The children enjoyed investigating Maths Problems, using collaboration to work with a partner. They learned how to work systematically in order to ensure that they had found all of the solutions.
Year 4 enjoyed a scientific investigation as part of their learning about the water cycle. They created 'rain in a bottle' and carefully observed and recorded the changes.
Year 4 have been enjoying learning about the value of digits in numbers using different resources to help them!
We are very excited to have received some wonderful photos of Home Learning. We would love to see some more photos of Year 4 learning at home, so that we can add them to the Hall Of Fame; please send your pictures to: admin@st-marys.lewisham.sch.uk. We thought about the types of food that would have been available for people living in the Iron Ages to eat. Next, we reflected on how they would have mostly eaten foods that they could grow and farm themselves.
We made a modern day version of a Beef or Vegetable Stew with English Dumplings! We had the BEST time and loved every minute of it! We went to meet a character called Mary Anning who was a female scientist. She was an English fossil collector who became famous for her discovery of an ancient reptile called an ichthyosaur (which means ‘fish lizard’). We had a go at comparing modern day skeleton bones to a fossil and worked together to determine which type of creature it had similarities to.
We also learnt how a fossil was formed and then went to look at some real life fossil discoveries, including the ichthyosaur! We also went to visit the Red Zone Gallery to find out more about natural hazards. We looked at a map of the world and noticed that volcanoes and earthquakes occur along the plate boundaries – fault lines. We then discovered more information about the causes of Volcanoes and Earthquakes and watched some real life clips of them. We even experienced how it feels when the Earth starts to shake! Year 3 and Year 4 loved visiting the British Museum to take a look at some artefacts from the Kingdom of Benin and learn more about this period of history. We realised that these primary sources can tell us lots about the way the Benin people lived. We noticed that there were lots of powerful models of the Obas (Kings) and strong animals to help represent them. Lots of these objects were made from brass, coral and ivory.
Luckily, we also had time to visit the Ancient Egyptian displays to remind ourselves about what we had learned about last term. We even challenged ourselves to spot some cartouches and hieroglyphs on some of these artefacts. We even saw the actual Rosetta Stone! The Year 4 children were excited to visit Tate Britain art gallery to see their class photo in a special exhibition. It was amazing to see the photograph that was taken of the class last year when they were in Year 3 up on display for the world to see. It was even more fun to be able to be in an art gallery and be allowed to make lots of noise!
The children then reflected on how their lives had already changed so much since Year 3 and enjoyed comparing all their new ‘favourites’ with their friends. After looking at their photo, the children visited the Turner gallery and spent some time choosing their favourite piece of art, which they then tried to copy. It was lovely to be able to relax in this gallery and look closely at some very impressive paintings. Year 4 are learning all about Egypt and the Ancient Egyptians. We have been finding out about the geography of the landscape and have been thinking how important the River Nile was and still is today. We are now beginning to think about where the Ancient Egyptians fit into the history of the world and worked together to put some key events onto a timeline.
The Ancients Egyptians were around 5000 thousand years ago so we needed to go outside where we had more space. We decided that Miss Baxter’s foot represented 100 years – she had to walk a long way up the playground. This week, we have been learning about forces. Having explored Egypt on Google Maps, we wondered how the Ancient Egyptians were able to drag huge stone blocks across the desert to build the pyramids.
We learnt that there would be lots of friction between the rocks and the ground when they were being dragged so we investigated which material would have made dragging these rocks easier. We used Newton Meters to measure the amount of force it takes to move big rocks across a range of different materials. We found out that smooth plastic caused the least resistance. |
Year 4
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