Drop-down Morning: geography, history & D&T
Today we had drop-down morning! We use this as an opportunity to recap and strengthen our topic knowledge from previous years.
Today we revisited:
- Geography – Where in the world am I?
- History – Romans and Anglo-Saxons
- D&T – Product design
We started with geography. We were focusing on maps and grid references. Your children had a go at reading maps, identifying and writing their own grid references.
Next, we moved onto history where we played a game of ‘hunt’. The children had a question sheet all about the Romans and Anglo-Saxons and had to hunt around the classroom, gathering the answers from their classmates. They then completed a crossword using all their historical knowledge!
Finally, in D&T we recapped all things product design! We discussed the design process that all products must go through and even had a go at ordering the design process of a new car!
Help at home: choose a product in your house and ask your child to identify some of the design criteria it might have had.
Topic – Art
Our Art Topic has been made up of two parts: art history and art skills.
Our art skills learning is building up to creating a collage inspired by the architecture we’ve been exploring. We’ve been looking at buildings by our chosen architects: Zaha Hadid and Christopher Wren.
To create our collages, we’re using lots of different skills…
- tracing
- observational drawing
- collage
and media…
- carbon paper
- different background materials
- pencils, pens
The media might be different colours like primary, secondary or complementary colours! 
We’re using a lot of line and shape when creating our art. We also might use shade to show darkness and shadows.
Help at home by spotting what shapes you can see on or as part of the architecture you see!
Science: Water Cycle
Year 4 are chemists!
As part of our chemistry unit, we’ve been learning about the water cycle.
- Evaporation is when water turns into water vapour from the heat of the sun.
- Condensation is when water vapour changes back into water and forms a cloud.
- Precipitation is when solid or liquid water falls from the Earth’s atmosphere.
- Collection is when water from precipitation is gather back into lakes, rivers and seas.
We also learnt about the 4 different types of precipitation – rain, snow, sleet and hail.
Your children found it fascinating how all the water on Earth is continually recycled through the water cycle. We even had some interesting discussions about whether we drink the same water that dinosaurs drank!
Help at home: ask your children to talk you through each stage of the water cycle. Make sure they use our key vocabulary:
Leeds Discovery Centre and Royal Armouries
We had a wonderful time at the Royal Armouries and Leeds Discovery Centre yesterday! In the morning, we looked around the Royal Armouries, where the children were able to answer questions about the different artefacts on display. We were lucky enough to witness sword fighting!
At Leeds Discovery Centre we took part in an Ancient Egyptian workshop. The children were able to touch artefacts, design their own Egyptian town and create a self portrait (in the style of hieroglyphics).
The children were amazed by the fascinating Leeds Discovery Centre store, which holds over 1 million artefacts. We were able to look at a range of different items from the past; we even saw Ancient Egyptians bandages that were wrapped around a real mummy at one point!
Help at home: Discuss something they have learnt, their favourite part of the day or a question they now have about Egyptian life.
Reminder: learning drop in
An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them.
Learning Journey Drop in 1 – 03.12.24 and 05.12.24 Times – 8.45 am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm
Art: Georges Seurat
This half term we have been learning about Georges Seurat and his pointillism style of painting. On Monday, we got to have a go ourselves. We used cotton buds to recreate the dots that Seurat used to create his paintings. The children had to work very patiently and carefully. They showed great focus and concentration.
Help at home by discussing Georges Seurat and looking at some of his paintings. You can talk to your child about what they like and don’t like and what you like and don’t like about the paintings.
Autumn 2: Week5
Our book of the week this week is How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers. The children have enjoyed writing about the different ways they could catch a star. We have been looking at different constellations and recreating them on the playground.
We have been discussing our word of the week-reflection. The children used this word when describing what they needed to do during one of our classroom challenges.
Help at home: by practising the phonemes and letter formation that is on the Friday home learning sheet.
Math
We have been continuing our work on part wholes. The children have been partitioning numbers and using the sentence stems ….. is a part…… is a part …. is a whole.
RE
We enjoyed discussing different places of worship on Monday and then the children recreated some of these using the classroom equipment.
Remember: to bring your child’s reading record book and library book on a Thursday.
How to write a set of instructions
Year 3 have planned, written and edited their writing this week – a set of instructions.
A set of instructions tells the reader how to do something.
They had the freedom to choose what they wanted to write their instructions for:
- How to spend a day without technology
- How to fly a magic carpet
- How to control a giant robot
- How to survive a day at sea
We needed to include bossy (imperative) verbs, time connectives and adverbs to help give detail the reader.
We also acted out each scenario to see what we might need and to generate ideas!
Here’s some of our writing.
Help at home: Can you spot the verbs, time connectives and adverbs?
Guided Reading Week 4
Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 6th December.
Extra Time: up to chapter 24/page 109.
Divine Freaks: up to chapter 11/page 113.
Mr Gum: finish the book.
How To Train Your Dragon: up to chapter 10/page 117.
Kensuke’s Kingdom: up to chapter 8/page 117.
PE: Gymnastics
This half-term, we are becoming gymnasts. For the past couple of weeks, we have been focusing on travelling, whether that be low, high, quick or slow. We were able to travel into spaces and sequence a range of different movements. We have then had a lesson to explore the apparatus with controlled and balanced movements.
