St Anne's Catholic Primary School

We have loved our first term in Year 4 so far! We have learnt about some really exciting topics, including descriptive writing, the digestive system and all about the Ancient Greeks.

In English, we read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, and designed our own chocolate bars. We used descriptive language and designed the packaging for them, then wrote letters to Mr Willy Wonka trying to persuade him to make our creations in his factory. Our persuasive skills were so great that we got a reply from Willy Wonka himself!

We have really enjoyed our two science topics this term, we have learnt about organisms and their habitats and the digestive system. We learnt about different habitats and how to look after them so that we can keep animals and insects safe. After that we looked at the digestive system. We have learnt the scientific names of all of the different parts, and did a really great experiment where we followed our teachers’ breakfast through the digestive system. We mashed up a banana and a slice of toast in a bowl, and passed it through a make-shift digestive system, using a food bag for the stomach and a pair of old tights to represent the small intestine! It was fascinating to see how our bodies work, and it helped us to think about what we eat and how to look after ourselves.

During our Learning Journey this term, we have been learning all about life in Ancient Greece. Did you know that the Ancient Greek civilisation began in the year 700BC? We have had great fun finding out all about how they lived and how different their lives were to ours. The Ancient Greeks loved going to the theatre, but their theatres looked very different to the ones that we go to nowadays. We learnt about the differences between how boys and girls were treated, and had a debate to decide whether we would prefer to live in Athens or Sparta. One of our favourite Ancient Greek stories that we learnt about was ‘The Battle of Troy’, where the Greeks sent a giant horse as a ‘surrender gift’, however Greek soldiers were hiding inside and attacked the city and ended up winning the 10-year long battle!

We finished this Learning Journey with our amazing Ancient Greek Day. We all came into school dressed as Ancient Greeks – even the teachers! We had a really fun day and it was the perfect way to end our Learning Journey.