On Monday 29th June, we had our spectacular Sports Day! The whole school took part in a sporty morning or afternoon. There were lots of different events and points were earnt by all. The champions will receive a small prize but we all agreed it was the fun of taking part that counted.
Last Wednesday, we were lucky enough to take part in an African drumming workshop. The workshop was in three sections: drumming, dancing and singing. Each part was fantastic fun and we really, really enjoyed our day. Meet our African drumming teachers:
Here we are, all kitted out with our very own Djembe drums, ready to start:
This is us learning our dance steps:
If you’d like to see us in action, learning the moves, click on the following link:
Watch us performing to the school in an end of day assembly too:
A heart-breaking but inspirational story. That was our verdict after finishing reading Journey to Jo’burg by Beverly Naidoo. We read the book in our Literacy lessons as we are studying stories which raise issues and dilemmas. This book had a big impact on us and really made us think about the experiences and emotions of the characters which we came to care about. We strongly recommend this story to you. Not convinced? Then have a listen to our reviews.
On the last Friday before the half-term holidays, we had great fun taking part in the Skipathon. We had a warm-up session with a coach and then took part in a variety of whole class, paired and individual skipping activities, led by Mrs Barrett. Have a look at our videos to see who you think our champion skippers are.
As you might remember from a previous post, we have been involved this year in the 2009 Drama Consultancy Programme. We have been taking part in lots of drama activities. We are now using the skills we have acquired to prepare a final performance. Our performance will be based on animals and their habitats, our current topic which we are working on in class. We have tried really hard to be creative and prepare a performance which is very different from our usual class assemblies and year group plays. We are having lots of fun rehearsing at the minute and are very excited about the end result. We’ve got a lot to do and learn in a short time, but we’re confident that we can come up with the goods! We will be opening the curtains on Monday 22nd June and we hope very much that you will come along to see our work. We will be bringing letters home shortly detailing times so keep your eyes peeled! In the meantime, have a look at us rehearsing:
We have spent some time in our Literacy lessons recently looking at information texts. We learnt that a range of features are often included in this type of text i.e. clear, bold titles, contents pages, sub-headings, text boxes, illustrations, annotated diagrams, captions, technical vocabulary, precise descriptive language, glossaries, index pages etc. We used our knowledge of these features to produce an information page based on an animal of our choice. We researched our chosen animal before writing our text to find out lots of facts to include. Our work has now been published in our very own class book, ‘All About Animals’. Every single pupil in our class wrote a page of this book. Please have a look at our book here or see it on display outside the hall.
On Friday, we had the last of our three week block of swimming lessons and are now back to our normal timetable. In 4JB, we would like to say a great big thank you to all of the parents who gave up their time to accompany us to Havelock swimming baths each day. So, to Mrs Westcott, Mrs Hayes, Mrs Heath, Mrs Leaver, Mrs Cutting, Mrs Winters and Mrs Brown, thank you ever so much for being helpful, punctual and reliable and for keeping us safe as we made our way to and from the swimming baths each afternoon.
We are getting on so well at swimming that we are now officially a bunch of super swimmers! Some of us who couldn’t swim to begin with are now swimming beautifully and some of us have even been retrieving objects from the bottom of the pool. We are particularly proud of Karl today who has previously been too frightened to get in the water. Today, he not only got in, but swam his first first length.
Year 4 are now enjoying a three week block of swimming lessons at Havelock pool. Some of us in 4JB are wearing arm bands and using floats and some of us, who are a little bit more confident in the water, are swimming without support. We are all really enjoying the lessons and are making a lot of progress in a short time.
Scoot is 4JB’s new classmate! We created him in our D.T. lessons for our topic ‘Aliens and Robots’. We worked in groups to design and make Scoot’s body parts and then assembled him as a class. We incorporated electrical circuits into our designs to make sure Scoot became a fully functioning robot.
When the switches on the side of Scoot’s head are closed, his eyes light up.
The switch on his body allows you to switch on his buzzer.
Scoot’s knee caps spin when you close the switches on the sides of his feet.
We have worked really hard on creating Scoot and we are really proud of our new class mate. He stands outside of our classroom so please feel free to come and meet him and even switch him on, but please be careful – Scoot is fragile and we would be ever so disappointed if we found somebody had injured him!
Yesterday, we visited Eureka (a Science museum) in Halifax. We travelled by coach and had to set off at 7.40am! Some of us were a bit blurry-eyed as we pulled out of Colin Avenue and started our journey. We had a great day. First, we enjoyed a Science workshop on Forces in which we helped Fizz and Flash prepare their friend Ted for his first trip into space. Next, we had a great time exploring the different areas of the museum. We shopped and worked in Marks and Spencers and we drew cash out at the bank. Some of the cashiers looked rather familiar:
and some of us tried to rob the bank instead!
We took our cars to the garage to fill up:
we explored parts of the body:
we met some new friends, including Scoot the robot:
and we chilled out in an igloo!
All in all, it was great fun but a pretty exhausting day, as you can see!
On Friday 13th March, we got funny for money at Old Clee to help raise money for Comic Relief. For this years’s Red Nose Day we were allowed to wear something funny which we all interpreted in different ways. Some of us wore crazy hair, some of us came to school in our pyjamas and some of us dressed in fancy dress. In our PSHCE lesson, we talked about the purpose of Comic Relief and looked at the Red Nose Day website. We thought about the people we were trying to help and felt proud that for somebody, somewhere, we had helped to make a difference.
The Pyjama Gang!
Crazy Hair!
Amy Winehouse, Robin Hood and Jeff Hardy joined us for the day!
Last Tuesday (10th March), we visited Grimsby Leisure Centre for an afternoon of fun and games. We were involved in lots of badminton and tennis activities which helped us to develop our skills. We were split into teams so it helped us to develop our group skills too. We were lucky enough to have lots of talented adults to coach us and also received help from students from Havelock. A great afternoon was had by all, as you can see for yourselves:
Getting warmed up!
What a shot!
A helping hand for Chloe.
In 4JB, we are bringing a robot to life! We are working as a class to make a life-size robot and are planning to use electrical circuits to make parts move, light up or even make a noise! In groups, we are each consructing a part of the robot’s body i.e. the arms, the legs, the head and the body. We will then assemble the body parts to construct the final product. Here we are working on parts of our robot:
We are so excited about this project and really believe our robot is going to look stunning. We hope to finish by the end of next week and will post a photograph of the final result. We can’t wait. We hope you can’t either!
Finally, our very own solar system is complete! It took us more than a few days to bring you the finished result but here it is. What do you think? Please leave us a comment – we’d love to know whether our hard work has paid off!
If you would like to see close-up shots of our individual planets, click here:
Do you enjoy sketching? Well, we certainly do! This afternoon we have been sketching robots and Miss Blair is really impressed with the results. Some of us think we have produced our best drawings ever and we’re feeling pretty proud! We looked closely at lots of pictures of robots and realised their bodies are made up of 3D shapes. We practised drawing 3D shapes before having a go at a complete robot of our own. Here are some of our robot sketches. We hope you think they rock too!
Today is another sad day for us (see previous post) as we are losing yet another classmate. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for her, Gracie will be moving to Australia! We hope she has an amazing time there and enjoys the sunshine. Think of us Gracie, in the cold and snow, when you are sunbathing on those beautiful beaches! We will all miss Gracie terribly in 4JB and are very sad to see her go. We would like to say a big thank you for the sweets she brought in for the whole class (and for Miss Blair’s beautiful plant too). We hope to hear from her some time soon and to hear all about her new home and school.
Yesterday was a sad day for all of us in 4JB as we had to wave goodbye to one of our classmates who has now left to attend a different school. We will all miss Tyrone a great deal and were very sorry to see him go. We hope he is very happy and makes lots of new friends at his new school. If you’re reading Tyrone, keep in touch and drop us a line now and then. We would love to hear from you.
Recently, in our Literacy lessons, we have been trying really hard to use descriptive language. In one lesson, we described a mystery animal and hoped that the language we used would allow the reader to picture clearly the creatures we described. Can you guess what the following animals are from our descriptions? We hope you enjoy our writing.
What am I?
It climbs sneakily up vast walls.
It springs from one massive, colossal web to another.
The crazy creature has a huge, pure red patch on its fierce, black back.
Patiently, it stands in the blazing hot sun and hunts for flesh.
It is as fierce as a lion.
It lives in the deserted desert in the mighty Africa.
Would you fight a creature like this?
If you did, you’d lose!
by Bradley Mortlock
click-here-for-bradleys-answer
What am I?
It moves delicately like it’s dancing through the air.
It is pink and blue and as dotty as a Dalmation dog.
It is as colourful as a rainbow.
Its wings are as fragile as a flower.
Sometimes it sleeps on a lovely green leaf to keep warm.
by Marcus Giorchino
What am I?
It slithers like a worm in the exstremely tall, fresh, green grass.
It is as long as a coach.
It is as ferocious as a killing tiger.
It’s as smooth as silk.
Rapidly, it chases its prey which runs as fast as it can.
by Thomas Jarrett
Today we had some special visitors in school: Hayley - our Community Police Officer, PC Brock - a dog handler, Spock – a spaniel and Harry – a German Shepherd.
Hayley
Hayley and PC Brock shared lots of information about their jobs and allowed us to ask lots of questions. We even got to see Spock in action as he sniffed out a £10 note and earned a play with his ball as a reward!
Chelsea-Lee, Spock, Matthew and Marcus
Some of us were even lucky enough to meet and greet Spock personally and give him a bit of fuss but we weren’t keen on getting quite so close to Harry!
PC Brock and Harry
We’ve been lucky enough to have an extra adult working with us over the last few weeks – Miss Beckett. She’s been very friendly and has helped us all with our work. We’ve really enjoyed having her here and made her a card to say a big thank you. She was very kind and gave us all sweets before she left (including Miss Blair) which were very much appreciated. We will miss her in 4JB.
Yesterday, we went experi-mental! We were busy working with pastels, chalks, charcoal, watercolour paints, wax crayons, pencil crayons, sand and grit to see what different effects and textures we could produce in preparation for making our very own planets (see previous post). Here we are at work. This afternoon, we will be working on the final versions so look out for photographs of 4JB’s completed solar system in the next few days.
Millie and Aaron
In the last couple of days, we’ve been learning all about our solar system. We can now name each of the planets which orbit the sun, in the correct order, starting with the one nearest to the sun. We found out all about how Pluto used to be classified as a planet but was then reclassified as a dwarf planet. In groups, we researched the main features of each of the planets and we are going to use our knowledge to create our own solar system in the classroom! Can you name all of the planets in the correct order? If not, let Thomas help!
Today, we were told by Miss Blair that the book, The Iron Man, has been made into a film and we have been asked by the director to write and record a voice-over for the trailer! We worked in teams and tried to use persuasive, powerful language to create drama and suspense and attract our target audience. Here are two of our recordings. Please let us know what you think.
We have now resolved our technical difficulties (see previous post)! Here is Group 1 using their set of objects as other mystery objects. Can you guess what the hoops are being used as?
find-out-what-group-1s-hoops-are1
click-here-to-discover-what-the-hoops-are-this-time1
Group 4 were given two mop-heads as their objects! What do you think they are being used as?
find-out-what-group-4s-mop-heads-are-being-used-as1
Do you enjoy a bit of drama? We certainly did yesterday! We had an extra special day as we took part in a drama workshop. Two visitors, Emma and Louise, came to observe and participate in our session. They are drama specialists and were very impressed with our creativity!
Warming up!
At the beginning of the session, we played some fantastic games including ‘Zoom, Eek, Bump’ and ‘The Sponge Game’. These games helped us to develop our imagination and encouraged us to look and listen carefully.
Travelling back in time!
For the second part of our workshop, we travelled back in our imaginations to the Tudor period and thought about what it would’ve been like to have lived during that time. We worked in groups to create still pictures which showed an aspect of Tudor life. For example, ‘A visit from a doctor’, ‘At school in Tudor times’, ‘Working in a Tudor kitchen’ and ‘The Battle of Bosworth’. We had to use our skills of co-operation to work successfully as teams and we were really proud of the work which we produced. We will try to upload some photographs to show you our still pictures but at the minute we are having some technical difficulties!
Our favourite parts
Here are some of our favourite parts of the day:
- “My favourite part was thought-tracking, which was when we shared our thoughts in character, because I got the chance to pretend to be somebody else from another time.” (Gracie)
- “The part I liked the best was when we were given objects and had to create a mime which showed the object being used as something else.” (David)
- “I loved working on the still pictures which showed aspects of Tudor life.” (Millie)
We all really enjoyed the day and had great fun. We earned class rewards because we made Miss Blair so proud of us. So why not have some fun yourself and go and create a bit of drama!
Do aliens and robots interest you? We are all very excited today because we have started a new topic called ‘Aliens and Robots’ and we think it’s going to be great fun! In Literacy, we started to read a thrilling new book called ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes. We’ve only read the first two chapters and already we’re hooked. It’s a real page-turner!
