In the second part of the Summer term One of the highlights was the Barnet Music Festival. The children from Year 4 had been practising a number of songs throughout the year and had the amazing opportunity to perform alongside children from other schools in Barnet on the stage at the Arts Depot. The children who attended sang beautifully and made us feel very proud.

In the first half of the Summer Term Year 4 have been practising written methods of multiplication and division. The children used Cuisenaire rods to show how the numbers are partitioned for multiplication

In the second half of the Spring Term, our topic was called "Temples, Tombs and Treasures", They learnt all about life in Ancient Egypt and the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. This topic was launched with an archaeological adventure. They role-played some of the aspects of an archeological dig, battling against the windy weather conditions and finally discovered an Ancient Egyptian tomb in one of the sheds! The children used torches to look into the "tomb" and discussed how it felt to make this discovery.

In the first part of the Spring Term the children have learnt all about Rainforests.  They started the topic with creating a Popplet of what they already know and what they want to know.

In the second part of the Autumn term, our topic was called "They Made a Difference", they looked at significant people in different fields such as art, science and politics. They were lucky to have Rabbi Schochet and Lord Levy to come and speak to the children about the different aspects of their roles. The children asked some interesting questions.

In the first half of the Autumn Term the children have been listening to, discussing and expressing views about poems based around the theme of nature. They performed poems by a range of poets including Benjamin Zephaniah and Grace Nichols as part of their work during Black History Month. They thought carefully about using appropriate intonation and actions to make the meaning clear to our audience.

In PE the children have been choreographing their own dance routines. They worked in groups to plan and perform movement phrases that combined varied actions, dynamics and use of space. They counted the beats in order to perform effectively in unison.

In Maths the children have been exploring the different ways that large numbers are made up. They created a 0-1000 numberline using different length strips. They had to work out how long each strip was and how to add the strips together to reach 1000.

In Maths this half term, they have been learning about decimals. They used practical equipment to consolidate our understanding of tenths and hundredths and practised converting fractions to decimals.

The Digital Leaders presented an assembly to the school to review the SMART rules, reminding the children how to stay safe when using computers and the Internet.

This half term the children have been reading the "Ice Palace" by Robert Swindell. They discussed the main character, Ivan and the decision he made at the beginning of the story. They created a conscience alley with all of the reason about whether or not he should go on his quest to find his brother. Later on in the half term, they wrote an alternative ending, thinking about the language and structure of the story.

In Science Week the children enjoyed learning all about our organs. They linked this with our learning about mummification and thought about how and why the Ancient Egyptians preserved the human body and its organs. Dr Kaye showed us a real heart and they looked at how the heart works.

In Maths they constructed pyramid nets to create boxes for our hamantaschen for Purim. They discussed the properties of the nets and revisited our work on different types of triangles. The children have also worked on negative numbers and calculating differences on a numberline. They linked this to our Ancient Egypt timelines and calculating times between years BCE and years CE.

In Maths the children have been using arrays to explore the relationship between division and multiplication.

As part of Book Week the children created a freeze frame scene of their favourite book.  They then wrote a caption to go with their freeze frame for a display in the library.

They were lucky to take part in a tennis workshop where they practised different tennis skills.

Our IPC topic this half term was Material World. The children looked at different properties of materials. They devised a fair test to find out which type of paper towel was the most absorbent.

They baked biscuits for Yom Ha'atzmaut and decorated them with blue and white icing. They followed step by step instructions and measured ingredients carefully.

As part of our work on the Rainforest the children looked closely at soil from our school environment, thinking carefully about what was in it and the children compared this to what might be in the soil on the forest floor.

The children enjoyed taking part in our annually book swap to help celebrate Book Week.

The children enjoyed celebrating ‘Shakespeare Lives in Schools Day’ with a visit from Jill Berelowitz who came in to talk about her sculpture "Mind's-eye Tree" that was installed in New Place in Stratford to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. She told the children about the process of creating the sculpture and how it was installed.

Our IPC topic in the Autumn Term was “Time and Place, Earth and Space”. They learnt that day and night occur because the Earth rotates on its axis and that when a place is facing the sun, it is daytime and that when a place faces away from the sun, it is night time. The children also learnt that shadows occur because an opaque object blocks the passage of light from a light source. In this investigation they found out that their shadow changes position and size throughout the day. They then discussed why this happens and thought about how a sun-dial works.

Year 4 have also started their linking project with a school in Ghana called Northern Star and took part in a carousel of activities related to their Ghana project. The children were able to handle Ghanaian objects, trying to think what they were, what they would be used for and what they were made of.