November 2021 – Year 4 @ BCPA

Month: November 2021

The Blitz

28/11/2021 / mrsjgardiner / Comments Off

The children have been learning about how the Battle of Britain ended and how this led to the Blitz.

They have learnt about the importance of blackouts, who ARP wardens were, what air raid shelters looked like and why the government decided to evacuate children out to the countryside. The children even heard the sirens sound and tried to imagine what it would have been like for the families at the time.

As the weather was nice we decided to use the playground to try and recreate some of the scenes for the camera. Here are a few of the photos we took and what the children said about their freeze frames.

Air raid siren sounding – families racing to their shelters

Air raid siren sounding – families in shelters overnight whilst bombing of the cities takes place

Children who have been evacuated to the countryside lined up and waiting to be chosen by a family who will take them in

Mother with her two children, scared of the bombing

Family squeezed into the air raid shelters. Some trying to sleep and others just waiting for the siren to stop

ARP wardens on the lookout whilst families take shelter

On the train platform the guards blow the final whistle. It’s time to board the train and leave for the countryside. Families say goodbye to each other.

In the cities people sheltered in the underground stations. Here are a group sheltering on one of the platforms.

Odd Sock Day for Anti-Bullying week

17/11/2021 / mrsjgardiner / Comments Off

This week is Anti Bullying week in school. We kicked started the week off by wearing our odd socks to school as a great way to celebrate being unique.

We spent time thinking, talking and sharing our thoughts on what bullying is, how it makes us feel and what we can do if we see someone being bullied or if we ourselves experience bullying. The children responded superbly and suggested some very sensible ideas.

We then considered this question – ‘In ONE WORD, how do you feel when someone is kind to you?’

The children came up with the most amazing bank of words. Please click on the link to see some of the wonderful things they said.

list of words

Each child then picked a word and made a beautiful tile for display in the class to help remind us of how powerful KINDNESS really is. Here are some photos of the children proudly sharing their ONE WORD.

The children will be taking part in lots of other anti bullying activities during the rest of the week.

Fact finding mission!

17/11/2021 / mrsjgardiner / Comments Off

Year 4 have had lots of fun finding out about the Battle of Britain. They searched for and recorded interesting facts posted around the school grounds and worked brilliantly in their teams to crack a mystery code. Below are some photos of the event.

English – Defeat the Monster

10/11/2021 / mrsjgardiner / Comments Off

This week we have started a new English Unit based around the premise of Defeating the Monster. As always we will be using a model text to support our learning and our text this time is called ‘Zelda and the Rain Cat’. We are sure this will capture the children’s imaginations and inspire some excellent written work.

During the unit, key skills taught will include:

Conjunctions to link words, phrases or clauses together. They will be encouraged to use FANBOYS which is an acronym for (for, and, nor, but, or, yet , so) and a range of subordinating conjunctions which tell the reader when, why or where something happens.

Show not Tell where the writer uses description to explain emotions rather than directly saying. For example if the main character was scared of a monster approaching they could write…. He knees trembled as the ferocious beast edged closer. This would indicate the main character was scared but without actually saying so.

Creating tension through the use of different sentence structures. Complex sentences to provide more information and detail for the reader and short snappy sentences for added suspense.

Our Spelling lessons will focus on -ous and -tion and we have carefully selected an additional five year 3/4 words to learn each week which link well to the English Unit. We hope the children will go on to use these words in their innovate and independent write.

The children have already completed the WOW starter where they have created their own monster, described its appearance and thought about verbs for the way it moves. This creature will be used in their innovate write later in the learning journey but already the children have shared some great ideas.

Please see below for a copy of the text and story map.

story map for Zelda and the Cat (blog version)

A3 text – Pupil copy

Wartime Head lamp covers

10/11/2021 / mrsjgardiner / Comments Off

As part of our Attack and Defence topic the children have been learning all about the Battle of Britain and the ‘dog fights’ that took place in the air over Great Britain. The children discovered that Hitler retreated on 31st October 1940 but soon after, the Blitz began and Hitler took to bombing the City of London at night.

We introduced the use of Wartime headlamp covers and discovered how and why they were used on cars. The children in 4PG made their very own versions and what a great job they did. 4B and 4D will be making theirs very soon.

Linking back to our Electricity unit in Autumn 1, we set the children the challenge of making their own working headlamp to fit inside the cover. They all did really well and could see how the slits in the cover would stop the light rays being spotted so easily from the sky.