Welcome to Year 4

Welcome back to Cowell Class! We hope you have had a lovely Easter break with your friends and family and are ready for another busy and exciting term in Year 4. This term we will continue to work hard in preparation for our times tables check in June and we have Mrs White, Mrs Killian and Mrs Abbott who will be supporting us throughout the week.  

We are looking forward to all the brilliant things we will be doing this term and we hope you continue to shine brightly!

Our topic this Summer Term is One Moment in Time

This Summer Term, in Science, we'll be learning about electricity. We'll explore how lightbulbs work, how to use electricity safely, and understand electrical circuits. By the end, we'll know the basic parts of a circuit and understand conductive materials. In History, we'll delve into the events leading to WW1, life for soldiers, changes in warfare, and how life changed in Britain afterwards. In Geography, We'll focus on European countries in WW1, comparing maps from 1914 and today, and exploring London and Berlin's features in 1914 and now. In RE, we'll learn about Sikhism and what it means to be Sikh in Britain today, including core beliefs, teachings of Gurus, and their relevance today. In Computing, we'll use Scratch to learn programming. In Art and Design, we'll explore monoprinting with Karen Lederer to inspire our own printing techniques. In design and technology, we'll make healthy biscuits, researching and designing with a budget. In Music, we'll work with DMS to learn about different instruments.

Our PE lessons will be on a Tuesday. We will be swimming with Mrs Ryder and Mrs Thompson. 

Please make sure you come into school wearing your PE kit (red T shirt, black or blue shorts, trainers or plimsoles and tracksuit bottoms and hoodie - when it is cold.) Long hair is to be tied back and earrings removed. 

We will regularly post information on dojo but if you have any questions do let us know. 

Mrs Bravington

Mrs White, Mrs Killian and Mrs Abbott

This half term our DT topic was to create our very own Durham Miners’ Banners. The main materials we used were felt. We sewed a loop for our dowl to slot through. They look good enough to be presented at the Durham Miners’ Gala! Well done everybody! 🪡🧵

We had a great time planting trees with Hannah and Rachel from OASES 🌳

We had an exciting afternoon in Science. We investigated how sound changes the further you are away from the source. 👩‍🔬🧑‍🔬

We had a brilliant afternoon using the world maps to find out the distribution of natural resources. Everyone’s geographical vocabulary was amazing! Well done everyone! 🌟🌍

We had a great afternoon exploring sound. We created our very own telephones using two cups and string. We made careful observations throughout our enquiry to see what affected our messages from being received. We found out that the string between the two cups had to be tight in order for the sound waves to travel successfully. 🔬🥼👩‍🔬🧑‍🔬

We had a lovely afternoon learning all about Chinese New Year which is tomorrow. We learnt about the animals in the Chinese Zodiac as well as how the colour red represents luck. We also learnt that New Year's Eve is a very special night when families gather together and have a large, traditional feast of fish and chicken.
Some people may eat jiaozi, a steamed dumpling, or nian gao, a sticky sweet rice pudding.

As this year is the year of the dragon, we created our very own Chinese dragons. They look fantastic!

Happy Chinese New Year ! 🏮
Xīn Nián Kuài Lè

We had a great afternoon with Dr Kate and Dr Sarah who taught us strategies about how we can make ourselves feel better when our emotions become overwhelming.
We found out that our brain is made up of two parts - our guard dog who helps us deal with situations which may make us fight, flight or freeze and our wise owl who helps with our logical thinking and reasoning. We were then introduced to our learn2bounce friends who taught us strategies for when the guard dog part of our brain takes over. 🧠🌟

Every week, KS2 are given a hotspot challenge to complete at a break time and lunchtime to see if they can beat the world record for that particular challenge. 

This challenge was to see how long we could hula-hoop for before the hula-hoop dropped. Did you know that the world record for the longest hula-hooping session is 100 hours?! 🏅

To help us understand the purpose of the 5Ws when writing a recount, we shared personal photographs and explained What we were doing? Who we were with? When was it? Where was the photograph taken? And why?

We looked at first hand evidence from the national archives to investigated what caused the Trimdon Grange Mining Disaster.

We have a new room in school which is going to be used if we need a quiet space to work or need time to calm. Key Stage 2 are also going to be using this room on a lunchtime to play quiet games.  Our new room is called the JoyCE room after our lovely caretaker Joyce Bell. The CE reminds us of our values as a Church School. 

On a Tuesday, it is Y4’s lunchtime to use the JoyCE room. We had lots of fun!

This term we investigated how pneumatics is the use of pressurised air. We investigated how pressurised air works. We did this through joining two syringes with tubing.  We found out that when you push the syringe that is not closed the other syringe will open due to the air pressure.  
 

We then used the theme of Egyptians to make our toys. Some of us created mummies, sarcophaguses and pyramids. 

We investigated the steps the Ancient Egyptians took to prepare pharaohs and nobles for the afterlife. We found out the steps taken to build the pyramids as well as the steps taken to prepare the body for the afterlife. 

We explored how pharaohs and nobles were mummified by mummifying our very own 'pharaohs'. We took the intestines, liver, stomach and lungs out first and put them into canopic jars ready for the pharaoh's journey to the afterlife. Then, we dried out our pharaoh's body before finally preserving the body with natron (salt and bicarbonate of soda). 

This advent, we are thinking about the themes of kindness and peace in school. This year, Picture News are challenging schools around the UK to make their own school peace chain. 

On our chain, we thought of ideas about how we can spread peace around school and the impact this will have on others. Our chain was a total length of 3.12m! 🕊

We created peace bracelets where we learnt about various different faiths. Each bead on our bracelets represents a different faith. 🕊

We had an exciting morning with Caitlin from the SSP. We thoroughly enjoyed playing End Zone! ⛹️‍♀️⛹️‍♂️

Our first lesson was to investigate what the three states of matter are and understand the difference between solids, liquids and gases. We did this by filling cups with marbles and seeing how the ‘particles’ behaved when we shook the cup. We discussed if the bonds between the particles were strong or weak as well as how the particles moved. 👩‍🔬

We had a very busy week spreading awareness for anti-bullying!

We wore our odd socks to celebrate individuality. We even created our very own odd sock and wrote down words and drew pictures about what things make us who we are. We took part in a live webinar with Jo and Jack from Picture News. They helped us understand what British Values and Protected Characteristics are and why they are important. We discussed what discrimination is and why the Equality Act matters as well as how we can make an impact in our school and the wider world.
🧦🌟❤️

We travelled to Greece, Italy and Mexico trying lots of different foods. We tried mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, basil, guacamole. Our favourite was definitely the nachos and guacamole! 😋

We had a fantastic morning at Durham City Gymnastics Club 🤸‍♀️

We have been concentrating on supporting our mental health by learning different mental health superpowers that can help us to cope with our emotions and feelings. 

What an exciting afternoon we had! Meet our new school councillors for Year 4! Well done everyone! We are so proud of you all. 🌟

We had an exciting science lesson this afternoon! We investigated the role of our saliva glands and tastebuds by trying different flavours of sweets. We also investigated how our other senses help to send messages to our brain when eating by pinching our noses and covering our eyes. A great start to our digestive system unit! 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬

Year 4 September 2022 - July 2023

For our DT unit this summer term, we were given the task to create Viking longhouses. First, we’re searched what a Viking longhouse is investigating the features that they have and thinking about what features we could use to create ours. We then designed our very own houses thinking about the materials and tools we would use. We then created our longhouses using our designs. With the help from Mrs Bravington and Mrs Killian, we used the saws to construct the base out of wood. We then measured and cut cardboard and decorated it with straw to give our roofs a thatched effect! 

We had lots of fun during DT on Wednesday afternoon! As part of our DT unit, we will be looking at making our own healthy sandwiches this term. On Wednesday, we created and tried a variety of different sandwich fillings including: cheese savoury, tuna mayo, club sandwich and cream cheese. We then evaluated the sandwiches by rating their taste, smell, texture and appearance. 👩‍🍳🥪🥙🍞

We have had a brilliant day celebrating World Book Day! We enjoyed a fabulous parade this morning where we got to show the whole school our amazing costumes. We then took 10 minutes out of our school day to read for pleasure. Mrs Harvey challenged us to see if we could be captured reading in some funky and bizarre places. After, we then enjoyed an emoji quiz where we had to guess the name of the book title by looking at the emojis for clues. 

You all looked fantastic Class 4 🌟📚

This half-term we have been learning about the festival of Vaisakhi. We had the opportunity to meet Mr Singh. We got to ask him lots of questions about the festival as well as what the 5 K’s represent. We then listened to some traditional instruments as well as practised meditation.  

We wore yellow to raise awareness for mental health. You all definitely brightened our day! 🌟

For sign language day, we discussed what it means to be deaf and how we can communicate with deaf people effectively. We then learnt different signs for animals and played animal bingo as a class. 

We discussed what democracy is, the structure of parliament and why we vote. We then talked about how we vote for school council and why it is important to have a school council in school. After, we discussed what qualities would make a good school councillor. We then worked as tables and wrote key words in our people that would best describe what type of person we would want to represent our class.

Some of us are going to write our manifestos throughout next week. We will then nominate 4 candidates who we will then vote for as a class and decide who will represent Cowell Class at School Council meetings.

Good Luck Everyone!

We discussed the difference between primary and secondary sources and how they help us find out information about a historical period. We also talked about how reliable different sources of evidence can be too!

We then looked at artwork created by Frederick Catherwood who assisted John Lloyd Stephens whilst he explored lost Mayan cities. We analysed artwork created by Frederick Catherwood and used our inference skills to determine what the artefacts drawing/painted in his artwork could be made from and what the artefacts might have been used for. This then gave us an idea about what society might have been like during the Mayan period.

We investigated how our tastebuds and saliva work by trying to guess the flavour of different sweets. We first had to guess the flavour when our eyes were closed and our noses were pinched. Then, we guessed again but just with our eyes closed. Finally, we had to guess the flavour of the sweet using all of our senses.

We also learnt about where saliva comes from and how our tastebuds keep us safe.

FUN FACT: Did you know that we have over 10,000 tastebuds which change every two weeks and we produce 1 litre of saliva every day!

Year 4’s Class author this year is Cressida Cowell. She is well known for writing the fantastic ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ series. As a class, we created our own dragons. Everyone’s ideas were incredibly imaginative! 🐉📚