Iron Woman

In Literacy this week, we have been writing our own ‘Iron Woman’ stories based on Ted Hughes’ original novel ‘Iron Man’. As part of our grammar work, we have been focusing on the use of fronted adverbials. Other literary features the children were expected to include were similes, repetition, rhetorical questions and direct speech. Here is an extract from a piece of writing -

Art

In our Art lessons we have been studying the work of artist ‘Eric Joyner’. There are some common themes that appear in all his pieces of work: robots and doughnuts. When asked why he drew these things he simply answered ‘because they are two of my favourite things’. We decided to create our own Eric Joyner inspired pieces using oil pastels and water colours as our main media. Through careful observations, we noticed that Joyner would often use brighter colours (oil pastels) to make the objects in the forefront of his pictures stand out and blended colours (water colours) to create the objects in the background. Here are some piece of artwork completed by members of our class.

Science Week

As part of ‘National Science Week 2016’, 4R have been finding out about the discoveries of famous Scientist Benjamin Franklin. We learnt how Benjamin Franklin discovered static electricity whilst flying a kite, attached to a key, in a lightning storm. Franklin received a small spark of static electricity that jumped from the key to his knuckle. As part of our practical lessons, we used static electricity to create moving objects such as a floating tissue paper ghost, a flying orb and a rolling drinks can. We finished the week with a whole school ‘Jelly Tower Challenge’, where the aim was to build the highest jelly tower possible. Here are some photos from the week.

Maya Poetry

In our Literacy lessons, we have been writing Maya inspired poetry. One common theme running through all examples of Maya poetry was  thankfulness for the creation of the world and all living things in it. We created out own four-line verse poems giving thanks to the Maya Gods for these beautiful gifts. Here are some of our poems. Can you spot any of the poetic devices we have used?

Ancient Mayans

On Tuesday 2nd February we celebrated our topic with an Ancient Mayan Day in school. We came to school dressed in traditional Maya clothing. Most of us wore clothing typical of a Maya noble; this included bright colours, beaded jewellery and the most fantastic headdresses. In the morning, we had the chance to cook some traditional Maya cuisine such as vegetable filled tortillas, nachos, guacamole, salsa dips and chilli hot chocolate! In the afternoon, we played a game of Pok-a-Tok in the hall. Fortunately, the losing team were not sacrificed. The winning team received clothes and jewellery from the spectators. We also designed our Maya burial mask inspired by Pakal the Great and completed a Maya maths challenge.

The Big Draw

As part of ‘The Big Draw’ 2015 we decided to make marks in Science. We considered the question ‘What is gravity?’ Gravity is a force that pulls us down towards the centre of the Earth. Next, we set up a pendulum using two chairs, a broom handle, a plastic cup (with a hole at the bottom), string, sellotape and paint. Underneath the pendulum was a large piece of paper. We each had a turn at swinging the pendulum to make interesting patterns on the paper. We learnt that when we let go of the cup, the force of gravity was at its greatest, making a larger pattern. As the cup returned to the centre, gravity decreased, creating a smaller pattern on the paper.

Languages Day

On Thursday 24th September, we celebrated the European Day of Languages and the 2015 Rugby World Cup. Throughout the Rugby World Cup, we will be supporting Scotland and Uruguay, so we decided to learn more about their languages and cultures. We sang the Scottish national anthem, ‘Flower of Scotland’ and learnt some rugby related phrases in Spanish. We located both countries on a world map and found out about their iconic landmarks. At the end of our exciting day, we had the chance to taste some different foods. 

Families

One of our RE topics this half term is ‘Families’. Within this topic, we have been learning about the family tree of Jesus Christ. We read a story from the Book of Ruth, which taught us about the importance of showing care, love and loyalty to the people in our family. In this story, Ruth says to her mother-in-law, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God” (1:16). We listened carefully to the words in the song and reflected on how we could be more like Ruth and live our life in God’s way. Here is the song we listened to and some of our art work of Ruth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79KUTX-hE18

Living things and their habitats

In Science, we have been learning about different habitats around the world. A habitat is a place where an animal or plant lives. It provides the living thing with the food, water and shelter it requires. So what is a micro-habitat? A micro-habitat is a very small, specialised habitat such as a clump of grass or a space between rocks. We have been exploring the micro-habitats in our school grounds. Here are some of the mini-beast we found:

Anglo-Saxons

We’ve jumped straight in to our new topic of ‘Anglo-Saxons’ by reading the terrifying tale of ‘Beowulf’ by Michael Morpurgo. The story is set in fifth-century Denmark, where the murderous monster Grendel stalks the night. Only Beowulf, the great Prince of the Geats, has the strength and courage to defeat him but has he met his match in the foul fiend Grendel . . .

We have been writing some of own historical stories, featuring a heroic Danish warrior.