Big Bang!

During our 'Big Bang' we explored our opinions of Henry VIII before visiting a Tudor Portrait Gallery to identify the real portrait of Henry VIII. of Henry VIII. 

It was interesting to see how our opinions of King Henry VIII influenced what we thought of the portraits we saw. 

History

We began our Topic ‘The Tudors’ by looking at portraits and exploring significant events in the life of King Henry VIII.  We were fascinated by the number of wives that he had and how each of their marriages to the King ended.

Throughout our History unit, we learnt about significant events in Tudor history, we also looked at how Henry VIII and Elizabeth I carefully controlled their public image.  During one lesson we also looked at Tudor death inventories to try to discover how ordinary Tudors lived.

We finished our unit with a visit from Cas from Hitchin Museum who shared artifacts with us and helped us to create Tudor Christmas cards using block printing.

English

The children began English this half term with a cross-curricular focus. Using the theme ‘Once Upon a Royal Time’ we began our unit by writing a formal letter to King Charles III to send our condolences on the death of Queen Elizabeth II and to congratulate him on his ascension to the throne.  We also asked him questions about his upcoming coronation.  The letters were then published and posted to King Charles. We are keeping our fingers crossed for a reply.

To continue with our theme we then wrote non-chronological reports, about the Tudors.  We used history books to research information and then created our own reports paying particular attention to using different types of conjunction to extend our sentences.

Maths 

In maths the children completed an Addition and Subtraction unit. As a class we began using apparatus to show how to exchange when completing formal addition, moving towards full writing addition.  We completed the same strategies when we learnt how to use formal written subtraction.  Year 3 worked with numbers up to 1000, whereas Year 4 worked with numbers above 1000.

Science

This terms unit was called ‘Health Eating and Heathy Bodies’. The children began by considering where humans get their nutrition from and identifying the food groups.  We thought about what a balanced diet is and the effects that each food group has on supporting the body.

We then moved to looking at the skeleton of humans and animals and compared the bones, in some cases these were real bones. To complete our unit we investigated the muscles, we were able to complete two experiments, the first to show how strong the muscles can be.  During our second experiment we played Tudor Five Stones to demonstrate the fine control the muscles can have.