An extra specially jam packed week in Year 4! Here are some of the things we have done:

• Designed and made some clay pots taking inspiration from Ancient Greek pottery;
• Investigated how to sequence sections of text using sentence openings and closings and time vocabulary and used them in writing Greek Myths;
• Investigated measurements – looking at the areas of Space Invaders and the perimeters of the Queen’s jewellery rooms;
• and with Mrs Leakey the children made their own puppets to tell the story of ‘The Good Samaritan’ to Year R!

This week we’ll be finishing off our fantastic Greek pots and preparing some special things that will be happening in the last week of term. Comment below with your favourite things that happened this week to earn yourself a Star Point. Have a good weekend!

Spellings:

Times Tables:

History – Ancient Greek Theatre

In the last week of term we are planning to put on an afternoon of entertainment based on Ancient Greek theatre. Before we can do that, we need to know about the kinds of things involved in the Greek’s favourite method of entertainment.

Your task is to produce a piece of work based on one of these categories:

You will have to research your category and then use this in a certain way. For example if you were researching Greek Masks you could produce a report on the various different masks used in the theatre, or even make one. If you are unsure of what to do, leave a comment below and I can give you some ideas.

 We will be using your work to inform what we include in our performance.

We’re off tomorrow morning! I’m really looking forward to it and hope we get some good weather to go with all the great things we’ll be doing. We’ll be posting all sorts of things that we do and learn on our York Residential blog at http://york2012.trinitylower.net

Please make sure that you come in your school jumpers tomorrow: This is to make sure that we can identify you in busy locations. You do not need your full school uniform/shoes!

Make sure you’ve got everything packed and ready to go, and avoid playing outdoor cricket, having a barbeque or doing anything else that might normally bring rain!

Our Ancient Greek topic continues to bring inspiration for some great learning in Year 4. This week we have:

• Started writing our own Ancient Greek playscripts based on the myths of the tasks of Heracles;
• Created Greek pottery style pictures, using wax crayons to imitate the way the Ancient Greeks removed layers of blackened clay;
• Found out about Ancient Greek city-states and how similar or different they were to each other;
• Learned more about Greek Gods, entering them into our databases using our own data-fields to classify their features/powers/etc.;

In our other learning we looked more at related number facts and operations in our Numeracy, focussing on solving inverse problems.

We’re looking forward to our residential to York next week. You can follow our progress at our York residential blog at http://york2012.trinitylower.net where we hope to post about what we are doing and have learned.

Have a great weekend!

 Spellings:

No spellings have been given out this week due to next week’s residential. Check the previous blog post for more information. 

Times Tables:

Task: Operation Putting Away Children’s Kit In coNvenient baG (P.A.C.K.I.N.G)

Your Learning Log time this week is to be spent organising things that you will need to take with you to York on Wednesday. This is your opportunity to make sure that you have all the equipment you will need for three days in York and plan towards packing them away (for example: You will need your toothbrush but it will have to one of the last things you pack).

I’m looking for people to show me their skills of preparation and take some responsibility for their own packing (rather than leaving it for someone else!)

Here is the list of ‘Things to take’ from the itinerary:

How you organise yourself is up to you. You might want to make a checklist or simply collect all your objects together. The big test of your organisational skills will be how you get on in York (and whether or not you find you’ve left something behind!)

Due to going on residential next week we have not given the children spellings to take home this week. The week following residential (week beginning 7/05/12) we will be assessing Spelling Ages in the time that would be normally spent doing Spelling tests, after which they will be given spellings to learn for the week beginning 14/05/12.

Please get in contact with any questions.

1st week back from Easter and we’re straight back to learning! We’ve started our new topic on the Groovy Ancient Greeks and our science topic on Moving and Growing. This is what we’ve been up to in our class this week:

In our Literacy we have read, listened to and acted out some Greek myths and looking at the speech contained in them: How punctuation, verbs, adverbs and the structure of a sentence can interest the reader and show you how a character is feeling.

In our Numeracy we have been looking at properties of numbers, such as factors, products and sums, and how we can relate easy calculations to more difficult ones, such as using ’2 x 3′ to work out ’20 x 3′.

In our Science we investigated the skeleton of the human body and where we have bones. We learned that an adult body has 206 bones in it, but you are born with 300 bones! Really, really interesting.

In our Topic work we have decorated our theme area with Ancient Greek style grand columns, used the Greek alphabet to write our own names and found out about everyday life in their civilisation. We also started researching the Greek Gods to turn into our own databases in our ICT.

The Learning Log for this week is on the previous post. Have a great weekend!

Spellings:

Times Tables:

History – Groovy Greeks

Having started our new topic this week your task is to conduct your own research to produce a project on the Ancient Greeks.

I’m looking for you to show me:

1. Your ability to research a topic using a range of sources;
2. Your ability to present information in an interesting way (try a new method for displaying information that you would usually use!);

Each project should display where you have got your information from (books, websites, TV show etc.)

Your research could include the answers to questions like:

• When was the Ancient Greek civilisation? When did it start/end?
• What different cities were there?
• What was their religion? Did all groups of people pray to the same God?
• What did they eat?
• What did different people have in their homes?

How you present your information is up to you. You could make:

These should be handed in by Wednesday 25^th April. Happy researching!

Today we started our new Science unit on Moving and Growing by investigating the bones in our own bodies (we learned that are 206 bones in an adult skeleton!). Two Big Questions to come out of the session were:

Are you born with all the bones you will have throughout your life? Do your bones stay the same all the way through your life?

Comment below with what you think in your own words. Children who reply with well thought through responses will be awarded with a Star Point.