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Excalibur – Year 4 & 5
Excalibur – Years 4 & 5
Welcome to Excalibur Class
The adults in Excalibur Class are:
Mrs Helen Trusson – Class Teacher (Monday – Thursday)
Mr Dave Gordon – Class Teacher (Friday)
Mr Jack Bunter – Teaching Assistant - Monday
Mrs Bridgett Spiller - Teaching Assistant (Tuesday – Friday)
Mrs Cae Hills - 1:1
Week beginning 17th July
This week, we completed our Local history and Geography topic with a mystery photo tour around Queen Camel village…once the children found the item in the photographs, they had to mark each location on a map of the village. When we returned to school the children wrote a 6-grid-refence number for each location on their maps - they have become incredibly good at it!
We have also completed the door plaques for the classrooms, from Merlin to Lancelot, we can't wait to reveal these beauties in September! In the meantime, hopefully children will be enjoying homemade pizzas now that they know how to whizz up a batch of speedy dough!
https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/bread-recipes/basic-pizza/
Week beginning 10th July
We have continued to explore electricity this week, by testing materials to see if they are electrical insulators or conductors. As you can probably see from the photos, we used objects which were in our classroom environment to test and have discovered that metals make good electrical conductors.
Week beginning 3rd July
Over the last few weeks we have been investigating electric circuits in our science topic. The children are grasping a good understanding of what components are needed to form a successful circuit and whether a circuit is complete or incomplete.
Week beginning 26th June
We have had a very fun-packed week!!!
On Wednesday we had a full day of sports starting with House sports in the morning including cricket, football and netball.
During the afternoon we had our Sports Day which included javelin, an obstacle course and lots of track events.
The following day (Thursday) we had a maths day. We spent all day doing 'fun' maths activities including, a maths scavenger hunt around the playing field and playground, investigated 3D nets, designed and made a maths game, took part in the 'calculation-a-thon' and played an 'escape room'...maths really can be fun!!
Week Beginning 19th June
Week 2 of our cookery classes was Macaroni Cheese! The key skill from today's recipe was the Béchamel sauce - one of the "mother sauces" of French cuisine. First, the children made a roux from flour and butter before adding milk and cheese to pour over the pasta. We discussed ways to balance the meal across the food groups as well as what else we could use our sauce skills for!
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/best-ever-macaroni-cheese-recipe
Also this week in PE we have enjoyed practising athletics events in preparation for sports day (next week), as well as practising basic skills for rounders.
Week Beginning 12th June
Today we began our DT unit of cookery with the theme of cheese! Savoury or sweet, cheese is a brilliant do-it-all and of course tastes amazing on its own too. First up, we baked cheese scones with a secret ingredient to help the rise - the perfect accompaniment to The Ashes this Fathers' Day!
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/lemonade-scones
Week beginning 5th June
We have enjoyed our lovely sun shelter and the glorious weather this week, by having our class 'story time' outside.
To complete our local history topic on Cadbury Castle, the children have used all their knowledge they have gathered about this heritage site to create a leaflet to inform visitors of the history linked to 'Cadbury Castle'
Week beginning 22nd May
This week we have been learning about the water cycle. As well as creating our own diagrams of the processes involved...
...we have also made our own water cycle models to see with our own eyes the processes of the water cycle occurring.
Week beginning 15th May
We have been starting every Tuesday morning this term with a yoga session.
The children really enjoy it, and use the opportunity to focus on their health and wellbeing!
Week beginning 8th May
This week we completed an experiment in our science topic 'states of matter' to investigate the best temperature to melt...chocolate! We discovered the more heat you give the solid chocolate, the more energy the particles gain, leading to the them behaving like liquid.
Week beginning 1st May
This week, we had a visitor (Stuart) to our school from the Exeter Hebrew Congregation & Jewish Community. His knowledge and insight into Judaism was fascinating and had the children completely engaged and full of questions. A perfect way to launch our next RE topic on Judaism!
Week beginning 24th April
This week, in maths we have continued to develop our understanding of decimal numbers. We have explored tenths, hundredths and thousandths using base 10 equipment to support the concept of size in relation to these decimal values.
We have also continued with our States of Matter science topic this week. Our science experiment involved finding out if gas weighed anything...we had lots of fun shaking 'fizzy drink' bottles to investigate this enquiry and concluded it does! Orangeade lost the most gas (carbon dioxide) weighing 20g lighter after we had shaken it.
Race for Life 2023
Week beginning 17th April
What an amazing week back to the summer term we have had in Excalibur class...
We have continued to play the glockenspiel and read music, which we started in the Spring term.
The children are learning about states of matter in our new science topic, starting with focusing on the behaviour of particles.
And perhaps the highlight of the week...the Year 4 and 5 trip to Legoland. As you can see from the photos, learning and fun was had by all (adults included!)
The forces workshop
The Model Making Studio
Miniland
The rides
Week beginning 27th March
We had some unexpected, but very welcome visitors this week. The children enjoyed hearing about the lambs and petting them.
We celebrated Easter this week with a school service which sadly due to the weather was held at school rather than the planned venue of St Barnabas Church. We all arrived in our Easter bonnets...
...and Excalibur class shared how Easter is celebrated around the world.
Week beginning 20th March
In science this week, we have been learning about classification keys. In groups we worked together to create our own classification keys for animals from different habitats.
We are very proud of the classification keys we produced...
We have also been busy designing Easter eggs for a competition run by SSAFA.
Week beginning 13th March
To celebrate science week, we have spent a day exploring engineering through the project 'If you were an engineer what would you do?' Once we had established what the role of an engineer was, we set about considering problems and how we might find solutions to these.
We then worked on creating detailed, annotated designs which we felt solved the problems we had explored. These ranged from creating a 3-in-1 shoe to replace school shoes, trainers and wellington boots...to creating ideas and inventions for completing lessons whilst ensuring we have regular physical exercise throughout our school day.
We really enjoyed sharing our designs and inventions with the rest of our class.
To round off the day, we got to interview a real-life engineer (remotely) and to make the day even better, we had one of our questions posed to the engineer - well done Wesley for your great question!
Week beginning 6th March
We have been enjoying 'Poetry Week' this week. We have written group poems and individual poems all centred around the theme 'Earth'. To round up our week on poetry, we rehearsed and performed our poems to the rest of our class.
Coding for inputs and outputs to follow a marked route in Computing
Week beginning 27th February
Tuesday was....Volcano Day!!! We all had a fantastic, fun-filled day and are very proud of our creations.
We started the day with creating and moulding our volcano shape based on the specific volcano we were given, most were stratovolcanoes but we did also have a few shield volcanoes. With a plastic bottle forming our magma chamber and newspaper scrunched around, we started to papier mache the models...
Once dry, we painted the volcanoes to give them an authentic look...
Finally, the part we had been most looking forward to...the erupting...
We also celebrated World book day on Thursday. The costumes were truly amazing and a great effort was made by all of Excalibur!
We had a great time in the Reading cafe listening to our class reading book 'The Secrets of Vesuvius' and enjoying hot chocolate and biscuits.
Beginning to code our Lego EV3 robots in Computing
Week beginning 20th February
On Tuesday we all had the opportunity to make...and eat... pancakes to celebrate shrove Tuesday. It was lots of fun!!
We also shared a king cake to celebrate Mardi Gras in true French style. Eloise was the lucky person to find the tiny doll hidden in the cake according to tradition, the person who finds the doll should receive luck and prosperity!
Thursday afternoons this half term, we are having outdoor learning sessions with Mrs Hewlett and Mrs Crang. This week we went up to the allotment to do some digging...there was also a lot of exploring and handling of insects, particularly worms and centipedes!
Week beginning 6th February
This Tuesday was 'Safer Internet Day' and although we are always raising children's awareness of how to be safe online, this day offers an opportunity to have an even greater focus. We completed a quiz exploring scenarios which may arise online and as a class voted on a selection choices for how to react. We were very proud with our score 9/10!!
We have added the link to this page as many children in the class said they would be interested to see how their parents performed in the quiz...Good luck Parents!!
We also spent time playing a game which linked to the quiz, so Excalibur class are feeling very confident in their knowledge of how to best keep themselves safe on the internet...whilst still having fun!
Week beginning 30th January
This week the year 5's have been busy learning about square and cube numbers in maths lessons, whilst the year 4's have been counting in 6,7,9,25 and 1000 along with plenty of challenges and reasoning based on these themes.
We have also started circuit training in PE lessons. The children have one-minute on each activity/circuit to achieve their best score, and we will be using this to set ourselves goals from week to week to try and better our performances.
Week beginning 23rd January
Continuing with our volcanoes topic, we have started to consider the tragic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. The children watched an inspiring animation, tracking the stages of this eruption and then wrote a set of diary entries imagining they were a child living through this experience. They have produced some fantastic pieces of writing...well done Excalibur class!!!
Week beginning 16th January
This half term, we are studying the stages of the human life cycle in science. This week we have been graphing and analysing data relating to a baby's average height in their first year.
Week beginning 9th January
Exploring fixing and joining techniques
In our music lessons this term, we are starting to learn to play music using the glockenspiel. This week we have been focusing on playing the notes D, E and F. It took a great deal of concentration to play in time but we actually sounded really good!
Week beginning 2nd January
Starting out on our Computing/DT Project
The children have returned to school after the Christmas break with great enthusiasm!! We are literally starting off the New Year with a ’bang’ with our topic this term being Volcanoes and Earthquakes. Look out for news later this term of a volcano day, when the children will create volcanoes and then use chemicals (safely) to create an eruption.
Week beginning 12th December
Christmas has arrived....We had Santa arriving by helicopter on Monday...
We wore Christmas jumpers on Tuesday for our Christmas dinner....
And we also had our Christmas party and made lovely 'stained glass window' Christmas cards for our families.
Merry Christmas and Best wishes for the New Year!
Week beginning 5th December
We have been busy finishing off our history topic on the Anglo Saxons and Vikings this week. We ended the topic by learning about the Battle of Hastings, which the children have a great understanding of including the events leading up to and during this event in 1066!
Week beginning 28th November
Wow! What a fun-packed week we have had as the build-up to Christmas begins. It started Monday with a West End Musical Dance workshop based around the Pantomime Aladdin.
On Tuesday, we had the fantastic pantomime 'Aladdin' perform at our school...
Then on Wednesday we made our Christingles in preparation for our Christingle service on Thursday...
Week beginning 21st November
We have been busy this week becoming involved in the Men's football world cup. We have all selected a team which we will support throughout the tournament
We spent some time researching and finding out about our selected country.
Each day we record our country's football result on our World cup chart.
Excalibur have also continued with their World Cup themed Art project with Mr Plumbley this week. The children researched the flags of the countries involved and matched the corresponding colours to form part of the final display.
Week beginning 14th November
This week we have celebrated anti-bullying week. The focus this year has been 'reach out' and as a class we have explored how we can do exactly that...either to gain help for ourselves or for others we feel may need help and support. To show our support and unity in this approach, we made wrist bands and wore them for the day...
Sam & Leia Enjoy Children in Need
Star and Worker of the Week
We have also been developing our music knowledge and singing skills with the song 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams, which we are really enjoying as it lifts everyone's spirits!!!
Week Beginning 7th November
Maths Curriculum Evening
Thank you to those parents who attended and supported the Maths Curriculum evening we held this week. If you were unable to attend, then below you will find links to a variety of resources which provide an insight into your child's Maths Curriculum and will enable you to further support them on their maths journey.
This week we wrote playscripts for the character we are reading about in class called 'Beowulf'. To prepare us, we acted out playscripts to help us understand their structure and how stage directions are fundamental to bringing a play to life.
Week Beginning 31st October
Children thoroughly enjoyed their art lesson this week. The first of a group of lessons, led by Mr Plumbley, saw the children start the initial stages of a World Cup project. It will be interesting to see the project develop over the up-and-coming weeks.
We have also started to improve and develop communication skills in PE lessons to support our work in team sports/games. We completed several tasks during our PE lesson which encouraged us to explore ways to communicate without speaking.
Week Beginning 17th October
All the fun of the disco!
Researching the UN's Rights of the Child in PSHE
Designing and Modelling our Classroom Using Design Software in Computing and Design Technology Classes
We celebrated Harvest at our local Church.
More Science investigations...this time not with air resistance but with water resistance. We explored water resistance by designing and creating a boat which would be streamlined and therefore travel the quickest through the water.
We had a lot of fun in this experiment; however the results were not quite as we expected???
Week beginning the 10th October 2022
This week we came to school on Monday in yellow to celebrate World Mental Health Day (Hello Yellow). We talked about our mental health and well-being throughout the day and reinforced the importance of talking. We took time out throughout the day to reflect on how we were feeling and completed focused colouring tasks to support us with this.
Est-ce que tu parles français?
This week, Year 4 did a little role play to try out their new french conversational skills. After just three weeks they are becoming more confident and are enjoying their new language skills.
Lucy, Betsy and Jack
Week Beginning the 3rd October 2022
In Science this week, we have been investigating air resistance and the impact it has on parachutes. We made 6 different sized parachutes ranging from 10cm x 10cm square to 60cm x 60cm square. Each parachute was dropped from 2 metres, and we timed how long they took to descend to the floor. We had a lot of fun and most of our predictions were supported by our results...the 60cm parachute was the slowest falling parachute.
Week beginning 26th September 2022
Another great week together with a mixture of learning about the United Nation's Rights of the Child in our PSHE and continuing our carnival build in Design Technology!
Week beginning 19th September 2022
We have being learning about the Anglo Saxons and Vikings. The children have produced time lines of key events during this historical period.
Carnival construction
Star and Worker of the week - Betsy and Dexter
Week beginning 12th September 2022
This term we are continuing with the weekly yoga sessions which the children experienced and enjoyed last year. It is proving to be a great way to start the new school year focussing on our health and wellbeing.
Star and Worker of the Week - Lola and Frayer
Welcome Back!
We are so proud of how this year's Excalibur class are already settling into the new academic year. In Year 4 & 5 we are continuing to develop skills which will make us become even greater independent and resilient learners.
EXCALIBUR CLASS 2022-2023
Star and Worker of the Week - Freya and Noah
