Year 4
Autumn 1
We have started the year off with our exciting new topic of the Romans.
We learnt all about the initial invasion by Julius Ceaser and how he left because he didn't like the weather!
Then we learnt about the real invasion years later with Emperor Claudius leading. We became Celtic spies and had to find out information about the Roman Soldiers. We needed to think carefully about their appearance, weapons, strengths and weaknesses.
We have also looked at Roman Towns and everything you would find there. We then had a go at using all of this information to draw our own Roman Town. We can't wait to share what they look like!
We also visited Ufton Court and took part in lots of Roman activities:
In Art we have been studying the work of Paul Cézzane and thinking about tone and shading of sketches.
We have begun our journey by sketching leaves and will be moving on to fruits and vegetables soon.
During P.E this half term, we have been working on developing our gymnastics skills by practising our shapes and balances. We partnered up and created our own routines that included individual and partner balances as well as types of travelling between each balance. Here are a few of snapshots:
French
Year 4 have enjoyed revisiting the question “Comment ça va?” and have learnt a new response, involving the negative in French. This will be important, going forwards, when they will come across “ne….pas” in several other topics. The children have revised their number knowledge from 1-20 and have learnt the pattern of the higher numbers up to 69! We have played lots of number games and listened to a range of songs. This will be ongoing work – the more repetition the better. The children have also done role-play activities in which they build their confidence to ask and answer questions about their name, age and how they are feeling. In all this learning, we have focused on some familiar French phonic sounds from Year 3: in/ain/ein (vingt), am/en/am/em (trente), i/y (il), s/ss/c/ç ( garçon). The new phonic sound so far has been ‘ll’ after ‘i’ (fille)
Computing:
In our computing lessons, we have been learning all about fake news. Fake news has become commonplace in society and so this unit of work helped to make children aware of fake news and gave them the skills to consider each piece of news they read on its own merits and decide what is real or fake. At the end of the unit, we worked in groups to create a 'fake news' story and discussed as a class how we could tell the story was 'fake'.
Autumn 2
Science:
In Science this half term, we have been learning about States of Matter. We have studied how materials can change their state depending on different conditions. In this experiment, we were investigating how long it took chocolate to change from a solid state to a liquid state and which temperature helped to speed up this process!
French
Year 4 have started the new topic of ‘My Family’ in French. They have learnt some core nouns (eg une soeur) and are getting the hang of which article or determiner they need to use (a / the / my), depending on the French noun. They can say how many people are in their family and can ask and answer questions about their siblings. We even conducted a class survey in French! To finish the topic, we are writing up a small imaginary family tree in our French books, where we can write more detail about each person (family member, name and age). In all this learning, we have focused on the following phonics: ‘y /ll/ il / ill’ (fille/ fils) ‘è’ (mère) ‘oe/ oeu’ (soeur) and ‘on/om’ (mon).
We also had an MFL day that was based on French speaking countries around the world. We even had an activity where we looked at important buildings in these countries and then had a go at creating our own version using straws. Can you guess what any of the buildings were replicas of?
Art:
In Art this half term, we looked at illustrations in Shackleton's Journey and how they help to tell a story. We looked at how colour and shape were essential in doing this and had a go at recreating one of the pages from the book:
Summer 2
We kicked off Summer 2 with a fabulous trip to the Living Rainforest!
During the day, we explored the tropical environment and discovered many of its wondrous creatures.
We learnt lots about adaptation and made some marvellous memories.
Summer 1
In Computing we have been creating our own video games. We first looked at video games we knew and thought about what made them popular - a good hero and a great villain. So we got to work designing our own heroes and villains for a "Space Invaders" style game. We got very creative and planned them before then creating them in Paint3D on the laptops. We saved these as .png images which meant they had no background and could be used in a game. We then got to work creating a background, experimenting with different brush styles and effects.
Once we had made our pieces of the game, we then imported them into Scratch. In Scratch we coded the hero, villain. The hero would move with programmed buttons that control its movements from left to right. The villain was coded to move randomly around the stage every two seconds. If it hit a wall, then it bounced off! (We made sure to code in that instruction otherwise the villain disappeared!).
Our hero would should a lightning bolt every second and we coded it so that if the lightning bolt touched the villain they lost one of their 5 points. If the villain bumped into the hero, then the hero lost one of their five points.
The first character to get to 0, lost!
We then tested and played everyone's games!
Year 4 have enjoyed exploring a haunted castle this half term in our French lessons! We have spent time learning the vocabulary to talk about and describe the different rooms and inhabitants of the castle. The children have worked hard to get to grips with different sentence structures and the position and agreement of adjectives in a sentence. Within this unit of learning, the French phonic sounds ‘ch’, ‘eau’, ‘ui’ and ‘j’ have been practised – not to mention those tricky silent consonants at the end of nouns! We finished the topic with a project, in which the children designed and wrote about their own spooky castles.
In the penultimate week of term, we visited Stubbington. We all had an amazing time and if you would like to see more photos, please have a look at our Google Classroom posts.
In Gymnastics this half term, we have been thinking about our body management. We started by working on our floor skills, then we moved to learning about how to vault.
We began by using the spring board, then when confident enough we did without!
Spring 2
We had a busy Book week.
Our task was to learn how to properly read a book using a reader's theatre.
We had to think carefully about our intonations, volume and speed in order to tell the story correctly.
We used the book Black Dog and our performances can be seen on Google Classroom.
In Art, we were looking at the theme of journeys and were analysing the work of Emily Kngwarreye, who was an Australian aboriginal artist. 
We looked at aboriginal symbols and tried to think of our own for things we would see on a journey to and from school.
These symbols were then placed onto an aboriginal-inspired background created using paint.
In DT we were thinking about healthy eating. We looked at smoothies and discovered they are a great way to get our 5-a-day!
So we tested some different smoothies, rating them on taste, texture, appearance and smoothness.
From this, we designed our own smoothie recipe and then got to create them!
We had to think hard about our cutting and chopping skills in order to ensure the fruit and vegetables were small enough for the food processor!
Year 4 have learnt new food vocabulary in order to talk about mealtimes in French – mainly breakfast. They have identified two new verbs ‘manger’ (to eat) and ‘boire’ (to drink) and are starting to understand how to say ‘some’ in French. They are able to ask and answer questions about their opinions about different foods and drinks and have learnt how to use the verb ‘avoir’ to say they are hot, cold, hungry or thirsty. We had lots of fun with mimes!
In addition to our exciting KS2 MFL Day Year 4 have enjoyed completing a class survey about their friends’ breakfast routines. We also watched a video about what French people typically eat for their breakfast. This led to discussions about healthy eating and comparing breakfast habits in different countries. Well done Year 4!
Spring 1
This half term we have been doing lots of hands on Science.
We have been learning about digestion and teeth. We did an experiment to see the affect that different drinks have on the enamel of our teeth.
We placed the eggs in 250ml of water, orange squash, orange juice, vinegar, coffee and coke.
They produced some very interesting results! Can you guess which liquid caused the most damage?
In French Year 4 have had much fun this term, learning all about ice-cream! They have learnt how to talk about a variety of flavours and used their knowledge of masculine and feminine nouns to do further ‘flavour research’ with a bilingual dictionary. We have had very heated discussions about our opinions of different flavours. We practised how to order ice-cream in a shop, perfected our dialogues and had the ice-cream shop come to Overton in our last lesson! Through this work, we have looked at and practised several phonic sounds – including ‘a’ (l’abricot), ‘ch’ (le chocolat) and silent consonants at the end of nouns (le citron)
In Gymnastics this half term, we have used the wall bars to work on partner balances. We also practised 3 levels of partner balances on mats as well as creating a sequence of 3 symetrical partner balances on floor equipment.
In Computing this half term we got to use Minecraft! It blew our minds that we could be using a video game we all knew and played in the classroom! We had 3 challenges to complete.
Challenge 1 was to build a glass building that was a maximum of 12x12x12. We had to use our maths skills and building skills to achieve this. Some of us even built an interior like this kitchen!
Challenge 2 was to build 3D representations of the number 0-10.
Challenge 3 was to collaborate and try to build a version of the school. We looked at aerial photos of the school and worked out the size of each classroom, then from this plan began to build and create!
Autumn 2
This half term we have been super creative!
We have been continuing with our Art project focusing on Cezanne.
We combined all of the skills we have observed and practised into a final still life piece.
As well as this, we have continued with our Roman topic.
We have learnt about the Roman Empire's legacy and the innovative things they contributed to the world.
We were given 1/4 of a map of a Roman Town, then through research had to complete the rest of the maps!
We have been busy in French learning how to tell the time to the hour. We learnt some daily routine phrases and adapted them to cross the curriculum divide into their topic work on ‘Romans’. We spent some time imagining the daily life of a Roman soldier and the emperor and how different they would be. This culminated in a group dialogue which was then performed in front of the class. Lots of fun!
In Science, we have been looking at states of matter. We learnt about solids, liquids and gases and explored the processes of evaporation and condensation.
As well as this, we had a DT day when we built our own Roman chariots! We had to make sure that they had a working axis and followed the criteria for a Roman chariot.
To finish our Art topic, we linked our learning to RE and used our knowledge of Angels to design and make our own clay angels.
Autumn 1
Ufton Court
We had a trip to Ufton Court that related to our Roman topic. We had a great day which involved learning all about the laws and punishments, military skills and how the enjoyed drama shows!
