This week, Y4 were VERY excited to start their Djembe unit in music. We started by watching a video of a wedding in Mali where these traditional African drums were being played. We then got to grips with the instrument, discussing the different parts like the skin and exploring how we can produce different percussive sounds by hitting it in different places.
We then played different high and low notes in a four beat bar. To make it harder, children then had to listen and copy the different bars one after another (see the video!). We finished by attempting a Djembe call and reply. This was a tricky exercise where all players hold a steady pulse, one player beats a ‘call’ to which everyone else replies and then falls back into the steady rhythm. Our call was “We want you, we want you” with a reply of “We want you as a new recruit” Watch the video to see how it well children beat the syllables!
In their final week of our scholarship programme, Y4 spent the afternoon developing their orienteering skills. The session started with some small-scale cone orienteering, following a basic map to follow a route through a grid of sixteen coloured cones. Next, children used their geographical knowledge and inference skills to discover common ordinance survey map symbols. Next children studied a map of the school, learning to orientate the map north, use the legend to identify familiar places and measuring to estimate distances.
The finals step was putting this together. To get to this stage would normally take a few weeks of work but our sports stars met the challenge head on and, after a some early mishaps, learnt from their mistakes and managed to complete all of out short courses with some progressing further! This was another completely new experience for our children and was very well received with some now wanting the chance to complete the longer courses as a lunch time club.
Issy and Evie reading a cone map and gathering the corresponding numbers.
Working together to match OS symbols with the correct description. A tricky task which requires a range of geography knowledge, inference and common sense!
Ewan and Harrie did fantastic and were the only pair to progress to a long course. Well done boys!
This week our focus in maths is on dividing 2 and 3 digit numbers by 1 digit. We had initially put this back until we were all back in school as it is a particularly tricky area. Today we all got started using a range of maths apparatus which allowed us to exchange units so that they could be divided equally. Well done children!
Vinny and Ajay used place value counters for their divisions.
Paige and Noah used the same method but used base ten to represent their numbers.
“A problem shared!” River and Sophia working together to divide 48 by 4 using base ten.
After numerous set backs due to COVID19, our Sports Scholarship programme finally got underway this week starting with our Y4 gifted and talented sports stars. This is a brand new programme which we are trialling this year in partnership with Tigers Trust and has several key aims:
Aims
To provide children with new sporting experiences and opportunities
To allow gifted and talented children opportunities to apply and transfer their current skills to new sports
To provide children with pathways into local sports clubs where they can excel
To help children develop a deeper understanding of sporting values and how these can be applied to other areas of their learning.
To identify and develop sporting skills to help children reach their sporting potential
To show children how to live a healthy life and he a healthy sports person
To develop children as young sports leaders and officiators.
Tchoukball
In this first session, children got a chance to transfer and apply their skills to a game which they had never played before: Tschoukball. This fast-paced, five-aside game requires speed, agility and quick thinking to score by throwing the ball at a special rebound net so that it bounces outride ‘the forbidden zone’ and hits the floor of the court. It is an advanced invasion game and there are a several complicated rules to understand. One rule which really challenged the children was the restriction on being able to intercept a pass. With this law of the game, children were forced to really rethink their previously learned tactics of defence!
Where to score?: In Tschoukball, points can be scored at either end of the court, making defending a larger area much more difficult.
A new defensive mindset: Ewan can be seen here ready to catch the rebound to save conceding – intercepting the ball isn’t allowed!
We finished the session by challenging the children to come up with ways we could adapt one sport to practise and consolidate the skills of another. Together, we found the perfect solution: Kick rounders! Children were not allowed to pick the ball up (unless catching someone out) so had to practise their short, mid and long passes to get each other out. It was great to finally get out in the sun after a few weeks of poor weather!
Enjoying their outdoor session: Our Y4 Sports Stars
This week, Y4 have been looking at Roman mosaics in their art lessons.
They started by looking at some traditional, large scale mosaics and how the small tesserae tiles come together to make a detailed image, very much like pixels on a modern screen!
We also looked at mosaics today, including a very famous local mosaic ‘Three Ships’ in the city centre. Most didn’t even realise this was a mosaic!
Our mosaics would reflect the examples of nature often found in Roman mosaics, we also wanted to keep a local link so we decided to create mosaics of fish, taking inspiration from some excellent examples.
Our finished mosaics turned out fantastic! Well done for concentrating so hard on this tricky and time consuming work!
For the more than half of the children in Y3/4, today was their first day back at school since December 2020. What better way to start the week than with PE! This half term, children are continuing to have a 45 minute session of yoga, Qigong and Meditation with out well-being coach, Liesel Cobby. Since September, these sessions have proved very popular and are fantastic for children’s mental wellbeing.
Health Minds: Mrs Hebden’s class during their guided meditation.
Today was Y4’s first session of the ‘Reading Stars’ programme which is being delivered by Tigers Trust. These fun sessions are created by the Premier League and are fun, football themed lessons. Whats best is that they are being delivered through Microsoft Teams which means all of Y4 can join in together! This week children were working on finding and retrieving key information from a text. We’ve even had some Y3 home learners join in as well – super work everyone!
Active Warm-Up: Y4 Bubble taking part in the classroom with 25 children at home!
Today we finished a busy half term with a lovely fire in our forest school. This is the first time these Y4s have had a fire at school, so we spent some time learning about fire safety and following the rules. We then had a lovely afternoon drinking hot chocolate and toasting marshmallows. Well done children and enjoy your week off!
Y4 Bubble enjoying their Hot Choc!
Evie stirring the pan
Toasting marshmallows – for most this was the first time!
Today was our second HAS virtual competition and this time it was sportshall athletics.
This competition followed the British Pentathlon’s format of five events: 10x10m shuttle, standing long jump, vertical jump, chest push and speed bounce. All children completed the events and their scores have been sent in to find out how we fared against the other Hull Schools. Our home learners also took part virtually and we had lots of scores submitted which have been passed on to HAS. However, we did also have out own competition and worked out the winning girls and winning boys. Well done Y4, you’ve all done fantastic!
Our top three girls: Issy (1st), Alesha (2nd) and Ava (3rd) & top three boys: Ewan (1st), Connor (2nd) and Jake (3rd).
Issy demonstrating the vertical jump.
Jessica with a superb long jump.
Speed bound is probably the toughest event, here is Evie giving it her best!
Over the last few weeks, Y4 have been working hard on creating their Christmas Light boxes for this term’s Design and Technology project.
Investigate
The journey started with investigating light-up Christmas items which are very popular the time of the year. The children loved taking these apart and making links between components, design and materials. They identified the key parts they would need in their boxes: a switch, wires, a bulb and batteries.
Focussed Practical Task
One tricky part of our project was creating the box which would hold all of their components and be able to display their design. We spent a lesson focussing on how to use nets to create three dimensional shapes. Children created a wide variety of shapes in varying difficulty. Some were very challenging and were tricky to assemble!
Focussed Practical Task: Making Nets
Design
The next step was to design their boxes. Children made a plan drawing of the inside and outside of their net. They also make a wiring diagram so they new how much wire they would need and where their components would go. They also finalised a design for a switch using split pins and paper clips.
Ready to make: Summer with her final design!
Making
The next step was very exciting – the children were finally ready to make their light boxes! They uses scissors to cut out their nets, used pencils, felt tip and pen to decorate it, electrical pliers to cut and strip the wires and clue and tape to fasten their materials together.
The finished product
The Light Boxes turned out fantastic! The children all worked really hard on them and we are super proud of what they have achieved. As with any process, some parts were harder from others and the children have fed back some small changes we will make for the next children who will make these, but overall it was a huge success!
Phoebe’s snowman light-box ready for Christmas!
Mr Morgan’s class were very please with their work!
Home-made switches working perfectly!
If you’d like to make one of our boxes, follow our ‘How to’ video below!
