4SC November Afternoon Learning in Action

Science - Animals including Humans

This term we have continued learning about animals including humans. This month we have been learning about the human digestive system. We started off by making models of the digestive system with a partner using salt dough. We then moved onto labeling the different parts. In the next lesson we found out what all the different parts of the system do. We learnt how to keep our digestive systems healthy by eating a balanced healthy diet and drinking lots of water.

Patty enjoyed this learning so much she decided to make a collage at home for her home learning and proudly brought it into school to share with us. Fantastic learning.

We have now moved onto learning about food chains and food webs. We learned about producers, consumers, predators, prey, herbivores, carnivores and omnivores.

Creative Curriculum - Riotous Royals

This month we moved onto learning about Queen Elizabeth I. We learnt about what she looked like and about her role in the Spanish Armada of 1588 against King Phillip II of Spain. We also found out why she liked having portraits painted of herself so she could send them all around the country so people could see what she looked like. We drew some portraits of her ourselves to show what we learnt about how she looked. She especially liked her hands so made sure this were shown as her best feature in her portraits and she often had roses on her dresses to show she was a Tudor Queen.

We discovered she hated mice and was very frightened of them!

We found out that the Elizabethan Era was called the Golden Age as it was a time of many explorers, musicians and playwrights such as William Shakespeare. Her famous explorers were Sir Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake who discovered new lands for her to take over, drew detailed maps of the newly discovered places and returned with silver, jewels and even potatoes for her to enjoy. We ended our learning finding out about the Spanish Armada and had to sequence this event chronologically using a set of pictures. Next lesson we will draw our own comic strips to retell what happened - look out for these next month.

In Art we finally finished off our clay Tudor roses which we have worked really hard on for the past few weeks.

We had a fun day at Warwick Castle where we took part in a re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings, visited Henry VIII and his wives and even went down into the gaol where prisoners were often kept for many years. We were worn out climbing up the steps to the top of the tower and even fed the peacocks with some of our lunch. 

RE - Judaism

We continued this month learning about Judaism focusing this time on the festival of Hanukkah. We made our own dreidel toys and played together to win some chocolate coins and used our art skills to recreate the well known Menorah candle sticks which remind Jews of the miracle in the temple many years ago when there was only enough oil to light the lamp for one day but it burned for eight days. 

Guy Fawkes Day and Remembrance Day

We joined together in teams across school to have a fun Guy Fawkes day. We had a visit from Guy Fawkes himself in assembly who told us his version of the story and why he did what he did. We used our orienteering skills to find facts about this historical event and then used these back in class to make a time line of what happened all those years ago. We had fun making our own model of Guy which we entered into a whole school competition. We showed our respect to the Armed Forces by attending the Remembrance Assembly and being silent for one minute whilst the last post was played by our visitor.

PSHE

This month we have focused on road safety and Bonfire Night safety rules. We shared together how to cross the road safely and acted out how to do this as we grow increasingly independent as we grow older. Next year some of us want to be home walkers so we have to learn how to walk to and from school safely. We made our own firework safety posters after learning about the firework safety code. We had a visit from Blue Watch from Foleshill Fire Station to teach us about fire safety in our homes. We learnt about the importance of planning an escape route, having smoke alarms and how to make an emergency call should we ever need to. Nicolas made us all laugh with his question to the firefighter about how he got such big muscles. Half way through their visit we had fire alarm practice in school when we all went and stood out in the rain but our visitors were impressed with our evacuation drill.

Our theme this term is celebrating differences and we have had two sessions on bullying. Our first session was about what should we do if we witness someone else being bullied and the second session was about keeping ourselves safe from cyber-bullying whilst online on our phones, tablets or computers. 

A visit from McGrammar

Some of us were very star struck when we had a visit in class from McGrammar himself. We had worked hard learning our adverb song and were proud to sing it in the special assembly. Look on twitter and see if you can find our class superstar rap star Teo singing with McGrammar himself - we were so proud of him. 

PE

Mrs Burnside has continued to help us on Wednesdays with our PE sessions. We have continued to practice our multi-skills of catching, throwing, jumping, skipping, rolling and kicking balls and running to keep fit. We have also been learning how to join balances, jumps and rolls when making and performing our own gymnastic sequences individually and in small teams. We have also continued to walk the mile when we can to keep up our fitness levels despite the colder, wetter weather of Winter beginning this month. 

This Month's Challenge

Next month we are beginning to learn about Queen Victoria. Find out 5 facts about her reign.