Class Teacher - Miss Root     

                                             Teaching Assistants – Miss Dempsey and Mrs Jose     

                    

          

 Autumn 1

      

English

Year 4 have made an excellent start by beginning to look at their new book "The boy who sailed the world" for our first mini-writing unit. They wrote some brilliant secret messages which they hid around the classroom for their teammates to find. They warned them about the dangers they may find at sea. 

        

We have began exploring our new model text, which focuses on persuasive non-fiction writing. Our new text is based on “Owen and the Soldier”, a story where Owen tries to persuade the council not to remove the stone soldier from the park.
To bring this to life, we held our own protest around school, demonstrating just like Owen to argue for keeping the stone soldier! The children really enjoyed getting into character and using persuasive language to make their voices heard.

                         

                                                                                  

RE

The children have been reading Genesis 15:1-6 in their RE lessons and re-telling the story of the call of Abram. On slips of paper, the children wrote down the promises God made to Abram. Once they had written them down, they put them into a basket and they read the promises together as a class. 

                  

Collective Worship

In the w/c 13.10, year 4 focused on the theme of saying 'thank you'. Our class worship planners for this week decided they wanted the class to sit in a circle. We gathered together by holding the cross and saying a silent prayer to God. We then read the Gospel Luke 17:11-19. As a response, we discussed who we would like to say thank you to and why. Going forth, we drew around our hands and in each finger, we wrote who we are thankful for in our lives. 

                          

Music

Year 4 have begun their music lessons with Mr Edge. They sound brilliant!

Science 

Year 4 investigated the runniness of different liquids by timing how long they took to pour.
We came to the conclusion that honey took the longest!

          

Year 4 had a special mission from Mr Wonka to investigate what the best way to melt chocolate is. They timed how long the bar of chocolate took to melt, and each group placed the chocolate into a different place. We came to the conclusion that putting chocolate in a ziplock bag into a bowl of boiling water was the quickest at 1 minute 22 seconds. 

                

History

Year 4 have had an incredible and fun-packed Greek day!
In the morning, we learnt about Alexander the Great’s life and why he was so great!
We created some Greek tiles using clay, which is why they may have come home a little bit messy!
In the afternoon, we held our own mini-Olympics where the children competed in teams. Well done to team World Class!
We had a lovely lesson from one of our children who taught us lots of Greek words. Σας ευχαριστώ!
It was a brilliant way to end our Ancient Greek unit!

                         

                                

Library visit 

Year 4’s library afternoon was brilliant, we learnt about the Ancient Greek myth of the Trojan horses and created our very own!

          

Chatsworth Estate

We had the most amazing time at Chatsworth Estate. Both years 3 and 4 represented St Josephs incredibly well!

In the morning, we all went on a tractor ride around Chatsworth Estate and learnt about the history of the site and wider area. We explored the kitchen gardens and made our own potions with some incredible smelling herbs. We were all impressed at how exciting being a part of the Forestry Team is and how they measure trees in a variety of different ways.
After lunch, we explored the farmyard, learning about the different animals and how they are looked after and the adventure playground.

      

   

                 

                   

    

Remembrance day 

 Our collective worship planners planned a brilliant worship for remembrance day.
 We held our 2 minutes' silence and thought about the soldiers who lost their lives in the war.
 As part of our going forth, the children held the stones in their hand, close to their hearts, whilst thinking about the soldiers and then  dipped them into the water.
 We have also created some brilliant letters earlier in the week for the soldiers to say our thanks and created our own tissue poppies   to create a mini display for remembrance day.

          

Geography

Year 4 have begun their new geography topic of ‘Coastal erosion’. We learnt what a locality is and had a look on Google Earth at what we could find in our local area.