Year 4

Welcome to Year 4! 😁

Our staff team consists of Mrs Spree, Mrs Wright and Mrs Kaba (we will also have Miss Horne joining us every Monday afternoon); Mrs Wright teaches all day on a Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday PM and Mrs Spree teaches on a Wednesday morning and all day on a Thursday and Friday. 

In Year 4, we work super hard, have a positive attitude, achieve our goals and have fun along the way! Our class' Superskill is 'Teamwork' and we try our best to promote this in and around school. We hope your child will have a happy, exciting and productive year. 

Our curriculum ensures we have a wide variety of ways to help make our childrens’ experiences meaningful, motivating and memorable. Here are a few of the exciting topics to look forward to:

Humanities In Humanities we will learn about one of the earliest civilisations The Ancient Egyptians, we will learn about Rivers and Volcanoes, and even learn all about Crime and Punishment and much more!

RE This year we are excited to begin the new RE scheme in Y4; The Vine and the Branches.  Over the course of the year we will learn about The Creation, Prophecy and Promise, Galilee to Jerusalem, Desert to Garden, we then move onto learning about The Ends of The Earth in the summer term. Every week, in groups, the children will plan and deliver a Prayer and Liturgy session to the rest of the class. 

Science We will be learning about  electricity, sound, teeth, eating and digestion, states of matter, animal classification and food chains! We will make links to Art and Design Technology throughout our learning journey. 

Maths During lessons, we promote an understanding of concepts, using concrete resources to support the children in their learning.  We also focus on mental strategies and written calculations for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Being able to complete calculations enables the children to use their knowledge and skills to solve real life problems. Learning our times tables through regular practice at home and in school is highly valued and promoted! Times tables is a huge focus in Year 4. It is expected that children should also know all their 12 times tables by the end of Year 4 so it is vital that they practise them in preparation for our Multiplication Check and also to help our mathematics skills as times tables are in everything we do! 

English We foster a love of reading through whole class participation. Some examples of the books we read include The Mousehole Cat by Antonia Barber, The Firework-Maker's Daughter by Philip Pullman, The Balaclava Boys by George Layton, The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo. We use these books to extend the children's vocabulary and develop their communication skills by answering questions about what they have read. We also look at poetry related to our term theme like The Water Dance by Thomas Locker and 'My Mother Saw a Dancing Bear' by Charles Causley.

This learning also feeds into developing writing skills, analysing techniques used by the authors and emphasising the importance of spelling rules, punctuation and grammar. In addition, we develop understanding, knowledge and skills in all other subjects through a variety of fun and exciting teaching and learning activities.

Reading Reading is the key to learning! We highly recommend that you read with your child as often as possible (daily is ideal). Getting your child to read aloud to you and discussing books is vital to develop fluency and comprehension skills. To enable us to check how often your child is reading at home, please sign their reading record each time you read with them. They will need to bring in their reading record daily and books can be changed when the children have finished their books.  What is important is that children have opportunities to read fluently and with understanding.  We also encourage children to choose a book from the school library, these can be taken home too.

Homework In Year 4 the main focus for homework will be regular reading, practising spellings and learning the times tables ready for their multiplication check in June (play on Maths and Spelling Shed as often as possible!). Your child will receive a physical sheet of Maths or English work every week relevant to the class learning which will need to be handed in weekly (homework will be given out on Wednesday and returned on Friday). In addition, they will receive spelling homework to be completed on Spelling Shed, along with reading - please encourage your child to read daily, question them about what they have read and ensure they understand any new words. Diaries will be checked weekly, to ensure that they have read at home and are up to date with their reading.

PE Children will have PE every Monday and Friday and come into school in their full PE kits. Swimming will commence at the in the Summer Term.  (Children can come into school wearing their PE kit, please ensure this follows our uniform policy).

As always, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact either of us via class dojo or in person. We are happy to help. 👍🏼

We look forward to working with your children this year and thoroughly hope they enjoy their time in Year 4! 

The Year 4 team! 

What are we up to?

Autumn Term!

We have been very busy Autumn 1, we have all settled well into Year 4 and had so much fun with our learning too!  We have learnt all about Earthquakes and Volcanoes in Geography; in RE we found out about Abraham and the special promise that was made with God; we read and enjoyed the Firework Makers Daughter and in Maths we improved our Place Value skills and enjoyed our purposeful end point (timed relay races in our house teams!). The children loved learning about animal and plant classification in Science and they shared their purposeful end points (colourful posters showing animal classification) to EYFS children. They definitely went back to class more knowledgeable about animals and how they are classified! In PE the children thoroughly enjoyed practising their throwing and catching skills which led up to them playing team games, putting their defence and attacking skills into practice. In DT, the children produced some amazing slingshot cars and there were some incredible designs of the main body of the car!