Welcome to Class 4 - Otters

Geography Day

We had a wonderful time exploring our local environment on Geography Day. We were lucky enough to go on two long walks. Firstly, in the morning we walked through the village and along the back of Lees Court to the valley. We counted the number of homes we passed and tried to estimate how many people lived in the village. In the afternoon, we visited the Badlesmere Court Farm, where Mrs Scutt gave us an amazing tour, and answered all of our questions about dairy farming!

Performing Arts Week

We've spent lots of this week learning about The Beatles in Class 4. We've listened to lots of their songs, learned about members of the band and performed The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill to the whole school in assembly. We were also lucky enough to do dance workshops with pupils and teachers from the King's School, learned about Jazz with a jazz guitarist and we even had a 60s disco with Class 3.   

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill - Take 1

Since it was a lovely day, we decided to record the song outside. The children performed it brilliantly, but unfortunately I didn't account for the havoc that the (very gentle!) breeze would cause to the sound quality! The children had a lot of fun recording it though, so here it is.  

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill - Take 2

Here is the children's performance in front of the whole school, for which we welcomed back three children who'd been off with covid and so missed the previous recording. Luckily, it wasn't blowing a gale in the school hall!

Debating

We randomly selected the motions and whether each team was for or against. Then, the children spent a week preparing their arguments and practicing their speeches for the debates. Each debate was run very formally by a chairperson and a timekeeper, and the children took it all very seriously. Mrs Garrett, Mr Graves and I were incredibly impressed by how confident, well-informed and persuasive all the speakers were.

Cricket

We've been learning some cricket skills with Mr Hodder this term. This week he wanted us to show him our muscles when we were practicing throwing!

Arts Week

We focused this week on an illustration by Isol from the book "It's Up to Us." It shows a woodland scene, at night, both above and below ground, highlighting the way in which the carbon in living things becomes trapped in the ground below us.

We spent some time outside, sketching things that might appear in our versions of the picture. We also practised drawing trees based on the shapes they form. We looked at how the roots of trees and plants grow (surprisingly shallowly it seems!) and explored what types of animals may be living underground. Finally, we set to work on our own interpretations of Isol's picture - first by painting the ground and some trees on blue card and then adding details on top with oil pastels. We decided to do two versions, one at night like Isol's, and one during the day. 

Life Drawing

The children took turns to model for the rest of the class to draw them. We started with quick 3 minute sketches and built up to longer, more detailed 15 minute pencil drawings.

Outdoor Sketching

We took our sketch books outside to practise our observational drawing. The children drew plants, trees and leaves, and any little creatures they could find.

Chopsticks

We had stir-fried noodles in Class 4 to mark the end of our China topic. The children all helped out preparing the vegetables, we cooked the noodles in the classroom, and then we all had a go at using chopsticks. It was tricky, but lots of the children had mastered it by the time they'd finished their bowls!

Computing - Micro:bits

The children used the "radio" functions to code their micro:bits to transmit signals to each other. We tested the range of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signal on the school field. Then we played a secret message game in which the children had to use the micro:bits to direct their partners to the correct location based on different questions. 

Jasmine Flower

In Music, we learnt about the pentatonic scale and how it is used in many different musical traditions from around the world. We saw its importance in traditional Chinese music, and we all learned to play the first two bars of a traditional Chinese song called Jasmine Flower. 

STEM Week

We had a wonderful and very interesting time during STEM week, doing a series of activities around the theme of Our Future with Mr and Mrs Blair. We had great fun exploring the school with thermal cameras, building our own led torches, learning about plastic pollution and considering global inequalities. We were also very lucky to become reacquainted with Ethan and Mrs Hayhoe's ever-growing chameleons. Rufus brought in his amazing static electricity homework for which he (and his dad) had built a working Van de Graaff generator!   

Electricity - Designing Switches

To help with their understanding of electrical circuits, the children created switches out of cardboard, copper tape, tin foil, split pins, elastic bands and sellotape. They designed and built them in groups of 3 or 4 and afterwards we tested them to see how well they all worked.

Scratch Animations

I've uploaded all your Scratch animations. You can view them all here: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/30496728

Well done everyone! They are very amusing and you've done lots of great coding to sequence them. If your animation is not up here, then I'll just need a little help identifying your file and we can add it after half term.

Making Scones

We had a go at baking some scones in Class 4 this week. We measured and mixed all the ingredients, and then Michelle put them in the oven for us. The best bit was eating them afterwards! Much debate was had over the time-old question of whether to go cream-first or jam-first, and in the end many of the children tried both!

French Days of the Week Game

The children have been really enjoying French lessons on a Tuesday afternoon. We played this game to practise our days of the week and everyone wanted a go! I promised to put a link up here so that anyone who wanted to, could have a go at home!

https://wordwall.net/resource/3874515/french/days-of-the-week-french

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