Year 4 have had a very busy half term. Our brand new topic ‘Rolling on a River’ has included lots of fun activities such as creating art in the style of Renoir and using Digimap software to read and draw maps. We started this theme with a fun-filled, water-themed ‘Discover & Do’ session!

During this topic, the children have enjoyed being ‘river detectives’ and have produced excellent reports about British riverine life. They also enjoyed writing poetry about river pollution and finding out about invasive species in British waterways. 

In STEM we have found out about lifecycles, food chains and food webs. We investigated whether it matters what type of tissue we flush down the loo. We were amazed to learn that wet wipes contain non-biodegradable plastic! 

We loved finding out more about our local River Usk. We discovered that Newport has the largest tidal range of any city centre in the world! It can be as much as 14.5 metres! What a creative and knowledgeable bunch of children we have! 

In Maths we have been working hard on a range of skills. These include, calculating tenths and decimals, measuring capacity and volume, adding amounts of money and finding change, and working to gain our times tables bands. We were able to practise all of these skills when we visited the Big Bocs Bwyd!  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 the change from £2.  The Year 6 ‘helpers’ were so impressed that we’d done all the hard work for them!

During PE sessions we have been perfecting our Sports’ Day skills and  have thoroughly enjoyed learning how to play tennis. We  have now built up sufficient skill to have a small game! We have also been preparing dances for our Creative Festival.

In our Expressive Arts lessons, we have explored a range of mediums and tools in which to express how we feel rivers flow and sound. We used sketching pencils and ink to experiment with mark-making. We created and composed river music in our ICT suite on Garageband. We compared our paintings of Newport landmarks to that of our partner as Monet and Renoir did when they painted the famous scene of the ‘Frog pond’. It was fascinating to see how differently we observed the picture!

What a fun filled half term we’ve had!