Monthly Archives: December 2019

Year 4 making DT catapults

Class Work, D&T

Year 4 finished making their Ancient Greek catapults.

They spent some time last week making the essential preparations when they measured and cut all the parts (pegs, dowels and batons).

Today each group used a glue gun to stick all the parts together. They had to work well, as a group, to hold the parts in place, making sure that the hot glue stayed away from their fingers!

The results were amazing . Using a bottle top, they could place some “ammunition” in it and launch it. Some went really far.

Excellent effort year 4.

A special well done to Tyler who came and helped year 4 and then made his own catapult from start to finish.

Climate change comic strips

Class Work, Computing, PSHE

Year 4 Robins have been learning about features of a comic strip. They said the following features were important; design, colour, short snappy titles, speech bubbles, thinking bubbles and key characters.

Robins then created a comic strip based on their PSHE lesson of climate change and being environmentally friendly.

The children suggested the following facts could be included in their strips:

► Switch lights off when not in use
► Ride a bike to school instead of being driven to school
► Read a book instead of using a computer
► Recycle rubbish

The app children used was Comic Life on the iPads.

Creating shapes in Hopscotch

Class Work, Computing

During Computing with Mr Baddhan today, Robins used an iPad app called Hopscotch, where they learned how to program characters to perform an action using instruction blocks.

The app allows children to insert various programming blocks including motion, drawing and repetition.

Mr Baddhan asked the children to build a code to create three shapes; a square, rectangle and a triangle.

The triangle was the most challenging shapre to create however some of the children guessed the angle required for a triangle was 120 degrees repeated three times.

Creating a Scratch Knock Knock program

Class Work, Computing

Year 4 Robins have been programming their sprites to tell each other Knock Knock jokes in Scratch. The children added two sprites and then added a backdrop.

Robins also once again used the coordinates block – learning about the x and y axis of their sprites and program them to start at a specific position on the screen.

They then used the say and wait blocks to pause between the say block conversation.

See some examples of their work below.

Amelia

Lewis

Dayne

Creating Etch a Sketch using Scratch

Class Work, Computing

In the past couple of lessons, Year 4 Robins have been attempting to create an Etch a Sketch game. They were shown how to program their chosen sprites to use the pen up and down blocks.

Some children were then able to press different keys to change the pen colour and also change the backdrop. Some children even managed to add an instruction backdrop before the game loaded.

Here are some of their finished games.

Nyeema

Moharnab

Kai

Dangers – safe people and safe places

Class Work, PSHE

The children were aware of the common dangers around us. We don not always see them as “dangers” but we know to be careful.

Things like:
• roads
• railways
• empty buildings
• building sites
• canals

We also discussed SAFE people and SAFE places. People we could go to for help, for example, Police men/women, teachers or people who work in SAFE buildings like those working in a school, doctors surgery and shops.

We also discussed gangs or groups of people who hang around together.

The children discussed what they might encounter with the gangs and how gangs can be seen to be intimidating. We also discussed what we could do if we felt uneasy and referred back to the SAFE people we could go to.

Well done Year 4 – a very good discussion.