The Year 4/5 team:

Mr Hughes - Class Teacher

Mrs Baber, Mr Tiddy, Mrs Last and Mrs Walton - Teaching Assistants

Thursday afternoons - Music/PSHE with Mrs Chaplow and PE with Miss Nilsson

Useful info...

Spellings will be sent home at the start of each term and they will be tested every Friday. Children should be practicing regularly at home.

Spellings will be posted at the bottom of this page at the beginning of every term just in case paper copies are misplaced. 

Times tables and spellings are expected to be practised weekly at home. This can be done using TT Rockstars.

In the Summer Term, the Year 4s in the class will be completing their Multiplication Tables Check. The children are practicing regularly in class but to support them they should be regularly practicing at home as well. The Soundcheck test on TT rockstars is the closest representation of the actual check so that is a great game to be practicing on.

For information regarding our termly learning and topics please click the stars below!

Week 3

This week in Kingfisher we began our new 'Invasion' topic in History. The class were challenged to order the events of Anglo-Saxon and Viking times in the UK into a timeline. The children were shocked that the timelines were so long, they went round several tables! They enjoyed finding out interesting facts, the more gruesome the better!

Week 4

This week,  Kingfisher really enjoyed our 'Sing and Sow' workshop. The children planted some wildflower seeds outside school. All the children, but especially our new eco warriors, are really excited to see the colours bloom and nature flourish.

Kingfisher have also enjoyed learning lots of new skills in English, including: similes, power of 3, fronted adverbials and personification. They are very much looking forward to creating their own writing filled with tension and suspense next week! 

Week 5

This week, the children in Kingfisher wrote their own continuations of the Zelda Claw text. They all came up with brilliant ideas and chilling, terrifying and unnerving writing, all of which was filled with lots of tension and suspense! Here are some examples of what the children wrote:

Just then, Zelda stumbled into an empty field, not knowing the dangers ahead of her. Zelda realised she was lost. At that moment, Zelda started to tear up and she felt nervous, frightened and scared. Although she was scared, she still had the guts to be brave, so she went to investigate. AC

Zelda’s heart stopped beating for the minute like a dagger had hit her heart. MP

She scampered to the woods as fast as she could, crouched behind a tree and eventually fell asleep. When she woke up, it was twilight. She was in a cage! She tried to get free, but it was made from pure anger and hate and so was impossible to break. Just then, out of the corner of her eye she spotted a silhouette, but nothing was making it. EJ

Zelda breathed a sigh of relief, she was safe. Just then BANG! A lightning bolt smacked down, only inches away from her. Zelda was so frightened she hid behind a tree. Then, she followed the sound to something horrifying. She panicked. The something had been summoned by the lightning. AT

When she was safe, Zelda was still so scared to the point she could barely breathe. So, she found a bit of shelter and settled down for the night, wondering where that crazy shadow was. It was black as the night sky. The next day, she went out wondering where it went. She couldn’t get it out of her head. She found an abandoned house and inside she saw a weird doll that gave her the chills and made her feel dead. SM

Week 6

The children ignited their new writing by completing a Masterchef-style eating challenge! They had to eat a mystery pastry and figure out the ingredients that went into making it! They managed to successfully determine many of the ingredients and they were all very excited to begin learning about how to write clear and focussed recipes.

Later in the week, using our recent learning in art about contrasting and complementing colours, we painted beautiful Harvest fruit for our presentation in the Harvest Worship on Thursday. They also did research about their chosen fruits and everyone in class confidently spoke in the Worship. Well done everyone!

Week 7

This week the children made Anglo-Saxon style cakes (they called them cakes but they are more like flapjacks!). The children loved the process of making them, even the tidying up at the end! Even though a few of them ended up a bit burnt, the majority of them were delicious! The children used this process to write some exciting instructions later in the week.

Term 2

Week 1

Kingfisher had an exciting start to term when they found their classroom had become a clock factory! As part of our new text in English (Clock Close), Kingfisher became clock detectives and try and figure out Mr Hughes's clues to identify different clocks. 

Week 2

This week we conducted a very exciting science experiment! As we have been learning about teeth, we wanted to find out which liquids had a bad impact on your teeth and which looked after your teeth. We used boiled eggs as teeth substitutes for this because the shell is like the enamel round your teeth, whilst the egg itself is the tooth. We poured different liquids over the eggs and made observations four times a day to see what had changed.

Some of our results were rather surprising. As we predicted, coke, energy drink and vinegar were very bad for the egg, discolouring it and the eggs had large build up of sugar round the outside. Juice and squash also had big build ups of sugar and grime around the egg, showing these are also very bad for our teeth. Even though the milk curdled (and smelt very bad!) the egg inside was well protected, as was the egg in water with both looking exactly the same as when they went in. Lots of us thought the honey would be bad for the egg because of the sugari-ness of it! However, the egg was perfectly preserved and we linked this to our History learning as Anglo-Saxons put food in honey to make it last longer.

Week 3

Kingfisher were very excited at the end of this week for two new starters in the class. Their names are Pinky and Pepper and they are rather shy! Kingfisher are looking forward to getting to know them better and learn about responsibility when taking care of them.

Week 4

In DT this week, we continued learning about packaging. We experimented with creating our own prototype for a cupcake box. We were given a net of a cube and we decorated it before cutting it and gluing it into shape. We noticed that when we decorated the net, after folding the cube into shape, some of the sides were upside-down or sideways! This was frustrating, but we figured out why it had happened and will know when we make our final product later in term how to make sure this doesn't happen again!

Week 5

The class designed Christmas Decorations to put around our class this week. The class decorated themselves as reindeers. They were very happy with their results!

Week 6

We had our school No-Pens Day this week. Throughout the day we completed a range of activities without doing any writing. In the afternoon, we started our new Science topic on Sound. We explored this through musical instruments and seeing how we could alter pitch and volume and how the sound was created and travelled.

Term 3

Week 1

Kingfisher finished off their Fresh Food, Good Food DT topic this week. They all created some delicious fruit skewers, experimenting with different cutting techniques for a range of fruit. The children enjoyed making their final creation, especially trying some new and different fruits.

Week 2

This week, as part of our History learning we roleplayed as different prospective Kings of England after Edward the Confessor's death. We learnt about why each man thought they should be King and we debated who we thought had the best case! We then created our own version of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Week 3

We investigated muffling sound as part of our science learning this week. We had to create a device which would muffle the sound of a whistle as much as possible. We discovered that using cloth and cotton wool was very good at muffling sound, whereas paper didn't reduce the sound and tinfoil actual echoed it! We also discovered that making mufflers which actually blocked the sound receptors on the iPad were very successful.

Week 4

Our classroom was filled with legendary rock stars this Friday! The children made such huge effort with their costumes and they all looked AWESOME! We enjoyed: having Hit the Button battles in class, times table board games, a music seminar with some visitors, time in the IT suite on TT rockstars and watching a very tense 'Student vs Staff' battle in the hall!!

Week 5

Following Times Table Rockstars Day, some of us published newspaper articles for the school newsletter about what happened. Here are some of our examples!

Term 4

Week 1

We began our new science block looking at Moving Mechanisms. We learnt about pneumatic systems and discovered that by using them you can use air to lift very heavy loads! We then used bottles, balloons and tape to create our own.

Week 2

We built on last week's Science and DT learning by learning about water resistance. We learnt that different shaped objects will move through water at different speeds due to the water particles. We were challenged to create a model out of plasticine that would move through the water as quickly as possible! We figured out the more narrow and pointier shapes with less air resistance moved through the water the quickest.

Week 3

We celebrated World Book Day this week and wore some excellent costumes! We had a great day creating our own wacky stories, having a book themed PE lesson and playing book pictionary!

We also began getting ready for Science Week on Friday. We conducted an experiment looking at particle size and whether all air particles travelled all the way to our lungs. We demonstrated this by using different sized foodstuffs (such as cocoa poweder, pasta, rice and couscous) and a variety of sieves and colanders. Parents also came to see our learning during this session and we really enjoyed showing what we knew and can find out!

Week 4

This week, our Year 5 children went on a trip to Portishead Police HQ as a part of their Mini Police Training. We did some very exciting activities such as: using police walkie talkies, having a tour around the call centre, asking questions to one of the police chiefs and going to the police museum! The children asked loads of brilliant questions and were excellent ambassadors for CDW!