Sycamore
Welcome to Sycamore Class!
We are Year 4 and we are taught by Miss O'Brien and Mrs Weaving.
Have a look at what we will be learning in Term 3!
Drama – 20.09.19
Today we took our English lesson outside into the sunshine as we thought about what we have read so far in our class story: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Using the key events in the story so far, we worked together in groups to create freeze frames of the scenes. We all worked together really well, and although we didn’t have long, we managed to create some amazing frozen images for our class mates to guess!
Mini Marines Day – 18.09.19
We were lucky enough to spend 1.5 hours outside with two men from the marines. We took part in a range of activities, which were all very fun!
One of the activities was a team building exercise where we had to work as a team to get across the area without touching the floor. Using tires was a good way to do this, although it was tricky to fit everybody on at the same time!
We also learnt about fire safety and how to start a fire, putting our skills into practice when we toasted a marshmallow over the open fire.
Finally, we took part in an inflatable obstacle course! We dived, climbed and weaved our way across the course, showing good team work as we helped our friends along the way. What a great day we had!
PE Lessons: Yoga – September/October 2019
In our indoor PE lessons in Term 1, we did some Yoga lessons. We worked hard to create new positions and shapes with our bodies, working on our balance to enable us to hold them. We looked at individual yoga poses, as well as partner poses (these were the most fun!). We really enjoyed these lessons, which were a nice relaxing end to a Monday afternoon!
Papier Mâché masks – October 2019
In Art, we made Aztec masks using papier mâché and paint. We planned our own masks in our sketch books, thinking about shape, pattern and colour. We then made the cardboard base and used newspaper to build up contours. Once the masks had dried (a few days later!!), we painted them white before drawing on and painting our patterns. They all turned out great and have been on display outside our classroom for all to see!
Arts Week – 21.10.19 – 26.10.19
During Arts week this year we were creating some new artwork for the huge display boards in the hall! Each class voted for their favourite book and we then based our artwork on this book. We chose Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We spent the week creating lots of great, wacky pieces of Art for the display. We made a giant chocolate river, some giant boiled sweets and some edible mushrooms. The artwork is now up in the hall – do have a look, it looks great!
Malawi Workshop – 7.11.19
On Thursday 7th November, we were lucky enough to take part in a Malawi workshop at school. We took part in lots of great activities and produced some lovely Christmas cards at the end of it. We particularly enjoyed trying the crisps!
Well-being Festival - November 2019
8 children from Sycamore Class were lucky enough to attend a Well-being sports event at Faringdon Community College. They took part in lots of fun activities such as trampolining, Yoga and an agility course! We loved hearing all about it back at school!
Christmas Poetry Performances (and Christmas Jumper day!) – 13.12.19
On Friday we worked together in groups to perform a Christmas poem to the rest of the class! First, we all laughed along to Michael Rosen performing his poem ‘Chocolate’, before deciding on a checklist of what makes a good poetry performance. The children then had some time in groups to practise their Christmas poem before performing to the class. Everybody did extremely well!
Christingles – 17.12.19
In RE we have been learning about symbolism in the Christmas Story. We also looked at the Christingle and learnt about what each element represents. We then put our knowledge into action and made our own Christingles! We loved this activity and did very well not to eat the marshmallows (no matter how tempted we were!).
The Snow Queen – 18.12.19
On Wednesday 18th December we were luckily enough to travel with Years 1-6 to Oxford to see the production of The Snow Queen. We were all extremely well behaved and enjoyed the show greatly! The actors were very talented, and the special effects were great! Everybody did John Blandy School extremely proud! What a lovely end of term treat!
Merry Christmas everybody!
Dragon’s Den – Victorian Inventions - 13.01.20
In history this week we have been learning all about the Victorians. We have been focussing on Victorian inventions, looking at what problem they solved in society. It was hard to imagine that a telephone or a bicycle used to not exist! Once we had learnt about the inventions, we worked with a group to come up with a pitch to convince the rest of the class that our product was the best. We worked hard to create a poster to show the product and to write a pitch to deliver to the rest of the class. We then presented each of our inventions, before having a vote for which invention we wanted to invest our money in. It was a bit of a surprising result, with the Christmas cracker being chosen as the most wanted product!
Gymnastics – 13.01.20
In indoor PE this week we have started our work on gymnastics. We had a think about how tensing our body can help us to balance, providing a strong base for any partner work that we might do. We worked hard with a partner to come up with some interesting partner balances, as well as trying out some challenging examples. We are looking forward to taking this further next week!
Find out what we are learning this term!
Years 3&4 Statutory Spelling List
SPaG
Homework
Helpful links and documents