Year 4 has had a very busy half term. Our topic ‘Surf’s Up!’ has included lots of fun activities such as creating wave art with chalks and pastels, using iPads to design beach themed word clouds, using Google Earth to explore the Welsh coastline and even visiting our very own school trailer!
Our ‘Surf’s Up!’ Immersion Day was so much fun! We were able to explore Welsh coastlines on online maps, analyse photographs considering what we might hear or see, create beach-themed word clouds, match sea creature images to their names and be creative making sandcastle flags and writing messages in bottles as if we were stranded on a desert island!
During this topic the children have enjoyed being ‘shoreline detectives’ and have produced excellent reports about British marine life. They also enjoyed studying Japanese Haiku poetry, and then tried their hand at creating their own poems based on rockpool creatures. The children further developed their Literacy skills by enthusiastically creating persuasive posters prompting people to adopt British marine animals. What a creative and knowledgeable bunch of children we have!
We developed our mapping skills, using Atlases to locate different places on the Welsh coastline such as Tenby, Aberystwyth and Porthcawl and have learnt about the impact of litter found on our beaches. The children were outraged by the statistics and facts they learnt about litter and decided to use this information to create infographics to urge people not to do it.
Our new Science topic is ‘Excellent Electricity’ and we had so much fun exploring and learning around this theme. We learnt what electricity was, where it comes from and how to stay safe when using it. We even thought about what life would be like without it!!! We can’t wait to explore further in the next half term.
In Maths we have been working hard on a range of skills. These include, written methods for addition and subtraction, multiplication, halving and doubling and working to gain our times tables bands. We were able to practise all of these skills when we visited the school’s trailer! We looked carefully at the menu, chose up to 3 items and then added the prices together to find the total. Next, we had to calculate how much change we would get from £2. The Year 5 ‘staff’ at the trailer were so impressed that we’d done all the hard work for them!
During PE sessions we have been perfecting our Sports’ Day skills in preparation for our Sports’ Day on Wednesday, June 8th. The children have thoroughly enjoyed learning how to play tennis and have now built up sufficient skill to have a small game!
We’ve been fortunate to have 2 special visitors this term in the form of PC James and Bonnie the Therapy Dog. During PC James’ ‘Friend or Foe’ talk, the children had to discuss different scenarios and what they would do in that situation and then explain their thoughts giving reasons for their thinking. They are such a sensible bunch and were able to see immediately how each scenario could be dangerous. During Bonnie’s reading sessions, children were able to enjoy a more calming and relaxing environment whilst sending Bonnie off to sleep with their beautiful reading.
What a fun filled half term!
