A belated happy half term from 4TE! Above is a little video of some of the activites 4TE have been up to in the final week before half term. Photos used in the video are below. Have a great break!

At the start of this week, 4TE took a trip down to Brodsworth Hall to explore more details about our expedition, ‘Why is Sugar Not So Sweet’. We all had a brilliant time exploring the hall and gardens and speaking to some experts about this fantastic building steeped in history! Above is a video of some of the pictures from our trip, and below are the photos used in the video, plus a few extra ones, 4TE hope you enjoy!

Today, 4TE have become news reporters! Recently, we have been learning about the tarnished history of sugar and its links to slavery. We have specifically been looking at the life and times of Mary Prince – a famous abolishionist. Below is a compilation of various parts of our individual news reports blended into one. The children wrote their own scripts and researched all of the information themselves. This has hopefully culminated in a very professional and informative report!

4TE have been getting very active and busy with their maths this week! We have been doing some more work on fractions and I can say that with each passing fraction, we are getting better and better!

After what I hope was a fantastic Easter, it is absolutely brilliant to see everyone coming back this week and we have hit the ground running! Here in Year 4, we have been immersing ourselves into our new expedition, ‘Why Is Sugar Not So Sweet?’ where we shall be exploring its historic roots, and flavourful present. We have been creating timelines, our own sugary products, and conducting a blind taste test! Over the rest of this final summer term, we have got so many great experiences planned, and I can’t wait to share all of these and all of our learning in the weeks to come!

And just like that, another term has finished! It seems like we have only just come back from Christmas! But time flies when you’re having fun and I think that was certainly the case throughout NJS this term and in 4TE too. Our expedition, ‘What A Wonderful World’ was such an informative, relavent and enjoyable topic and gave the children fantastic experiences. To demonstrate this, over the term we filled our displays and corridor outside of the class. The children put great effort into making our environment an engaging place to be and it would be a shame for such effort not to be shared, as shown below! To celebrate the end of this expedition and this term, we had a superb last couple days…

To celebrate the end of this term, 4TE had a very busy last day. First, along side 5RS, we embarked on an Easter Egg Hunt around school. 76 eggs were tucked away for the two classes to work together to forage for. They successfully found all of the eggs and were given an egg each for their detecting skills. Then, we decorated some cookies and biscuits which we had baked yesterday, and following this created more delicious goods in the form of chocolate-covered cornflake buns! Then, later in the day, we once again joined together with 5RS to participate in some board games which had been created by the children of 5RS. We had a great time playing some brilliantly creative games which led us nicely onto the end of the day and also the end of this term. The children deserved such a fun day to commemorate all of their hard work from this term. So to conclude, I hope you all have a lovely Easter and are able to get outside in the sun too. Have a great break and see you soon!

This expedition has had a very heavy music focus this last half-term! This initially cultimated in a trip to the recording studio to record our verses for the Trust’s song ‘Dear World’. Recently however, we have taken the tune of ‘Dear World’, and wrote our own verses in order to create our own song! The version above, with exception of the chorus, was written fully by different children in the class, then their verses were put together to create class 4TE’s very own song! Then, in the space of an hour, we hastily rehearsed, practised and then recorded our song as you can see above. I think the children wrote some beautiful verses and given the short amount of time we had to practise, performed fantastically. Lovely stuff songwriters!

Today with Easter looming, 4TE were given a challenge… In small teams could they create a protective casing fit with parachute to protect an egg from mighty drop? The teams did a fantastic job working together to conjure up such incredible and fantastic creations as you can see! Overall, we had 3 eggs suffer crackings and 4 which successfully survived the drop! It was a great bit of fun and developed our teamworking skills and a good time was had by all!

This week, Years 3 and 4 finally embarked down to XP in Doncaster to record our part of the song ‘Dear World’ which has been written by all of the different schools across the trust. Everyone got the chance to experience what it takes to record a real song and got a behind the scenes look into a recording studio to see the magic that goes into creating our favourite hits. For our future smash hit, we pushed ourselves and now our hard work is done, we shall be able to revel in the fruits of our labour in the future when the song is fully produced and ready to be released. Until then, we shall wait with great anticipation!