Apple Class Page
Apple performed a magnificent version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth at The Albany Theatre. The children performed brilliantly and gave a confident performance filled with live music, energy and professionalism. Thank you to the school adults who accompanied them, the parents/carers who came to watch, the PTA for funding the project and the children for working so hard in rehearsals. It was an amazing experience that we will all remember for years to come!
Our core text is
Skellig
by David Almond
Our core text this half term is Skellig: a moving, mysterious and atmospheric novel about Michael and his family who, when moving house, discover something - or someone - miraculous in the garden shed. We’ll be studying how writer’s build atmosphere and mystery in their stories and writing our own too!
If you enjoyed Skellig, I recommend you try some of these other books:
Take One Picture 2024
Inspired by the doorways in Pieter De Hooch’s ‘The Courtyard of a House in Delft’, we studied the work of different painters and photographers.
We then looked at different landscape painters, experimenting with their colour palettes and brush techniques to create our own imaginary landscapes.
We took photos around the school and grounds of ‘doorways’ and learnt about how to change exposure, brightness and contrast to create black and white photos which we will collage with our final pieces.
Our paintings for Take One Picture
We looked at artists John McAllister, Daisy Dodd Nobel, Camilla Engstrom and Vincent Van Gogh, selecting the artist we wanted to focus on and exploring their use of colour and brush strokes to inspire our own work.
Apple class had a fun and engaging workshop with Jess from the Shakespeare Schools Foundation. We learned the 5 top tips for being great stage actors and told Jess our plans for our upcoming performance of Macbeth. She loved our ideas!
Summer Core Texts
This term we are becoming wildlife experts and other-worldly explorers. We are writing non-chronological reports about endangered animals based on ‘The Ways of the Wolf.’ We met Tom, his rather odd uncle and aunt and a strange girl who lives in a world only found at the strike of midnight. This inspired us to write description of important places at different times of the day. And lastly, to one of my favourites (because it has a tiger!) to Cinnamon, a beautiful princess who is searching for a reason to hear her own voice. We will be creating our own tales based on Neil Gaiman’s story of culture.
Residential Day 1
Once we arrived, the weather was on our side. We enjoyed abseiling and archery activities followed by free time in the woods. Dinner was lovely and followed by a night walk, campfire and marshmallows!
Residential Day 2
Our second day started early with a cooked breakfast. We headed to our activities for the day: high ropes. We had a friendly game of rounders, forest school activities and a trip to the tuck shop. We ended our evening with a session at the swimming pool and talent show round the campfire.
Residential Day 3
Our last day - although some of us didn’t want to leave! We packed up our rooms and made lunches before heading to the woods for some orienteering. Our last activities for the week, archery and abseiling, were a bit soggy from the rain and we had a picnic lunch followed by an Easter egg hunt!
Take a look at what we got up to below!
![IMG_1256[1].JPG](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/620519cf67121a35f9f7c2a1/c6a593a6-a56b-4621-9d9a-5d4ea1e682b2/IMG_1256%5B1%5D.JPG)
Biomes and Climate Zones
Following our geography work on biomes and climate zones, we had sessions run by Climate Education to teach us about renewable energy and carbon footprints.
We learnt lots of useful facts and understood why the earth is heating up. We found out the travel places a large part in pollution and found out ways we can more sustainable in our everyday lives.
World Book Day
Winner of the KS2 model from a book - Well done Rex!
Novel in a novel place
Eleanor Parks
This year for World Book Day, we worked with local artist Angry Dan to write our own limericks. We learnt how presentation of poems can also be pieces of artwork.
We dressed up as our beloved book characters and made models from our favourite texts.
Some of us read our favourites in some incredibly strange places…
Spring Core Texts
Our texts have taken us globally! We have been reading, learning and writing Just So Stories. We have learnt how the whale got its tiny throat, how the rhino got his wrinkly skin and how the stars came to be.
We are also travelling to North America for our texts this term! ‘The Ways of the Wolf’ is a beautifully illustrated non-fiction text with a wide range of language. Our second text is Pax, a tale on two parallel planes: Pax, a lone fox and Peter, a boy who left his best friend on the side of the road.
These will influence our writing of non-chronological reports, narratives and suspense writing.
Egg-cellent eggs-periment!
Our science topic this term has been digestion in humans and where better to start than with our teeth!
We investigated which liquid have the biggest impact on our teeth. We tested six different liquids and made predictions. Our winner was….
Apple Juice!
We found that the high sugar content eroded the top layer of ‘enamel’ even more than coca cola!
We learnt about the Women’s Institute (WI) and how they were encouraged to ‘make do and mend’.
World War II Evacuation Day
Our immersive drama experience took us back in time to the 1940s. We met the incredibly strict Miss Smith and her two colleagues who taught us what life was really like at this time in history.
We also baked and learnt how rationing affected the everyday lives of people at the time.
POP ART Movement
Our autumn term art project focused on all things Pop art. We looked at the movement and identified some key features: bold lines, contrasting colours and repetition. We looked at Andy Warhol as our main inspiration and used his work of Mick Jagger to experiment with media and composition designs.
Although drawing portraits can be tricky, we persevered and practised features and found a good likeness in our final pieces!
Autumn Core Texts
This term we have delved into new worlds. We have written non-chronological reports from Weslandia, a boy living in his own world. We met Varjak, his family of Mesopotamian Blues and a big friendly dog; this inspired us to write our own adventure tale. And lastly, to the true story of a hero, empowered by the colour of her hijab. We will be writing diary entries based on Ibtihaj Muhammed’s story of culture.
Learning this Term
Electricity
In our science unit, we have been busy building our circuits. We identified what components are needed and hypothesised different scenarios. We also became experts in electrical symbols when drawing our circuits.
Next term we will use our knowledge to design light-up cards in DT.
What a Wonderful World
Our enquiry question was ‘How are humans changing the world?’ This half term we explored the 17 global goals and whether they can be achieved by 2030. We thought about what we can do in our everyday lives to be more sustainable and looked at the innovations that could become more mainstream in the future.
Maths Investigations
We have been using manipulatives to find patterns within number and shape. We have built 2D shapes from cubes to work out the area.
We noticed that our times tables can help us to find out the area more efficiently.
How many have you read?
Launched this year, our Top 10 Books is a new initiative to encourage reading. There are a wide range of genres and styles, including novels, picture books and graphic novels. Each child has a space in their newly-designed reading journals to record all the books they have read this year.
Magpie Phrases and New Vocabulary
This is an opportunity for you to indulge in language as a reader. By reading a wide diet of material, children should be able to use their found phrases in their own writing. We would also love their vocabulary to grow; finding out unfamiliar words (however subject specific!) is a great way to make links across texts.
By the end of Year 4, most children should have read or been read the top 10, waiting to start a new Top 10 adventure next year!
A reminder that children should be reading at least 3 times a week and filling in their reading journals independently.
Welcome to Year 4. In Apple this year, we will be exploring lots of new and exciting topics. See our parent plans tab to find out what we are learning each half term.
OUR NATURE-INSPIRED STILL LIFES FROM OUR WORKSHOP AT DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY
Publishing our own mini books!
Publishing our own mini books!
We wrote our own tales inspired by Hansel & Gretel and published them as mini books : )
Plants & Living Things: drawing from life
We collected plants and natural objects from Forest School and then made studies of them from observation, looking at shape, texture, form and line. We used different sketching pencils to create tones and annotated our studies, evaluating what had been successful and why.
Our final pieces: bird sculptures
We designed our final pieces using our experiments and contextual studies in our sketchbooks. We used newspaper, paper mache, tissue paper, card and paint to make brightly-coloured feathers and textures. What beautiful birds!
Iron Man sighting
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BREAKING NEWS
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Iron Man sighting ⋆ BREAKING NEWS ⋆
We planned our own Iron Man encounters in English today, and then wrote our own news reports to read out to the class. Watch out viewers!
Art: Bird project
We made studies inspired by the work of Mark Catesby & Eric Ennion, using watercolour washes and detailed marks
Creating Scratch mazes
Creating Scratch mazes
We’re learning to code this half term with Emma, creating our own Scratch mazes.
Performing our dragon poems
We composed spine poems in small groups and then edited and published our poems independently and performed them to each other.
Our new text is ‘Tell Me a Dragon’.
As part of our immersion in the text, we’ve been recreating some of the beautifully-illustrated dragons from the story using watercolour washes.
BREAKING NEWS: Dragon sighting in Forest Hill!
This morning we became Dragonologists and searched the school grounds for evidence of dragon life!
After watching the news clip, we generated a list of possible evidence: footprints, burned bushes, scratched or broken tree branches, debris and destruction, and even dragon dung!
In pairs, we conducted our research, taking field notes and photos of our findings and observations.
We’ve been painting snowflakes in art, using delicates lines and mixing opal-coloured shades to make detailed studies as part of our learning for ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’.
We are reading ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’.
We entered a wintery world in the classroom, with snow storms, sleigh bells ringing, snow falling and blizzards blowing! In our talk partners, we generated words we associate with winter, such as icicles, bare branches, fir trees and snowflakes.
Next, we worked collaboratively, painting winter-inspired imagery on black paper, each person working on each piece of paper and adding to each other’s ideas.
Finally, we came back to the carpet to generate descriptive language inspired by our painting.
We have been creating self-portraits inspired by the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
We experimented with line and shape, using pens and paint to create stylised drawings of ourselves and then experimented with brightly-coloured backgrounds, using different brushes and mark-making techniques to make bold, final pieces.
