Welcome to Year 4 Spring Term 24-25
What is Sound?
For this half term, our unit in Science is all about sound! Today we spent some time investigating what sound is and looking at the visible vibrations objects make as they make a noise. We had lots of fun making different observations.
Hockey
Year 4 have been enjoying learning all about hockey. We have been learning how to hold the stick, control the ball, dribble, pass and stop the ball. Today, we practised passing and defending. We looked for space and our partner passed to us while avoiding the defender. We are looking forward to starting some mini games next week.
Hot Seating
We have begun our new literacy unit and watched the film Little Shoe Maker. At various points throughout the story we also took part in some ‘hot-seating’ where children took on the role of the two shoemakers and the customer. They were asked about how they were feeling, what they were thinking and what they might do. They enjoyed being the different characters and also thought up some excellent questions.
Portraits
Year 4 have been enjoying learning about photography and different photographers. They have planned their portrait and this week they took their photographs. They thought about props, what part of the face they wished to picture and lighting. We are all looking forward to our next lesson where we will edit the picture for our final piece.
Who were the Anglo Saxons and where did they come from?
We have began to learn about the Anglo Saxons in our history learning. Last week we learnt about the mystery of Sutton Hoo. This week we have been learning about the invasion of the Anglo Saxons after the Romans. We discussed the meaning of invader and settler. We then discussed where the Anglo Saxons originated from and how they altered Roman Britain. We are looking forward to learning more how they evolved Britain.
Guided Reading: Oliver and the Seawig
Today we read chapter text of Oliver and the Seawig. Together we read the text and then we discussed each character and their feelings towards each other. We discussed how Oliver would feel when he could not find his parents. We tracked emotions throughout the chapter. We then used our Vipers and answered questions on the text. Well done Year 4! You all worked well together to retrieve information from the text.
Chinese Music
To celebrate Chinese New Year, Years 3 and 4 enjoyed taking part in some different activities linked to Chinese Music. We completed some research into traditional Chinese instruments, created a fact file about the traditional Chinese Dragon Dance and listen and appraised a traditional Chinese song.
Children's Mental Health Week
We all enjoyed celebrating Children's Mental Health Week. We talked about the five steps to wellbeing. We then connected to our friends and asked them what they liked and disliked. We then compared this to other friends. We tried some different ground techniques to help us control our emotions. We then reflected about ourselves and thought about what we likes and what we want aspire too. We also reflected on our achievements so far in our lives. Finally we all took part in creating our own personality islands to share with others a bit about ourselves.
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Soundproofing Materials
Within our Science lessons, we have set up an investigation to test which materials are the best for soundproofing. To do this, we used different materials and placed them against a speaker and compared how well we could hear the sound through them. As a class, we agreed that sponge was the best material for soundproofing out of those we tested.
Year 3 & 4 Chinese Cooking
Year 3 and 4 have been celebrating Chinese New Year through a variety of activities. We created Chinese art, listened to a variety of music and took part in our own Chinese cookery class. Together with our friends, we prepared the vegetables and sauce for our vegetable chow mien. We then enjoyed tasting our food. It was very easy to make but yummy to eat!
Investigating Sound
Year 4 started their lesson by looking at a range of drums and exploring how sound can be made louder. We thought about the material the drum was made from and the size of the drum and noticed the harder we hit it and the bigger vibrations we made, the louder the sound was. Then we thought about how far away we could move before we would stop hearing a sound. We set up a mini investigation outside where we all started near the drum and moved further away until we stopped hearing it. We repeated the same activity with a speaker. Although we didn’t stop hearing the sound at the same time, we all stopped hearing the sound at some point. We thought about why this happened and considered sound waves like ripples when you drop a stone into a pond: the further they go, the weaker they become until they have no energy at all.
