| Year 4

We have had a very busy half term with our PSHE and Relationships learning, focussing on how to keep ourselves safe. A special week was Children’s Mental Health Week and we thought about ways we can keep our minds healthy as well as our bodies. We examined strategies to help develop positive thinking and understand that happy minds lead to happy people. It was also Internet Safety Week this week and Year 4 examined different photos and their accompanying posts and discussed whether the images were safe or unsafe. The children thought hard about whether an image revealed too much personal information such as an address, name of school or sporting club.


As part of our STEM learning we have been designing and creating extremophiles - organisms that live in extreme environments. Some of Year 4 researched and reconstructed real extremophiles and others created their own. We thought about how these organisms have adapted to life in their extreme environments and what they would need to survive.


In English we have been exploring the extreme environment of outer space and discovering life forms that live on the moon Pandora. We have taken this opportunity to expand our vocabulary using a ‘shades of meaning’ exercise that not only helps us discover synonyms of commonly used words but also help us choose the correct synonym to convey the right meaning. We have then used our vocabulary to write some fantastic character descriptions of the creatures of Pandora.


Kaiyan, Noah and Philip have amazed us with their dedication to personal fitness this half term. Both have been running really long distances with their families and we are very impressed with their stamina and drive to improve their fitness levels.


The Year 4 children have been dedicating some of their learning time to create artwork for Southampton Hospital’s ICU unit where temporary walls have been erected to create new wards. We thought that restful underwater scenes as well as fields, clouds and horses grazing would be a lovely addition to brighten up the hospital, as well as everyone’s favourite bear - Winnie the Pooh.

See what you think!