Year Review

This year we've learnt a lot. Some lessons we learnt were fun and others were normal.

When school started we met each other and learned each other's names.

October
As a trip we walked in the local area around the school and talked all about land marks, different streets, shops and graffiti on the wall. Then it was Black History Month. We wrote projects for homework and did African dancing and percussion workshops.

November
In November the old man of Ilford came in to talk to us about life in Ilford in the past.

December
After we visited the Vine Church and learnt about Jesus and sang carols. The following day our school drama group performed a Nativity play. Then a pantomime group came to act out the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

January
After the holidays we started our DT topic and we designed and made sandwiches which had to be healthy, balanced and attractive. Then we designed and made picture frames.

February
It was book week when we read a book, 'Silly Billy' by Anthony Browne. It was a book about a boy who always worried when he slept but, when he went to his granny's house his granny gave him worry dolls which he told his worries to and he never worried again. So we made our own worry dolls and wrote a book about what you can do with your worries. It was the book fair next where we could buy some books.

April
In R.E we learnt about guide dogs and a guide dog trainer came with her two guide dogs. One was called Maxie who was retired and the other dog was Tracker who was a puppy in training.

May
One of the Epping Forest Museum staff came in to talk to us about the Tudor timeline. Two people from our class, Yusuf and Keerthana dressed up into Tudor clothes. We had a trip to the Drama Centre and watched a play called How High is Up? In May we also started doing our class blog.

June
In history we were learning about Tudors so we went and visited the Eastbury Manor House in Barking, where we saw a Tudor house and discovered what the chores were like. In the same month it was Creative Arts Week and the theme was 'Traditional England'. We had a ceilidh in the playground. The week after it was Refugee week and learnt all about refugees and made posters to welcome new children to the school.

July
At the start of July we had our sports day. We went to Loxford Park and did several sports activities. We then had the summer fair where we sold lots of things including the clove oranges we made in Creative Arts Week. Then Open Hand Theatre Company came into school to act out the story of Henry VIII. Next we made some cakes to sell in our cake sale and had a competition. The competition was to guess the name of a puppy and the winner was Miss Sewell, the teacher of class 11. She won a toy guide dog and it came with it was a guide dog training jacket. Two days after was our class assembly. The day after that it was the school dance festival. There were 27 different dances; some Indian, some rock, some Albainian, some traditional English and many others. July was very busy!

Our Class Assembly

On the 16th of July we did an assembly on guide dogs. We introduced Mrs Weaver and her guide dogs Tex (Tracker's brother) and Maxie. Maxie has retied and is now Mrs Weaver's dog. All the year three classes have done cake sales to raise money for the guide dogs and in total we raised £341 so far. Class 1 still hve their cake sale to do tomorrow. Some people got the chance to stroke the dogs. To find out more, please look at our assembly PowerPoint above.

Time to Say Goodbye...

What a year we have had. When I look back at all the places we have been and all the work we have done, even since May when we started our blog, it makes me feel exhausted! (Or maybe that's because I need a holiday!)

Class 4 have come a very long way since the beginning of the year. Friendships have developed, confidences have grown, handwriting has got neater, answers have got clearer and my hair has got greyer! :o)

Our blog has been a great success this year and the children have worked exceptionally hard to make it so. We all hope that you have enjoyed reading our posts.

The children of class 4 have made me very proud this year. In addition to their hard work in class they:

• raised enough money at Christmas, in an agreement not to exchange gifts and cards with me, to buy school dinners for 200 children, build a little bit of a classroom, train a teacher, buy 5 bags of seeds, help provide health checks and provide safe drinking water for 25 people via the Oxfam Unwrapped website. Many of the children donated their tuck shop money everyday for a week. Their generosity was heart-warming.
• raised nearly £100 in our cake sale for Guide Dogs for the Blind.

And here we are at the end of a whirlwind year, leaving me just one thing to say: goodbye class 4, and good luck.

- Miss J

Worry Dolls

For book week we made worry dolls. We have also been making worry pockets. They are for the dolls to live in. We took some of the worry dolls home when we were finished. The others went into a book. To make the worry dolls we needed wool, wire, paper, hot glue and soft materials. Them we put the worry dolls in our worry pockets. They were tricky at first but then it became easier because we got used to making them. We learnt about worry dolls from a book called Silly Billy by Anthony Browne. We also learnt about a country called Guatemala. We learnt about it because the children from Guatemala used worry dolls. They tell their worries to the worry dolls and then they can forget about the worries.

Penguins

In literacy we have been writing non-chronological reports and we watched March of the Penguins. Penguins are birds that can't fly. There are 17 types of penguins but the Emperor penguin is the biggest. Penguins have a long beak. They have two feet. Penguins are black and white and they have quite big bellies. They are a bit hairy.

All About Refugees

Refugees are people who have to move from their own country because of wars and natural disasters.
Refugees can come from....
Iraq,
Somalia,
Pakistan,
Sudan,
Iran,
Turkey,
Kenna and
Zimbabwe.

The saddest thing is that children are sometimes trained to go into the war and fight. Many children are killed in wars.

Writing E-mails

In ICT we are learning all about e-mails and how to reply to someone who has already written to you. We learned that e-mails can be fun but you should always tell an adult when you are writing an e-mail to someone. So always be careful of who you are writing to and make sure that you don't meet anyone you don't know. Have some fun writing e-mails.

Fantastic Cake Sale

Our cake sale is on Monday 14th July. There are going to be lots of delicious cakes in the cake sale so we hope you have fun. The cakes cost 15p to 30p so don't bring over £2. We will be selling lots of cakes. Everyone in our class is making cakes.The cake sale is only for one day at playtime.