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St.Joseph's Catholic
Primary School
"Love one another as I have loved you."
Year 4 - Mrs Wardman
AUTUMN
Click on the images to download the knowledge organiser for our learning this term.
Autumn Term in Year 4
Goosebumps
We have started reading Goosebumps in Year 4. It is so scary! Every chapter is a cliff hanger. We have used this to frame our literacy lessons and are making our own scary Goosebumps story. We use Talk 4 Writing to support our writing in literacy. The video is us performing our story so that we can easily remember it when we need help writing our own.
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Our pictorial story boards
Watch us performing our Goosebumps story
Jesus' family tree
In our Come and See lessons, we have been investigating our own family trees and Jesus' family tree when he was on earth. He was from a long line of very important and interesting people. We have discovered a lot about the people in his family tree, including Ruth, Solomon, Jacob and Esau.
We freeze framed the scenes in the story of Jacob and Esau which we felt were important to tell the story. Jacob and Esau were twin brothers. Jacob was his mother's favourite and Esau was his father's favourite. They were very different and did not get along. If you would like to know the story of Jacob and Esau and the other people in Jesus family tree, click on the video links below.
Click on the video to find out about the people we have studied.
Art Theory
We have been learning about science and art crossing over into the theory of colour. There are lots of theories about colour but we have investigated warm and cool colours, contrasting colours and analogous colours. We have also been mixing tiertary colours. These are made by mixing primary and secondary colours and, when we describe them, we always use the primary colour first. An example of this is red-purple or yellow-orange. We have also been experimenting with water colour paints.
Understanding our emotions
As part of our Ten Ten programme of study, we think about how we are feeling and the things that make us happy or sad. We started this year by thinking about the things that can change our mood for the better or the worse. Things like earning dojo points at school make us happy but arguing with our brothers and sisters make us sad.
Mythical creatures
We have been investigating report writing in our Literacy lessons. Our report is about a mythical creature called the Snaglion. He has the heads of a goat and a lion, the body of a man, the fin of a fish, the tail of a snake and the hooves of a horse! We made our own mythical creatures by mashing up animals. Take a look if you dare - they are scary!
Learning about Anglo-Saxon Britain
We have continued our history of the British Isles from Year 3 by looking at the invading Anglo Saxons. The Romans left Britain in 410AD and took their army with them. Once other tribes realised the Roman army was not here to protect the people and the land, they started to try their luck at taking our land. Some were more successful than others and the Angles, Saxons and Jutes came over from Northern Germany, Netherlands and Denmark.
Copyright Corner Stones Curriculum
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes settled into life in Britain and formed their own kingdoms. Many of the kingdoms have familiar names. How many do you recognise?
At the beginning of Anglo-Saxon times, Christianity faded as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes brought their own beliefs with them. The Pope was worried about this and sent missionaries to Britain to spread the faith. We looked at the development of Christianity over the Anglo-Saxon period and some of the missionaries that Pope Gregory sent.
As Christianity grew in popularity, more monasteries were built in Britain. We looked at the life of a monk and what a monastery looked like. Monks did more than just pray all day and they had to stick to rules set down by Saint Benedict. We made models of a monastery and presented our findings in a powerpoint presentation to the rest of the class.
Hepp DT making catapults
HEPP DT is always one of the children's favourite days. Mrs Hepp came in from HEPP DT to make catapults with Year 4, linking to our History topic about invasions. The children used junior saws and G-clamps while using measuring skills and decorating skills to make their catapult accurate and colourful. They used a drill (under the supervision of Mrs Hepp) to make holes in their wood and learnt about the different types of wood that they were using. It was an amazing day, as the photos will show, and the children all went home with a smile and a catapult.
Varjak Paw
Year 4 are reading an amazing story opening from Varjak Paw. It is a story from the point of view of a Mesopotamian Blue cat called Varjak. He loves listening to stories of his amazing ancestor, Jalal, and want to make adventures of his own. We are using the opening to develop our story writing. To hook us in to the story, we made our own cats and put them round our classroom as if we were in the Contessa House like Varjak.
Egg experiment
As part of our Science topic about the body, we have looked at teeth. We investigated the types of teeth we have and the jobs they do and how to look after our teeth. We made some posters for Year 2 children about the best ways of looking after your teeth and we also carried out an experiment using eggs and vinegar. We wanted to know how effective toothpaste really is so we used eggs, as their shells are made of a similar material to our teeth, and we used vinegar, as it reacts much like acids would on our teeth. We looked at a range of toothpastes and came up with a research question. We had 5 questions to investigate: 1) no toothpaste Vs toothpaste, 2) adult toothpaste Vs children's toothpaste, 3) Colgate Vs Aquafresh, 4) the more toothpaste used the better it protects and 5) well known brands Vs shop brand. We made a range of predictions based on our research question and then carried out our very messy and smelly experiment.
Step 1
Coat the eggs in the toothpaste and leave for 24 hours.
Step 2
Clean the eggs with cold water.
Step 3
Submerge the eggs in vinegar and observe any changes over 24 hours.
We observed our eggs at 3 points over the following 24 hours and recorded our findings.
After 24 hours, we made conclusions about the effectiveness of the different toothpastes and compared them to our predictions. It turns out that children's toothpaste is not as effective as adult's toothpaste and toothpaste is much better at looking after your teeth than not cleaning your teeth at all!
Viking Day
Olaf from Viking School Days came in to the see Year 4 and teach them all about his Viking culture and lifestyle. The children were dressed as Vikings to really amerce themselves in the day and learnt all about life, clothes and games. They ended the day by learning all about warriors and battle tactics. Olaf was amazing and we would recommend him to anyone. Click on the link to find out more about the days and resources he offers. The photos below will show you the fun the children had learning with Olaf.
Christingle
Year 3 and Year 4 shared the festivities of the Christmas period with our local church. We sang songs, played games and listened to messages from the Bible. We ended with a Christingle presentation and prayers. We were able to take the Christingles home to show our parents.
Calendars
We made our own scratch art for our calendars. We coloured the paper beneath a colour to match the season we wanted to represent and then we covered it in thick, black wax. We then scratched an image in the wax to reveal the colour beneath. They turned out really well.
