Scientific enquiry
Scientific enquiries are what children do in order to answer scientific questions about the world around them.
What are the benefits of scientific enquiry?
As children carry out scientific enquiries, they develop a host of skills and competencies, knowledge and understanding, bringing enormous benefits to them as growing scientists.
Scientific enquiry increases children’s capacity to:
- problem-solve and answer questions
- work with independence
- ‘be a scientist’
- communicate effectively
One way to work scientifically is to carry out an observation over time. In Year 4, we are doing this using two amaryllis bulbs. The children are observing and recording information on a daily basis. This involves measuring, recording, observing changes and watering if needed. Each day, the observation generates questions.
What happens if…
“Predict what you think would happen to the growth of the plant if we added some plant food.”
Over the half term holidays, the bulb, planted in stones, had a small amount of plant food added to its water. Year 4 made predictions about whether or not the food would make any difference to the plant’s growth.
- “I think the plant will grow a lot more as it is getting nutrients from the food.”
- “Why is the stem leaning?”
- “Do you think we can see rapid growth? How can you prove this?”
We studied the line graph and the children used great scientific language to describe the changes they could see. The purple line represents the the plant given food.
- “The plant that had food is growing rapidly now! I know this because the purple line is now moving up vertically and before it was quite steady.”
- “I wonder why the speed of the growth has changed?”
- “Do you think this speed of growth will continue?”
Bulbs before half term and…
…after half term!
World Book Day themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 01 March.
Meet a creature
This afternoon, Year 4 came face to face with some fascinating creatures. We held and learnt about a range of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and mini-beasts. This was a real hands-on experience and every child was shown how to handle the animals with care and respect.
Welcome back
Welcome back to what is set to be a very busy half term indeed!
With links to our current topic and history, the Year 3/4 production of Darwin Rocks, is set to be a must see!
With booming beats, groove-filled guitar anthems and a dubious dress-sense, a theatre company from the distant future pays tribute to history’s most famous advocate of evolution in an adventure of discovery.
This story is about the work of Charles Darwin.
Charles Darwin was an English naturalist who changed the way humans viewed themselves and the world around them through his amazing ideas on evolution and natural selection.
Auditions to begin next week.
Darwin Rocks coming to a school near you soon!
In our writing lessons. we’ll be looking closely at traditional stories with a big focus on the type of language used. These all-time classics will also form the basis of some reading sessions. Year 4 will be acting out and retelling some of these great tales.
The children will investigate the styles and voices of traditional story language and identify typical story themes, such as good over evil.
As we have an upcoming competition, for PE, we’ll be mainly working on our skipping skills. Some of these are quite technical and will take time to learn. It was great to see lots of the children investing in a skipping rope at school.
Topic ‘Life Forces’
On Monday, the whole school have an onsite workshop.
Meet a Creature, an exciting animal-handling workshop, is coming into school.
The Year 4 workshop will be focused around predators and prey.
Pupils learn the terms predator, prey and producer and make links between plants and animals in the form of food chains. Children will discuss the different diets of animals and learn how herbivores eat the plants and then they are eaten by carnivores, so the food (energy) is passed along the ‘chain’.
Photos to follow!
As always, please feel free to pop in if you have any queries. We’re always happy to help.
Living and Learning this half term
- I cover my mouth (when I yawn, cough, sneeze). Get your child to demonstrate the ‘vampire’ method to family members at home.
- I can say something good about myself. It’s important that your child can confidently talk about themselves in a positive way.
- I pay compliments in a sensible way. Try paying compliments each day to each other!
- I receive compliments in a sensible way. Some children struggle to hear positive words about themselves, but this is important for self-esteem. Try paying (and listening) to praise and compliments.
- I know the difference between being proud and showing off. We encourage compliments to be paid – but encourage your children to know the balance between being having self-esteem and showing off.
- I recognise my talents. Talk to your child about talents, whether academic, physical, social or emotional.
Change4Life healthier snacking
Have you see the recent Change4Life campaign encouraging children to have no more than two packaged snacks per day to reduce their sugar intake? Remember fruit and veg are always the best snack and count towards your child’s 5 A Day.
The campaign is launched as Public Health England reveals half the sugar children consume comes from unhealthy snacks and sugary drinks. Children in England are eating nearly three times the recommended amount of sugar. Too much sugar can lead to harmful fat building up inside and serious health problems, and also painful tooth decay.
Recently children brought home the Family Snack Challenge. Can your family complete the 7-day healthier snack challenge? Change4Life provides lots of hints and tips for healthier snacking.
Supermovers
The BBC and Premier League have launched a campaign called Super Movers to encourage children to become more active while learning. Teachers will be using the video resources to get children moving in lessons throughout the day. This physical activity can contribute to the 30 active minutes children should be doing at school.
Why not use the Super Movers video resources to support your child’s learning at home. Activities range from learning times tables to apostrophes.
Hedgehog bread
Using our current topic of ‘Life Forces’, we decided to theme this half-term’s cooking around it.
What could be nicer than a hedgehog bread roll?
These are a great way to introduce the children to the art of bread making. With this fun and easy starter recipe, these mini hedgehog rolls are the cutest bake we’ve ever made!
We have done a fair bit of cooking so far this year and the children are becoming very confident in all the skills needed. These include staying safe in the kitchen and the need for good hygiene. Year 4 were able to weigh and measure the ingredients, and then could follow the recipe well.
Next, came the hard part – kneading the dough!
Using their knuckles, the class worked hard to knead the dough for five minutes. There were a few aching arms after this!
We discussed that when making yeast bread, the kneaded dough has to have some rise time. During rising, the yeast ferments (‘eats’) the sugar and develops the dough. Rising also improves the flavour and texture of the bread.
After kneading, we rounded the dough into a ball and left to rise for an hour.
When the rising was complete, the children set to work on shaping their balls of dough into hedgehogs. Using a pair of scissors appeared to be the best way to create the spikes.
Finally, with two eyes and nose, the little hedgehogs were ready for the oven.
The finished product – healthy, fun and of course cute!
Living and Learning – Safety Online
In Year 4, we regularly chat and remind the children of the importance of staying safe online. This afternoon, we had a discussion about some of the potential issues that could arise when using technology.
We used this video to remind us of all the safety problems and how to solve them.
Another useful site is www.thinkuknow.co.uk.
There are age-appropriate activities on both these sites.
Ask your child are they SMART:
Digestion
Today, we welcomed three university students who are currently studying medicine.
They gave a very informative talk to the class all about the digestive system. The children asked some great questions about the varying functions of different organs during the digestive process.
It was interesting to find out about each organ and the crucial role it plays breaking down the food, keeping the food we need for our bodies and getting rid of the waste!
