Roman Experience – Chester (Deva)
SIN, SIN, SIN, DEX, SIN!!! RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT!!!
Sponge on a stick!
Battle formations!
Interesting food choices…come read about our visit to Chester.
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.
“I loved that we actually had the Roman shields to walk around Chester and when we had a battle against the teachers!!” Maisie from 4NE
Spelling Bee Part 4 – Year 4 winner!!
We got to Spelling Bee Part 4 and Year was the only year group to not to have won an event. However, Lillyanna out of 4NE had other ideas and took the champions trophy on behalf of Year 4. In the run-up to the competition, Lillyanna had worked incredibly hard practising her spellings and it all paid off when she defeated the other children in a sudden death round. Well done Lillyanna and well done to all of the other competitors!
“I practised every day! Once I did that, I knew I would get the letter telling me I was part of the SPELLING BEE! It was a bit scary but once I did my first spelling it was ok and I enjoyed it!” Lillyanna from 4NE
Maths
Year 4 have been putting a lot of time and effort in to improving their times table fluency, whether that be through individual times table lessons, practising with the use of technology or spending time at break times or at home. They have all been amazing! We have our Multiplication Check coming up in June and we know they are all going to do brilliantly. Alongside this, we have continued to work on using a range of strategies to complete challenging calculations but also learning about analogue and digital time telling. The children have loved doing this using their own little clock.
“I love practising my times tables especially when they are hard ones and I also like it when we practise them with iPads, laptops and games!” Theo from 4JF.
World Book Day
We had an amazing time celebrating World Book Day in March, where Mr Matthews challenged the whole school to turn up dressed in outfits linked to any of our Love4Reading books that the children have accessed since being at Crescent. In Year 4, children dressed as characters from our current text, Matilda, was a very popular choice. During this day, we even recreated the Bruce Bogtrotter scene from the film where he had to devour a whole chocolate cake. Mr Engleman had this daunting task, whilst Mr Ashton acted as the evil Miss Trunchbull. Not to forget, Mrs Steele as the snivelling Cooky, who brought the cake out from the kitchen. We had a great day and we simply just love reading books!
“I loved World Book day because we get to dress up as characters and do fun activities. I liked the day when Mr Engleman was Bruce Bogtrotter and Mr Ashton shoved the cake in to his face!” Maya from 4LS.
Music
Year 4 have continued to enjoy engaging in Music lessons over the last 10 weeks. They have continued to practise their times tables through Mr Engleman’s love for Oasis. Also they have continued to investigate the instrument families from an orchestra. The children have loved working collaboratively to create tunes together using a range of instruments. They have even used these instruments to recreate a different events in life using instruments and different beats – believe it or not we told a story with our instruments based on attending a Taylor Swift concert.
Scooter proficiency – Time4Sport
We were very lucky to have the opportunity to practise and improve our scooter skills with the help of Time4Sport. The children were able to learn how to ride their scooter more effectively and how to ride it safely close to roads. The children loved this opportunity and are certainly more safe at riding their scooters. Well done Year 4!
Art – Andy Warhol
The children have been immersed in to the life of Andy Warhol and how he created his unique pieces of art. The children have learnt about the artist himself and why he is so famous. Year 4 started at off by practising with different colours to create repeat patterns in the style of Andy Warhol. We then moved on to learning about how we created similar using a special technique called mono-printing; we even linked it to our Love of Reading text ‘Matilda’, where the children chose their favourite characters and created their own prints using unique colours and different media (oil pastels, pencils, chalk and pencil crayons). For the finale, we then learnt how to create these pieces of art using a self portrait and then ultimately using iPads to create repeated patterns portrait pictures. We have thoroughly loved this topic!
SMSC Day – Sporting Legends
Most recently, we were engaged in one of Mr Clewes’s SMSC Days, where this time we focused on sporting legends and how professionals show respect, not only in sporting competitions but also in the wider world. We looked at the example of Marcus Rashford and how he used his sporting influence to help issues in the community like providing school dinners for all children. The children then set about creating their own code of conduct that they think should be followed during sports competitions. Afterwards, the children then got in to groups to organise their own sport competition of their choice and see if they could follow their own code of conduct. The Year 4 staff must say that they followed the rules perfectly; we were all very impressed!
