Making Lanterns

We had some special guests from ‘Friends of Parkwood Springs’ yesterday.  Y4 were chosen once again to help create lanterns to use in the Beacons Lantern Parade this Saturday.  We began by bending willow into the shape of a dragon’s spine, then got very messy covering it with gluey tissue paper and decorations.  I can’t wait to see the finished product, it’s going to be huge! We also helped to cover two badgers, which will be displayed on the route around the procession.

It would be fantastic to see as many families as possible on Saturday.  We are gathering at 5.30 and the procession will begin at 5.45, led by Sheffield Samba Band.  Look out for me and other Watercliffe folk as we’ll try to get a group together to represent the school (and share carrying those enormous lanterns!)

Here’s a link to the Friends of Parkwood Springs page if you want any more information.

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The Legend of Beowulf

The epic story of Beowulf was the first recorded story in British history and is one of the most famous Anglo Saxon tales.  The Y4s brought it to life this week by creating freeze frames, saying how each character felt and improvising overheard conversations at key moments in the story.

The children had no trouble showing the dramatic battle between Beowulf and the terrifying monster, Grendel, as you can see below!

Can you match each picture to what happened in the story?  Click here for a quick video if you’re struggling!

We’re moving on to creating our own versions of Beowulf so watch out for some terrifying monsters and fearsome dragons coming your way soon!

What a Fabulous Finish!

As the year draws to a close, the Y4s presented all of the incredible learning we have produced this term in a museum event on Tuesday.  We were amazed by how much we had done over the last 13 weeks – from Sheffield City Guides and Joe Scarborough inspired artwork to habitat boxes, adverts, animal stories, paintings and much, much more!  If you missed the event, here’s a couple of videos of what was on show:

Well done Y4 for such a productive, enjoyable and exciting year.  We have really valued your curiosity and eagerness to learn.  We have been impressed by your positive attitudes and the progress you have made since you came to us in September.

Have a fantastic summer!

Shoebox Habitats

What a day we’ve had in Y4! The plan was to design and create a habitat inside a shoebox. The children had already chosen their place and we began by critiquing some WAGOLLs with warm feedback, which we then turned into a rubric for how to create an amazing design. 

After that, we began with our backgrounds and built up our habitats from there, adding in extra details like leaves, stones and sticks. Using the rubrics to refer back to what we said we needed to include, made for even more creative, realistic and detailed habitats. We will be showcasing these, along with all of our learning from this term, in our museum on the 18th July – more information on this will follow!

A wild adventure

We had a fantastic time at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park last week! We saw such a variety of animals and learned more about their habitats.

We had session in the Discovery Classroom, where we looked at how animals have adapted to fit their environment and explored some amazing features of different animals. The incredibly heavy ostritch egg and enormous Millie the millipede were some of my favourites! The children also handled a hissing cockroache and giant snail! 

We loved the squirrel monkeys, meerkats and wallabies! We spotted lots of joeys in their mum’s pouches too. 

We can’t wait to see all of this fantastic learning come through in the children’s writing and theme work over the next few weeks! 

All the Artists!

We’ve had not one but two artists visiting Y4 this week! 

The first was on Monday, when we had a special visit from Sheffield artist Joe Scarborough. He told us all about how he became interested in art and what inspires him. Did you know, he loves aeroplanes and regularly goes out with his friend in a 2-seater plane?! 

He also gave us an insight into the life of an artist and explained that his main aim is for his work to grab people’s attention for at least 15 seconds. 

On Wednesday, we were working with ‘fimo clay’ with an artist, who is collaborating with Wardsend Cemetery. She spoke to us about some of the interesting people who are buried in the cemetery and guided us through using the colourful clay to make them! 

I was amazed by the attention to detail and realistic figures the children produced! They will be taken away to be baked in the oven, ready for an exhibition at Wardsend on the 25th June. Details of the event will be sent out closer to the day and we hope to see lots of parents and children there to see what we created! 

Triangles are my favourite shape

We’ve been investigating the properties of triangles this morning, cutting pieces of string to form equilateral, isosceles, right angle and scalene triangles. We found that making the shapes from string made us more aware of their properties. For example, to make an isosceles triangle out of an equilateral, you only need to make one snip! 

We’ll be putting our knowledge of shapes to the test in the next few lessons with some problem solving…

Right angles, left angles and wrong angles

We’ve been learning about angles all this week. We all know an angle is a ‘measure of turn’ and can define acute, obtuse and right angles. We even had a go at measuring angles using protractors! 

Today, we did some problem solving, investigating different angles on a clock face. The children were asked to find as many right angles as they could…turns out there’s quite a few! 

Of course, we also discovered that the ‘dab’ is an acute angle!

Here’s some of Mr Tompkinson’s class solving different angle-based problems: 

Scarborough’s Sheffield

As part of our expedition into why people choose to live in Sheffield, we’ve been looking at the art work of Joe Scarborough. His vibrant, colourful paintings of recognisable buildings  have so much going on and tell an exciting story about our city. The children chose oil pastels, crayons or chalk pastels to create their own versions.

Here are some of the (nearly) finished pieces:

We’re very excited because Joe Scarborough will be coming into school on Monday afternoon. I reckon he’ll be very impressed by some of the work produced this afternoon! 

Acting as Archetects

This morning, we put our measuring skills to the test by designing our own special space in Sheffield. Some children decided to create a park, others redesigned the Peace Gardens, whilst some went for a brand new swimming pool/play centre/cafe experience!  

Here are the children working very hard, can you spot the new high table?

The children measured their plans, then worked out the perimeter. We might have to send these suggestions to the Lord Mayor!