At Sevenbanks we use a text-enhanced approach. We select texts that will engage and support pupils learning other subjects/topics, promote love of reading and writing.  

Term 1 Year 4 read Over and Under The Rainforest and The Secret Wild. This will enhance their learning about rainforests. 

      

Term 2 We read Greek Myths as we are Historians. 

  We use the knowledge we have learnt to write Non - chronological reports. 

        

Term 3 we read Journey to the River Sea. This helps our geographical knowledge. We are Explorers. We learn about the water cycle and river features. We use maps and look at the physical and human features of the local river. 

     

The children enjoyed a rivers workshop run by the Severn Rivers Trust to enhance our geography learning this term. It was so lovely to see how excited the children were to show off their knowledge about rivers and the ladies were very impressed with how much the children already knew! The children also learnt some new facts too; specifically about the dangers our rivers face today and what small changes we can all make to make a big difference.

   

 

To celebrate National Story telling week, children in Ash class enjoyed sharing their 'Reading for Pleasure' books with one another and discussing what the story was about, what makes them enjoy it and summarising what has happened so far. It was really lovely to see children's shared love of stories! Reading can really take you to places you have never been before.

          

We are Designers. We look at how to make a slingshot car. We build a chassis first, and then we have to attach wheels on to wooden dowels. We tape the wooden dowels to our chassis and design a body for our cars. Once our cars are assembled, we test them out in the classroom.

             

Term 4 we read Tiger Tiger.   This is an absolutely brilliant book for an understanding on the viewpoint of an animal in Rome at the time of the gladiators. It gives a perspective that is rarely seen in books!  We are using this text as part of our ROMAN history topic. We are historians.

We have a fantastic day exploring Caerleon. We visit the National Roman Legion Museum and look at artefacts from 2000 years ago. We take part in a masters and slaves workshop which shows how the rich and the poor lived. We visit a Roman Bath House and learn how the Roman soldiers kept themselves clean, how they exercised and relaxed. Finally, we explore the Roman Barracks and Amphitheatre.

       

 

Practical maths-using manipulatives to develop our understanding. We are mathematicians. 

    

Term 5 we read Greta and the Giants. We learn about habitats and dangers to living things. We are Scientists. 

Term 6 we read When the Mountains Roared. 

We are poets.

National Poetry day. Year 4 investigating  poems. We read and perform Kennings.  We learn the pattern and structure of a Kenning.

   

 

We are Scientists -In term 1 the children learn about states of matter.  

The children had lots of fun carrying out a science experiment to test how quickly different sized chocolate buttons would melt! We made scientific predictions and conclusions, identifying how and why it changed state but also why one melted quicker than the other. 

       

 

We also think about how changes in the weather impact the creatures we see at different times of the year. E.g. spiders like warmer weather, so there weren’t many (if any) of them; snails do not come out in winter, but it hasn’t been too cold just yet, so there could have been a few still about; and slugs and worms love the wet environment, which is why we saw so many.

         

We are Geographers.  Ash and Birch Class enjoyed going to the local park to collate data as part of their geography learning in term 1. Children have to draw a map based on the route that they took, complete tally charts and questionnaires to identify how different members of the public used their local area.

    

In year 4 we recognised Earth Day and spent time reducing our use of electricity and created posters for others to learn about saving our planet. 

     

We are designers. We have been designing our own electrical devices. We have been learning in Science about electricity and applying this to our designs. 

Children enjoy making slingshot cars for D&T. They had to make the chassis, design/make their car and then test how effective their slingshot was. As you can imagine, this was lots of fun whilst also encouraging children to think creatively/critically!

 

We are artists. Our unit for  term 1 was Sculpture and 3D: Mega Materials.
- On Monday we studied the artist Magdalene Odundo and had a go at drawing some of her sculptures.

       

       

- On Tuesday, we designed and created our own soap sculptures… we found this tricky, but our resilience was fantastic!

     

- On Wednesday, we created a dragonfly sculpture out of wire… this was a tad fiddly! —

     

Finally, we created our own 3D sculpture using recyclable materials in the style of El Anatsui.

                  

We are linguists. 

Every week we learn French. We also try incidental French.  We learnt how to present ourselves.

 

 

For our maths learning in Year 4, children have been playing practical games to support their understanding of dividing both 2 and 3-digit numbers by a 1-digit number when there is a remainder. Children used physical objects and practically shared them into equal groups until they could not do this fairly anymore.