Roman Experience – Chester Deva
During this unit, we had a History focus (The Romans in Britain) and where better to go than Chester and the Chester Deva Roman Experience? We arrived to be greeted by our Roman Legionary, who took us to our ‘ship’ and we set off for Britain. After arriving, we learnt about the Roman way of life and what they brought over to Britain: they ate many interesting foods (including rats!) but they were very healthy too. We learnt that the Romans were very hygienic: we explored the baths and even sat on Roman toilets. Don’t get us started on the sponge on a stick! We thoroughly enjoyed hitting the streets of Chester with our swords and shields and entertained the residents of Chester shouting, ‘Sin, sin, sin dex sin!’ After arriving at the Roman Gardens, we practised battle formations and created our own shield walls. As you can tell from our pictures, we really enjoyed this experience. We’ve learnt so much and really enjoyed yet another visit to an exciting place. Chester… you were amazing!
Frey from 4NE said,
I thought it was really good because they showed us the Roman artefacts that they had found in Chester. I loved observing all of the old buildings and castle walls. I really enjoyed walking through the city dressed as a Roman Legion chanting “Sin, Sin, Sin, Dex, Sin” It was great!!
Computing
During our Computing topic before Easter, the children became experts at creating their own websites, considering content and style. They also had to work extremely hard at collaboration. On the laptops, the children were able create a webpage that showed information about something of interest to them. they also were able to create a webpage that contained their own book review of our Love for Reading text – Matilda. We have now moved on to understanding how webpages are structured and developed through the use of HypeText Markup Language (HTML). It all sounds very technical but the children were able to make changes to a webpage. Take a look at us in action.
Ava from 4LS said this,
I think this has been good because when we’re older we have the skills to be able to do things like this in computing. I like the fact that we get to choose what webpages we can create.
English
Over the last 10 weeks, our ‘Love for Reading’ text has been Roald Dahl’s Matilda and the children have used this as the basis for many pieces of writing. We have created our own play scripts based around how Miss Trunchbull treated Bruce Bogtrotter in the school assembly. Mr Engleman recreated the scene for us all – he looked quite sick after! The children have also written and edited character descriptions about Miss Trunchbull. This helped us to write a short narrative about the famous chocolate cake eating scene from Bruce’s perspective and then Miss Truncbull’s. We then moved on to developing our ability to write setting descriptions and we Miss Honey’s house to help us do this and then we wrote our very own setting description using an app called Epic Citadel. The children toured around this enchanting castle location and were able to describe everything they came across. They have worked so hard in writing and what they can produce now is amazing!
Eva from 4JB had this to say about writing in Year 4,
I loved writing our playscripts because we could show how the character was feeling. I think writing about Matilda is great!
PE – Athletics and Gymnastics
The children have absolutely loved taking part in their gymnastics and athletics lessons. They have fully immersed themselves in to creating individual and group routines, where they have used different jumps and movements to entertain the audience. On the other hand, during athletic lessons, they have had to practise their running, jumping and throwing skills with the of ultimately improving their technique and score. Throughout they have also attempted to beat their own personal best challenge in a half pivot turn and running between cones (a one-minute timed challenge). Below are some PE action shots.
Art
This art topic has seen the children learn about the famous pop artist Andy Warhol and how to create repeated patterns in the style of him. This led on to the children developing a skill of mono printing characters from the current ‘Love for Reading’ text of Matilda. This skill was developed using three different media: pencil, colouring pencil and oil pastel. They then moved on to producing these mono prints using more than one colour (Andy Warhol style) and afterwards they created similar art work using technology. The children have loved this art topic.
