Deathly Damage

Your task this week is to find a place in the last 50 years that has been hit by an earthquake. Once you have found it answer the following questions:

Where did the earthquake hit?
What was the magnitude of the quake?
How many people were killed?

Painting with Mr Pat

 4T all enjoyed learning how to mix colours carefully to make a gradient. Well done Gia Vinh you was great!

Causal Language

This week in English we have been learning about causal language and the words & phrases used to explain. Everyone has learned lots of new language and the whole class was especially impressed with Jeanette and Hannah's performance. After a vote it was decided that their video should be added to the class blog.

Speech Contest

 This week saw the MP2 speech contest and I can definitely say that I'm very proud of 4T. Jeanette did a fantastic job and I was really impressed with all of the technical language that she used. Another big well done to Anh vu who came second!

Filtering Competition

All 4T really enjoyed the lesson to conclude our unit of work on solids and liquids. Everyone was given the same quantity of water that was mixed with soil, twigs, leaves, sand and pebbles. Each group had only 20 minutes to separate as much solid from liquid as possible and try to get the cleanest water and the most water too. Well done to Group 5 who managed to not only get the cleanest water but also the most water too. Ms Alison judged them to have the cleanest water and after measuring it was discovered that they had gathered 900ml too! Well done Group 5.

Dormant, Extinct & Active - Can you find them?

Did you know there are three types of volcano? If you didn't, research using one of our favourite volcano sites and find out the difference. Once you understand the difference, can you locate each type of volcano on three different continents? When you have, post your answer in a comment below. 

Erupting

Wow, what a great day we have had today.  We all followed the instructions carefully to make our own volcanoes explode! First we added two cups of water to our jug. Followed by 3 level scoops of bicarbonate of soda, a few drops of red food colouring and a squirt of washing up liquid. We mixed it all together and poured it into our volcanoes.  After taking great care to carry our volcanoes downstairs, we took turns to add one cup of vinegar. This made a chemical reaction and it looked as if molten lava was pouring out of the main vent of our volcanoes! Now watch the exciting video of Bach and Chi Nhan's volcanoes exploding, and look at the slideshow of pictures from this morning.

Mixtures & Solutions - Do you know the difference?

During a busy lesson spent investigating, 4T discovered that not all solids react the same way when they are mixed with a liquid. Some solids seem to disappear into the water to form solutions while others are easily visible. Can you remember which solids dissolve to form solutions? If you can, write them down in a comment below. I wonder how many we can find?

Book Complete! Come and get it!

Good news Year 4 - our book is complete! I have tested it on my iPad and Mr Ian has now also tested it on his iPad too, so it definitely works. Unfortunately I could only save it as an 'iBooks' file and so it must be added to an iPad with the iBooks application on it. If you would like to add it to your iPad then I will happily copy the book onto a USB for you. All you need to do is connect your iPad to your computer and then open iTunes. Your iPad should then appear and all you have to do is drag the iBooks file from your USB onto your iPad. Make sure you click the sync button before you take out your iPad from your computer.

Marvellous Volcanoes

Even though it may be assessment week, everyone in 4T is still working hard during IPC sessions. This week we hope to build a model volcano that we can all erupt later. As you can see everyone has made a great start!

Book Week Fun

Book week is now over and I thought it would be nice to share a few of the best memories from the week. So much has happened this week that I don't know where to start. I'm so proud of all of Year 4 for trying so hard to read extra and finding the house Wallies that were so well hidden around the school.

The other stad out memory for me has to be the publishing of our class book in the library. I have never taught a class of such clever children and it's great that we are all published authors! That's right, if you search on Destiny now you will find our book. How cool is it that anyone in school can check our book out of the library for them to read at home! The e-book is nearly done and I will give anyone a copy of it when it is ready. 

The Best Selling Children's Author Ever

I was reading Ms Alison's blog, and noticed her tricky question this week was about finding out the best selling children's author. This made me remember something that means I can write a post and tell you all the answer.

When I was 6, I went to my local library for a really exciting meet an author afternoon. Amazingly, I was lucky to meet the fantastic author Colin McNaughton. I eagerly ran up to him holding a copy of Jolly Roger (one of my favourite pirate stories) and asked him to sign it for me. As he did so he told me that he was now the best selling author of children's books. He has had over 70 books published!

So I can indeed easily answer Ms Alison's question without even searching the Internet!

Read The Force!

Year 4! Remember to bring your books where ever you go, just in case the reading Jedi appear!