For the last few weeks, Year 4 have been learning about rhythms in drumming sessions. Each group has been challenged to learn a different rhythm and each rhythm follows a different pattern of beats.
It’s a noisy session but we love it!
As part of North Fawdon’s 60th birthday celebrations this year, each phase group is learning about a different decade. Year 4 has the 1970s!
We’re really lucky as our Mrs Halliford was actually a child in the 1970s and so she has lots of stories, experiences and memorabilia to share with us – a true primary source!
Last week she popped in to share some of these sources with us and we were fascinated! We examined photographs, certificates, commemorative mugs, a scarf, her first pair of glasses and an excellent record collection.
Our favourite items were the photographs of Mrs Halliford as a little girl (very cute!) and samples of her topic writing. Mrs Halliford’s handwriting was very neat when she was at Primary School and her drawings made us giggle.
At the end of the session, Mrs Halliford played some of her records to us on her record player – the records were much bigger than CDs!
We’re a curious and enthusiastic bunch in Year 4.
If you are one of our parents or school governors, and a child of the 1970s, why not pop in to talk to us about your experiences.
To show Miss Stonehouse that we really understand what we were read, we were asked to draw an illustration of the story setting from Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl.
We had to spot and use description from the text to help us. Here are some of our wonderful drawings and words from the text.
‘We lived in an old gypsy caravan behind a filling station….It was a very small filling station on a small country road surrounded by fields and woody hills.’
‘The filling station had only two pumps. There was a wooden shed behind the pumps that served as an office.’
‘It was a real old gypsy wagon with big wheels and fine patterns painted all over it in yellow and red and blue. My father said it was at least a hundred and fifty years old….and because the wooden spokes in the wheels were beginning to rot, my father had propped it up underneath with bricks.’
‘Immediately behind the caravan was an old apple tree. It bore lovely apples that ripened in the middle of September and you could go on picking them for the next four or five weeks. Some of the boughs of the tree hung right over the caravan and when the wind blew the apples down in the night they often landed on the roof. I would hear them going thump…thump…thump...above my head as I lay in my bunk.’
Can you spot some of the description in our illustrations?
In Literacy this week, we started reading Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. We spent lots of time trying to understand what the characters were like and why – using evidence from the text.
We used Role on the Wall to share our ideas. Inside the body shape we put what we knew about the characters, and around the outside were any questions that we had about the characters.
As part of our Rainforest Explorers topic, Year 4 were excited to discover that chocolate actually comes from the rainforest.
We researched the chocolate-making process, from cocoa bean to bar, and found out that lots of chocolate available in shops today is Fair Trade– meaning that the cocoa bean farmers who grow and harvest the beans, are paid a fair price for their work and product.
To understand just how hard life can be farmers and those working in the chocolate trade, particularly when products are not Fair Trade, we took part in a whole class role-play game.
We worked in six teams, made up of: Fair Trade cocoa farmers, independent Ghanian farmers, The Big Chocolate Company, The Fair Trade Chocolate Company, Supermarkets and Shoppers.
We all had different jobs to do. The farmers had to produce the cocoa beans and could sell them to the chocolate companies, getting a different price from each, depending on the quality and type of bean. The chocolate companies had to buy enough beans, of suitable quality, to create chocolate bars, which could then be sold to the supermarkets.
The Fair Trade Company drove a hard bargain to the Fair Trade Cocoa Farmer above!
The Supermarkets also proved to be excellent bargainers! But they weren’t so happy when the seasons changed and cocoa pod disease affected the crops, driving up the price of beans.
The game proved to be a HUGE hit and we really had to use a wide range of skills –communication, co-operative working and numeracy, to name a few.
Naturally, we had to carry out some quality control and taste the chocolate we were making and trading!
This week, some of our Year 4 girls took part in a gymnastics tournament, competing against twelve other schools in Newcastle.
In the run-up to the tournament, the girls spent lots of time in their lunch breaks, practising in the hall to make sure that they were perfectly polished and felt confident.
Here they showing wonderful enthusiasm, commitment and teamwork as they practise.
And that are VERY proud to share with you that they achieved SECOND PLACE! Well done girls!
To help us really understand the Talk for Writing text that we were learning in class, we decided to act it out! We made our own props (or found them in the classroom), and took turns to narrate and act in different roles.
Can you guess what we’re trying to explain?
Not able to guess? Just ask Year 4.
On Friday 20th May, we celebrated Fundamental British Values Day along with the other seven primary schools in our Trust. Everybody came to school dressed in red, white or blue and Miss Thompson, who had organised the day, started us off with an assembly to introduce the theme.
The four fundamental British Values are:
In our House teams, we visited four classrooms over the morning and took part in activities linked to each British Value.
Here are some photographs of our fantastic morning!
Year 4 have shared our thoughts and our learning from the day:
Byron – ‘I learned why we have laws, why people vote and why we are tolerant. I think voting is important because it’s better than arguing.’
Sophie – ‘I enjoyed the democracy activity the most because we got to make a poster and it will hopefully change my local community centre. I think tolerance is really important because you don’t judge people by the colour of their skin.’
Faith – ‘Tolerance is respecting each other no matter what we look like.’
Darcie – ‘I learned that we are all the same on the inside, even if we have different skin tones. I am going to show tolerance by respecting everyone.’
Neya – ‘I think tolerance is important because you should respect people. One thing I learned from today is to vote for our rights.’
Callum – ‘I learned that democracy is like a vote to change things.’
Denni – ‘I’m going to show tolerance by letting everyone join in my games.’
Chloe – ‘I learned that Parliament has over 1,000 rooms!’
Bethany – ‘I enjoyed the democracy activity because we got to make a poster and learned that you can only vote when you are 18 years old.’
Mark – ‘I liked the rule of law activity because it was really fun. Rules are important to help keep us safe.’
Melanie – ‘I enjoyed the democracy activity because we go to vote. I think individual liberty is important because everyone has a right to be free and to be treated the same.’
Mollie– ‘I never knew that there was an underground station in London.’
Cody – ‘I enjoyed the quiz activity because you got to use iPads to learn lots of facts. I learned that you should always show respect to people.’
Manny – ‘I am going to show tolerance by letting people join in games and being nice to them. I enjoyed the democracy activity the most because we got to vote on things that matter.’
Matthew – ‘ I think the rule of law is really important because it keeps us safe.’
Loujain – ‘ Tolerance is really important and you need to show respect to everyone. I really liked the voting activity because we got to vote about cleaning up dog mess!’
Grace – ‘In the tolerance activity, I learned that everyone is the same on the inside and wants to be respected. I enjoyed making the poster that might make a change in my community.’
These two lovely ladies enjoyed the day so much, they went home and created their own fantastic posters about it. Well done girls!
Our classroom is looking great at the moment as the walls are covered in our fabulous work. We are really proud of all of our hard work and so is Miss Stonehouse. Check out our newest displays.
Above is our super legend writing based upon the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Check out the names that we chose for our stories.
This is our Science display about the water cycle in the rainforest. We ALL helped to create a different part of the display and arrange the diagram in the correct order.
Here are the key words that we used in our Science lesson that day: transpiration, evaporation, condensation and precipitation. We’re a super bunch of scientists.
Did you know that Year 4 are super Spanish speakers? We love our Spanish sessions as we play lots of games and get to do loads of talking, which we’re good at!
Last week, we learned how to write an introduction to ourselves in Spanish. We created self-portraits to present with our writing.
Can you work out what each sentence might mean? Look for clues (names and numbers).
Year 4 @ North Fawdon 