Welcome to Sri Lanka

We are an enthusiastic, inquisitive, friendly class of Year 4 children!

Our teacher is Mrs Sanderson and we are also taught by Mrs Foley.

Call back frequently to see what we have been learning!

In English, we explored different types of poetry (including limericks, narrative and haiku). We learnt and identified the featured of poetry before exploring similes, metaphors, repetition and rhyme. We used this knowledge to create our own Roman narrative poem. These were then learnt by heart and performed to the rest of the class.

As part of our mini topic, Sri Lanka class designed and produced their own tie dyed t-shirt with a slogan to promote how we can help endangered species. We explored a range of tying techniques to add the pattern that we wanted to use before dipping our t-shirts in the colours of our choice!

This week we have been learning about glacial erosion and the impact this has on humans and animals.

On Monday, we had an assembly, led by Mr Abbott, to introduce what 'Green Week' is

When we got back to the classroom we thought about what we already knew about 'Weather and Climate' before identifying the different climates around the world.

We learnt what global warming is and the impact of this before looking more specifically at glacial erosion. We read 'Glacier on the Move' by Elizabeth Rusch which taught us how Glaciers rely upon snow in the winter months in order to move. Glaciers move REALLY slowly and carry rocks which rub on the bottom of the valleys which creates a 'U' shape that the glacier can flow down. When a glacier reaches the sea, it is then known as a tidewater glacier, which creates ice bergs as huge pieces of ice break away where the water is warmer.

Then, we produced a piece of artwork based on the images that we had seen in the text. We showed the impact of global warming on the glaciers and the impact that this might have on the people and animals who rely on them to survive.

This week, Sri Lanka joined in with a Science Experience Day. It was fantastic! We were able to use our knowledge of simple circuits from previous science lessons and discussed the components that we might need to build our own circuit.

Then, we investigated how to make our own switch. We knew that we needed metal materials as we had found in our investigation last week that they are the best conductors of electricity. We were able to explain that the bulb went off then the switch was not pressed because the circuit was incomplete.

Finally, we designed our own simple circuit that would make a lighthouse work. We were looking at lighthouses in our topic as part of preventing unfortunate events from happening!  We were able to choose the equipment that we wanted to use to create our final product.

This half term, in PE, we are focussing on Gymnastics. We have been thinking about our body shapes, hove we can move from one shape to another and we will be putting this altogether before Easter. We have had great fun exploring and have loved working together with our peers.

Thursday 2nd March is World Book Day! Today we have all dressed up as our favourite character!

During the day we listened to lots of stories/ extracts of stories from our teachers favourite books, we had a special assembly, we read a book as a class before creating our own version of it using a comic strip and lots of other fun activities!

This week, in PSHE children in Sri Lanka class have been learning about how to think positively when you are disappointed. We designed our own 'Funny Potato'. The children have designed their own potato to enter into a reality TV show where the funniest potato would win. We discussed how the potatoes could manage their emotions if they were voted out.

For our class assembly, Sri Lanka class learnt all about Burns night (because that was the day that we did our assembly) We learnt who he was, why Scots celebrate and told a story about a Haggis to trick our parents! (Haggis don't really have 2 legs shorter one on side of their bodies.

This week is aspirations week! This is where we learn about different jobs that people can do and talk about what you need to do to do that job. The children in Sri Lanka have been looking specifically at the medical sector. We have spoken to some paramedics, the school nurse, a doctor, a learning disabilities nurse and a mental health lecturer. We also had the opportunity to speak to an astronomer that works for NASA!

Sri Lanka class made Greek Gyros with a Tzakiki dip! At first, everyone was a little worried as many children had said that they had never tried cooking before! But, it didn't take long before we got used to the equipment. When we tasted them, we were shocked by how much we enjoyed them!

Ingredients we used (because the children have asked for them to make Gyros at home):

Pitta Bread, Garlic cloves, juice of half a lemon, chicken breast, cucumber, red onion, Greek Yogurt, oregano, Olive oil and white wine vinegar!

'I'd never used a sharp knife for cutting before.' - Misha

'I want to try and make this again at home' - Ksawier

'I've never used the hob for cooking before.' - Riley

'It was a fun experience. We got to do something that we don't really get to do at school.' - Frazer

In PSHE, we have been learning about how we are unique. So, we made a little video to demonstrate how we are all Unique!

On Friday 18th November, we raised money for Children In Need. We donated £1 to come to school in a spotty theme.

When we got to school, all our learning was spotty based!

In the morning we wrote poems about an Appoloosa horse or a snowy owl. We used personification, alliteration and rhyme to help write an Ode (which date back to the Ancient Greeks)

Then we explored pointillism to create our own landscape. We chose the type of media that we wanted to create our masterpiece. It was very tiring having to use small dots! here are some examples

On Tuesday 8th November, the children in Sri Lanka class had the opportunity to participate in a dance workshop. This was linked with their learning about Diwali, in particularly the story of Rama and Sita. We learnt each of the movements before putting them all together to the music!

On Monday 7th November, Year 4 were visited by Liz, an Ancient Greek!

During the day the children learnt about weapons and how people would have dressed!

The children were able to have a closer look at some Ancient Greek artefacts such as pots, money and other every day items that were used.

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Then, we completed in an Olympic games, re-enacted the story of Theseus and a traditional dance!

In English this half term, year 4 are looking at newspaper articles. Today we used some real newspapers to identify the features of an article and see whether this was the same in all articles.

Aiube - ' The features are not ALWAYS the same in ALL articles'

Then, we looked at the 'lede'. We discussed its purpose and looked back at some examples from the newspapers. Then we used a real life news report (from Newsround) to find out the information to answer Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How? before using this information to write our own 'lede'.

Then we moved onto learning all about the past tense, because news reports are always written after the event! We identified the past tense within a text before learning how to use the -ed suffix to change a root word into the past tense.

Today we learnt about Democracy in Athens. We learnt that 500 members of the Boule were randomly chosen in a lottery to come up with new laws and rules for the people who lived there. These laws were then taken to the Ekkelesia, which was made up of only Citizens (and it was pretty tricky to be a citizen) who would gather at the Pnyx to vote on which laws would be allowed. They did this by using black and white stones to vote.

Monday 17th - Friday 21st October is STEM week at Harrowgate Hill Primary School!

On Monday morning we were introduced to the story 'Twenty-One elephants' in assembly. We learnt about how the Brooklyn Bridge, in America, was built and how people were nervous about it holding weight. So, 21 elephants were led across it!

Once we had looked at a range of bridges and discussed how they had been built, their features, diagonal struts and where these bridges may be in the world, we were given our design brief! We quickly set to work on designing our own bridge!

Once we had completed our designs, we created a protype using spaghetti and marshmallows. This helped us to understand how diagonal struts and triangulation helped to make our structures stronger. We were surprised at just how much stronger they were!

On Thursday 6th October, the children in Year 4 invited parents to come and watch their Harvest assembly. The children had worked hard to learn the words to the songs as well as the British Sign Language to go with it. We invited the whole school to donate food, which was received by Zoe from Kings Church on behalf of their food bank. Thank you to everyone who donated!

In Science this half term, we are learning all about digestion and teeth!

This week we began an investigation to see which solution would be best for teeth. We were eggstatic!

We used eggs to represent the enamel on our teeth. We observed over time to see how the eggs were affected by each solution, which would demonstrate whether they would be good for keeping our teeth healthy.

First, we measured 100ml of each solution using a measuring cylinder before pouring this into the container with the egg. The variables that we tested were; water, Coca-Cola, vinegar, milk and no solution at all. We will observe the changes eggscellently over the next week to see what our results demonstrate. We can't wait to see what we find!

We also had a great time making crackingly good egg jokes along the way!

In maths, we have been using place value to make and identify numbers to 10,000!

At first, we made numbers to 100 using Base 10 and place value boards to show we understood the value of each digit.

Then, we used Base 10 to help us partition using a part-whole model.

Some of us were so successful that we moved onto using flexible partitioning!

In PE, we have been using our skills that we have learnt in Real PE and implementing them when learning to play cricket! We have increased our ball throwing and catching accuracy as well as learnt how to work more effectively as part of a team.

During transition week, in June, we learnt some facts about Sri Lanka. Did you know that Sri Lanka has 2 capital cities?

Then, we used the classroom computers to research the Sri Lankan Flag before we created a collage of it!