Year 4
Whale of a Time
Another poetry topic week we spent this term
revolved around the theme of Whales.
We read ‘The Whales’ Song’ (by Dyan Sheldon and
Gary Blythe) and used the story as inspiration for our
own poems about these ‘undersea mountains’, as some
boys described them.
The boys were able to utilise their growing
vocabulary and understanding of poetic form and
techniques to produce some wonderful work.
Egg-tra! Egg-tra!
Whilst looking at 3D shapes as part of our Maths
work this term, the Y4 boys were asked to try to
design their own box for a new chocolate treat
being produced for Easter (the Golden Egg).
The boys had to use what they had learned
regarding 3D shapes, their properties and their nets
in order to create an appropriate container which
would both show off the product and hold it
appropriately in place.
The boys worked fantastically well in their pairs,
came up with a host of interesting ideas (some
more practical than others!) and proved that they
could one day be designing the latest calorific treat
to hit the shops.
You and Me? Me and You!
Taking as our inspiration from the poem ‘You!’ (an
African poem from the Igbo people of Nigeria) the
boys produced some great insult poems, using
similes to describe parts of the body in a
disparaging way. They then turned the tables and
created a ‘Me!’ poem, with the same structure and
using the same poetic devices, describing
themselves in terms as glowing as they could
imagine.
Smartie-pants
ICT in the first half term after Christmas focused on
the use of Microsoft Excel. This data handling
software allows the boys to input data into
spreadsheets, create appropriate graphs, charts and
tables to display it effectively and use formulae in
order to let the computer help do some of the
difficult maths work involved.
In order to add a little fun to the end of the topic we
got the boys to collect data on the number of
different coloured Smarties in various tubes.
Surprisingly they had no difficulty disposing of the
evidence at the end of the session!
