Year 4 News

Ryan – 4C 

We have been learning about Matter. To explain what that is, let’s see… what is matter? It is everything! Matter is your desk, water, air, in fact anything on earth and in space that you can see, feel, taste or smell… like I told you, everything. 

Our most recent UOI in Year 4 was How the World Works. 

Our central idea was Understanding the way materials behave and interact determine how people use them. 

Our lines of inquiry were: 

The different forms of matter 

The way matter works 

The way matter can change 

The way we use matter 

The Learner Profile attributes that we focused on were Balanced and Risk-taker. 

Harry 4B 

What I found interesting is that everything is matter. Matter is basically something that has weight or volume. There are 3 main states of matter – solids, liquids and gases. A solid can’t be compressed, a liquid will take the shape of whatever it is in and a gas will spread anywhere. There are 2 more states of matter which are plasma and Bose Einstein. Something I found interesting is that water can be all 3 states of matter… water, ice and vapour. 

Isabelle 4A 

People might ask, ‘What’s the matter?’ Well, the answer is everything! Matter is everywhere… pens, trees, paper and even people! Matter can be in the form of a solid, liquid or a gas. Solids are things like tables, bottles and buildings. Liquids are things like water, juice and milk. And gases include things like steam, smoke and oxygen. In Science with Mrs Jones, we did an experiment where we mixed salt with water. The salt dissolved in the water and we had to explain whether it was a chemical or physical change. A physical change is when matter can return to its original state and a chemical change is when it can’t. The salt in water was a physical change. 

Rebecca 4A 

Another example of a physical change is when Ice turns back into water when it melts. A chemical change is when you put bread in the toaster and turns into toast. It is not possible to turn toast back into bread again. We learnt a lot of new scientific words which was fun and interesting. Some of these words were reaction, dissolve, properties and prediction and we used these in our Procedural writing learning task. Hugo is going to explain one of the other experiments that we did in our Science lessons with Mrs Jones:. 

Hugo 4C 

It was the start of the day. We were all super excited because we were going to do the coke and Mentos experiment. We all ran down to the Science room and Mrs Jones told us what we were going to do and then asked us to write down our predictions. She had lemonade too, so we could see if it worked with other soft drinks. We went outside to sit at the amphitheatre. When Mrs Jones put the Mentos in the coke it exploded. Then she put the Mentos in the Lemonade and it exploded too. We went back inside and drew a labelled diagram of what we saw. Mrs Jones explained that the tiny dents on the surface of the Mentos made the carbon dioxide bubbles create an explosion. Then just for fun we got a HUGE bottle of Coke Zero and put a whole packet of Mentos into it… this was the best bit… the explosion was HUGE! It went so high! This was my highlight of this unit of inquiry. 

Alice 4C 

Within this unit we were learning about different materials and their properties and the impact they have on the environment. Most of us at some stage have used a single use plastic straw. Did you know that every single one of those straws is still on this planet since they don’t break down and lots of it is in the ocean. 90 percent of sea birds have plastic in them and plastic takes 100s of years to break down, and that’s why many shops and businesses do not use plastic anymore.  

Evelyn 4B 

I was fascinated by the fact that all matter has mass. It’s obvious that solids and liquids have mass, but I was astonished that gas has weight too. We saw proof of this with the comparison of 2 balloons… 1 ballon had air in it and 1 didn’t. The balloon with air in it was heavier than the one without. Every day we looked deeper and deeper into this unit and I think I learnt a lot. Year 4 loved this unit.