Year 4

Welcome to Year 4!

Attached are details of the homework expected from the children this half term. 

Attached is an overview of the learning that Year 4 can look forward to this half term.

Attached is a poster detailing all the topic homeworks for this half term. All children are expected to complete two homeworks. Some are labelled as 'I', and should be completed independently.

To be awarded a 'Homework star', children need to complete four of the homeworks to a high standard, alongside daily reading, Mathletics and Times Table Rockstars.

Please see here for information about all the learning we have to look forward to this term. 

A dramatic circuit

Here we are dramatising an electronic circuit. We built and labelled hats with all the equipment we would need to construct a complete circuit and then moved the wool around us to represent the electronic current. When someone dropped hands the circuit was broken and the current stopped moving. We were very careful to make sure that we had every wire and crocodile clip in just the right place. 

Designing a surgical tool- jelly workshop

Today we were visited by specialist engineers who came to talk to us about how tools are developed and manufactured to be used by surgeons. We discovered that specialist equipment is used by surgeons and there is a lot to consider, for example tools must be non-intrusive, the cost must be kept as low as possible and the designs must take into account that people sometimes have allergies to materials. 

With this in mind, we divided into groups and chose a team surgeon, that person was given a minute to remove as many different objects from a container of jelly using chop-sticks as possible. We then thought about the difficulties we had and how we could design and make a product which could take more objects out in a minute and would have less impact on the jelly, and therefore the patient. We had a trial test with our new product and made further changes and adjustments based on our findings. After that, we made a poster to promote our product to the class and argue why it was a good idea. 

All the products designed showed an improvement in how many items could be removed and there was less impact on the jelly. 

Creative Lego

It is Science Week and we have had an exciting morning extending our knowledge of circuits by building and lighting a lego city. The activity gave us a chance to be creative- one pair of children made a prison complete with bars, another made a drive-through take-away and others made churches, houses, homes and shops. We considered the importance of making the structure stable and shared different design techniques. After that, we discussed series and parrallel circuits and lit up the downstairs and upstairs parts of our buildings with wires, a battery, two seperate bulbs, a switch, and we experimented with buzzers. We discussed the importance of switches and how they 'break' a cicruit, learnt the meaning of insulator and conductor and used fantastic listening and teamwork skills. When the bulbs didn't light we worked together to think about what could be wrong and used our problem solving skills to make changes and persevere until every building was lit. What a wonderful morning!

Trip to Grundy Art Gallery and Blackpool Tower Circus

Year 3 and 4 visited the Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool to look at the 'A Trick of the Light' installation all about how artists have used light in their work to create movement and 3D effects, this linked with our science work on electricity and we were able to explore how the installations worked and how they made us feel. 

The highlight of our day was the circus at Blackpool Tower. We were left amazed by the astonishing feats of skill and bravery. The knife thrower had many children hiding behind their hands and the trapeze acts made us gasp in wonder! It gave us lots of ideas for our writing when we returned to school.