creating a volcano, ready for some eruptions in the afternoon. The children's creativity shone out, and they created some lovely volcanoes. Once they were finished, it was time for some eruptions! Using a concoction of different materials, we were able to imitate some volcanic eruptions.
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With such an exciting start to the half term, it is bound to fly by!

Year 4’s Roman Soldier Day

The Year 4 children thoroughly enjoyed their recent Roman Soldier Day which enriched their understanding of what life would have been like in one of the most successful armies of all time! We’d love to share some of the photos and activities to show you what their day entailed.
 
Throughout the day, the children took on the persona of a soldier in the Roman army. They were given a new age, a new name and also a ranking in the army. Did you know that Roman female names usually ended in -a such as Julia and male names ended in -ius such as Julius!
 
We loved seeing all the different costumes and accessories. Many of the children were prepared for battle with their protective shields and swords!
 
Being in the Roman Army wasn’t an easy job, and men were put to the test to ensure that they were physically and mentally strong enough. The teacher ‘Generals’ put the children through their paces by checking that they were fit enough for the job. The children were instructed to march following orders – in Latin though! As well as this, they had to lap the playground carrying a heavy object to replicate the 30kg of kit that soldiers would have carried for up to 20 miles per day! A soldier was also expected to throw a pilum (like a javelin) up to 30m. General Thomas even got her class doing some push ups…
 
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The Romans were great inventors and problem solvers too. Building on the children’s existing knowledge of Roman Numerals, they solved some Mathematical challenges which involved using a set number of lolly sticks to make a Roman Numeral that represented the lowest and highest values possible. 
 
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Although invented by the Greeks, the Romans relied heavily on the use of  catapults in battle. The children were asked to create a catapult using lolly sticks, elastic bands and a bottle top as well as their design technology skills. Each class then went outside and tested their catapult by seeing how far they could launch a ping pong ball. They had great fun testing them out! Can you spot Leo and Elouise celebrating as their catapult was the most successful in 4PG? 
 
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After lots of hard work and learning, the children ended their special day by learning about and playing some popular Roman board games. They learned how to play ‘Delta’ and also a chess-like game called ‘Ludus Latrunculorum’. They had to use logical thinking to try and defeat their opponent. 
 
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We still have a week left of our project ‘Rule of the Rotten Romans’ but what a wonderful term the children have had so far. They have gained a wealth of knowledge about the Ancient Romans and their invasion of Britannia in 43AD. Hopefully they have been able to share some of their learning with you at home. 
 
 

Year 4 Design Technology: Exploring Structures

Year 4 have been busy learning and exploring structures over the past few weeks as part of their current DT project on ‘Roman Pavilions’

During the first lesson, the children were given cocktail sticks and plasticine and found different ways to make structures. They used photographs of famous and existing structures and pavilions to inspire their ideas. In this lesson, the children started to think about the importance of base shapes. They had lots of fun being creative and coming up with original designs.

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In the second lesson, the children worked with cardboard strips, double sided tape and card to make a cube-like structure. The purpose of this lesson was to explore how to join materials and also how to reinforce these joins so that the structure would be more robust. The children used joinery ideas from existing structures to help them, such as triangular corner pieces and hinge-like joins.

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Within our most recent lesson, the children learned about cladding by looking at photographs from real life structures. They learned about the different purposes of cladding before beginning to think about how they could use materials to clad their structure. The children were given the brief to create a Roman aesthetic design and used photos of Roman pavilions to support their thinking. They cut, rolled, folded and made marks on card before attaching this material to their structure. The results are rather convincing and certainly give a Roman appearance!

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Now that the children have the skills and knowledge needed from their exploration lessons, they will begin to design their own Roman Pavilions using shapes, materials, joins and cladding of their choosing. We hope to display these once they have been created!

Hopefully you received some information last week regarding a 'Roman Soldier Day' which Year 4 are having on Thursday 3rd February. The information is attached here also as a PDF.

From the Year 4 Team

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Year 4’s Creative Term

What a wonderful half term we have had learning about rivers and India as part of our project 'River of Life'. The children have worked hard and used their creativity within their Topic work, Art and DT. 

Our final website post for the Autumn term is written by our Year 4 pupils – Florence and Monica – who are going to explain their work:

Geography – Journal Pages
This term, we learned about India and the river in India called the river Ganges.The river Ganges is very important to people in India. People in India wash in the river because they believe that when they wash it washes away their sins but there also are negative impacts of the river on life. We made these journal pages after learning about different places along the Ganges. We used  creativity to present and decorate our page.
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DT – Making bread
In DT, we made bread and compared it to an Indian chapati and decided which one we preferred. We liked the bread because it had more texture and wasn't that salty but the chapati. The 4 ingredients we used were water, yeast, flour and salt.

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Art – Mehndi and Rangoli Patterns 
In art, we all looked at mehndi patterns and we had to create our own patterns. We looked at lots of designs and saw all of the beautiful patterns.
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Also in art we looked at some Indian fabrics in the hall and noticed some patterns. We designed some Rangoli patterns and after we did our practise, a few days later, we did our neat one and some of them went on display. Fun fact: some people in India put rangoli patterns on their floor to welcome people into their homes.  
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Thank you to Florence and Monica for writing our website post. We wish all the children, parents and carers a wonderful Christmas. See you in the new year!
Year 4 Team

Sensational Science in Year 4!

This term, Year 4 have enjoyed doing investigations during our Science Days. In Autumn 1, we became human biologists and learnt about the digestion system. The children created a model of a stomach using tights as the intestines, a sandwich bag for the stomach and funnel for the oesophagus. They had great fun seeing how the stomach breaks down the food so we can get energy. I’m sure you can imagine their reactions when the intestines created waste! 

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After learning about the digestive system, we moved onto learning about the function of our teeth and how liquids have different effects on them. The children made predictions and tested marble chips (to represent the teeth) by placing them into a variety of liquids to see what happened.

 

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This term, we have learnt all about the states of matter and investigated how liquids behave differently – this is called viscosity. 

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We also had lots of fun learning about how solids change to liquids by melting. The children worked sensibly with the candles, after a safety briefing of course, to test 5 different solids and discover their melting points. 


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In our final lesson, we applied all this knowledge to see how the water cycle works. We even create our own water cycle experiment using a candle to represent the sun, water and a mirror to collect the condensation. 


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We are so impressed by the knowledge the children have learnt during our science days and they have enjoyed all the investigations we have done.

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