Welcome to Year 4!

Timetable

Monday - Art

Tuesday - PE

Wednesday - Swimming in the first half of the term, PE in the second. 

Thursday - Library and Music. 

Fractions Revision

We are looking at fractions this half-term in maths, which children can find trickier than some other areas of maths. If your child would like more practise at home, then BBC Bitesize have a range of pages with short videos and revision activities to complete. You can find these here. 

Music - Learning the Viola

The class  have begun an exciting new musical journey, learning to play the viola with expert tuition from a teacher from the Norfolk Music Service. These lessons, which last all year, allow students to develop their musical skills, including reading notation, understanding rhythm, and mastering technique. Learning a string instrument such as the viola fosters creativity, concentration, and perseverance. We look forward to seeing their progress and sharing their achievements with the wider school community.

If you have not seen a viola before, it is a string instrument known for its rich, warm tone, sitting between the violin and cello in pitch. Slightly larger than a violin, it produces a deeper, mellower sound and plays an essential role in orchestras and chamber music. The viola typically reads music in the alto clef, distinguishing it from other string instruments. While less prominent as a solo instrument compared to the violin, the viola is valued for its expressive qualities and versatility across a wide range of musical styles.

Computing - Editing Images

Year 4 have been developing their digital design skills through a series of lessons focused on image editing in PowerPoint. They have learned to crop images, allowing them to highlight specific elements and improve the composition of their work. The children have also explored how to alter colours, experimenting with various tones and shades to convey different moods and artistic effects. Additionally, they have learnt all about removing backgrounds from images, a skill that enables them to layer objects seamlessly and create their own , sometimes very humorous, images.

Building on these techniques, the pupils have applied their new skills to produce a range of creative digital artworks. They have combined different edited photographs to design pieces that reflect their personal artistic vision or sense of humour.

Following their hands-on experience with image editing, our Year 4 pupils explored the concept of image manipulation, focusing on how to identify AI-generated images. We discussed how technology can create realistic-looking images, but also highlighted some classic mistakes that often reveal an AI's involvement. The children learned to spot tell-tale signs, such as hands with an incorrect number of fingers, skin that appears unnaturally smooth, and eyes that are disproportionately large or mismatched. By understanding these common errors, the pupils have developed a critical eye for distinguishing between genuine photographs and digitally manipulated or AI-created images, fostering their digital awareness and media literacy.

 Science - Making Ice Cream

We put our Changing Materials knowledge to the test in science by making ice cream - at our desks! 

This simple process can be completed at home. All you need is: milk and sugar; two zip lock bags (one bigger than the other) along with ice and salt. Put the sugar and milk in the smaller bag and ice in the larger. Then put the smaller bag in the bigger one and cover the ice with salt. Gently shake the bags so that the salt (and then salty water) cover the ice causing the ice to rapidly melt. As we learnt, the rapidly melting ice takes energy from its surroundings to change state. It is not the ice making the milk cold and creating ice cream, but rather the melting ice "steeling" heat from the milk which makes it freeze and create ice cream. You will need gloves or a towel to handle the bag for this experiment as the rapid melting can cause cold burns on exposed skin. 

As we discovered, there is just the right amount of shaking to form the ice cream. Too little and the ice doesn't mix with the salt and rapidly melt. Too much and the milk turns to froth and cannot then form ice cream. 

Science - How does it melt?

We applied our observation skills in science to explore how different materials freeze and then melt. Using ice cubes made from water, juice, vinegar and oil, we observed how quickly their ice cubes melted. We quantified our observations by measuring the cubes at 2min intervals using our rulers. This process became quite tricky as our cubes lost their corners and become more puddle like. 

We found that oil did not properly freeze in our freezer, creating a mush that melted within seconds. Vinegar melted with 15mins and we did not like the smell! To our surprise, the juice melted a little quicker than the water. This may be down to the sugar in the juice: something for us to explore in another experiment. 

Welcome to Platypus Class 2024 - 2025

Welcome to a new year of learning where we have terms of exciting learning ahead of us. We will be investigating states of matter and how our digestive systems work to name a few of our Science units. This year in Geography we will be exploring rainforests and touring South America. In History we will be learning about the Ancient Greeks and Romans. 

Our Religion & Worldviews will expand our theological thinking as we use Bibles and Qurans to study sacred texts. We will then deepen our Philosophical and Social Science learning by drawing out the key ideas and seeing how these are applied in the lives of people around the world. 

We have a trip book to How Hill, for the day, in March. More details will be released closer to the time. 

A little about the Quran

This year we will be using Qurans in our Religion & Worldview lessons alongside Bibles. The infographics below will tell you a little about how the Quran is organised and constructed.