Foley, Forestry and Farewell Four

We’ve had a really busy half term in Class 4.  We’ve been delving in to rivers, getting switched on about electricity,  testing teeth, venturing into abandoned buildings, exploring our forest area and getting down in a dance-a-thon.

Our maths work has centred around decimals and money.  We have been using different methods to add and subtract amounts of money, looking for the most efficient methods and pushing ourselves to calculate mentally where possible. Popping to the shops and making sure we have the right money to pay or are given the right amount of change won’t be a problem for us now.

Our river research has led us to discover the sources of the River Tyne in Kielder and Cumbria. Following the river along its course, we’ve located place names and learnt about settlement and industry that’s developed along the banks of one of Britain’s cleanest rivers. Finishing our study off at the mouth of the Tyne, we became explorers and showed what Brave Bears we were when we ventured across the river on the ferry from South to North Shields.   Our time at the beach was spent creating rivers that flowed from high ground, meandering until they flowed out in to the sea – just like the River Tyne.

We’ve been super scientists over the last few weeks. We’ve really enjoyed getting ’hands on.  Investigating electrical circuits gave us another opportunity to learn through exploration. Having made complete circuits to light a bulb and incorporate a switch, we turned our hands to designing bedside lamps in design technology lessons.  Our purpose was to create a lamp that provided soft lighting to help a toddler to sleep.  We followed the design brief to create some brilliant working lamps using our knowledge of not only circuits but materials and their properties,. We chose materials for our shades that affected the amount of light that our lamps would give off: transparent materials for a bright glow and translucent materials for a softer glow.

We were visited by students from IntoUniversity to help us think about possible careers for us in the future.  They told us about the work of scientists, museum curators and  Foley artists. We learnt that some jobs were louder than others.  Do you know what a Foley artist is?  We became one to create sound effects for a walk in the forest.

If we were adding sound effects to the stories we have been writing this half term, we would need to create a lot of sudden noises: claps of thunder, creaking floorboards and unexplained bangs. Our characters have broken in to an abandoned building that they were warned not to go in to only to find that their parent’s advice was right all along.  We learnt to combine direct speech and narration to tell our stories.  Using short sentences to create a feeling of suspense and longer descriptive sentences to help our reader to imagine where our characters were and exactly what they were doing.

The whole school took part in a dance-a-thon and when it was our class’s turn we really showed our great sense of rhythm, imagination and fun. We went from learning a routine to creating one of our own. We couldn’t quite believe how good we were and how quickly we were able to pick up a whole sequence of moves. In no time, we were busting our own moves in groups of 2 or three like true rock and pop stars.

Y4 Summer 2 24-25

Getting out into our forest school was a real education. Jessica from the forestry commission taught us about different kinds of trees and after learning about the difference between conifers and broadleaf trees, and evergreen and deciduous; we had a wonderful time identifying different trees by name around the forest and our wider school grounds. We now recognise the bark of a silver birch and can tell the difference between a hawthorn, a willow and a sycamore.

We’ve made ourselves and our teacher proud in year 4, and now we’re more than ready for year 5.  We can’t wait to find out what we can achieve next year!