Welcome to Year 4

Reading:

Children have all been issued with a colour banded reading book and they have been encouraged to also pick a free reading book from either the classroom, library or home to really instil that love and passion for reading.

The Year 4 expectation is for you to read with your child minimum of 5 times per week and record it in their reading record.  A parent, carer or guardian signature will be required for each read.

Please refer to the reading records for guidance and examples on possible questions that you could ask your child about the text which they are reading.

Reading logs and reading books are expected to be in school every day as part of school equipment and will be checked and signed by school every Friday.

Spellings:

The children in Year 3 have been split into 2 spelling groups. It is essential that we rebuild the children’s confidence with certain spelling patterns and sounds before moving onto to more trickier spellings. This will be reassessed at the end of Spring term.

Spellings will be introduced on Monday and tested on a Friday. 
All children have access to Spelling Shed which is a valuable online tool. Children should be accessing this at home via their log on and playing minimum 5 – 10 mins per day to really embed the sounds and spelling patterns. In turn, this will help with long term memory and increase their weekly spelling scores. 

Homework:

Year 4 will receive a ‘Homework Choice Menu’ filled with fun, creative activities linked to this term’s curriculum topic –Wonderful water and Anglo Saxons. It’s a free choice menu, and the children are expected to complete at least 3 activities over each half term, with the option to do more if they wish.

It would be wonderfully beneficial if your children could also access Spelling Shed and Times Table Rockstars (TTRS). Ideally, children should play at least 10 games of TTRS and Spelling Shed each week to support with fluency. Logins for Spelling Shed and TTRS can be found in your child's Reading Records.

          

Timetables

Attenborough Class

Queen Class

What We're Learning

Details of the Year 4 learning journey can be found here: 

Year 4 - What we're learning

Please note, this page will be updated termly, so please keep checking back.

Spring

Spring term is set to be full of adventure, imagination and discovery, with lots of opportunities for children to creatively learn and explore our exciting themes: wonderful water and Anglo Saxons.

In English, we will begin by exploring The King Who Banned the Dark, using the story to inspire our own newspaper reports recounting the key events, before moving on to shape poetry and creating river-themed poems as part of our Wonderful Water topic. We will also study the epic tale of Beowulf, writing detailed character descriptions and crafting our own short stories inspired by the legend. During whole-class reading sessions, we will continue to enjoy a wide range of engaging texts, including The Enchanted Forest and works by Marcus Rashford, helping to develop comprehension skills and foster a love of reading. In Maths, pupils will strengthen their understanding of multiplication and division before progressing to length and perimeter, fractions and decimals, alongside regular times tables practice to build fluency and confidence ahead of the Multiplication Tables Check. In Science, our focus will be on sound, where children will explore how sounds are made, how they travel and how we hear the many sounds around us through practical investigations. In Geography, our Wonderful Water topic will include learning about the water cycle, the features of rivers and the seas and oceans of the world, culminating in our own river investigation. In History, we will explore the Anglo-Saxons, discovering where they came from, why they settled in Britain and what life was like during this fascinating period. Our PE lessons will keep us active and energised, with outdoor netball and tennis sessions, alongside indoor lessons focused on health, fitness and developing a healthy lifestyle.

           

 

Spring

Autumn Term

In Year 4 we are excited to be spending our English lessons exploring ‘Billy and the Minpins’ by Roald Dahl, we are listening to the adventure Billy goes on, into the Forest of Sin. Using sensational sentences in our writing we will learn how to include subordinating conjunctions and fronted adverbials to create fabulous descriptions of the forest and the monsters within. In whole class reading Year 4 are diving into ‘The Witches’ to explore another story written by Roald Dahl, followed by delving into ‘Paddington’. We will use these books to undertake a range of guided reading tasks related to our reading dogs such as: Retrieval Rex, Vocabulary Victor, Prediction Pip, Summarising Sheba and Inference Iggy.

We are excited to be looking ‘Through the Window’ in our first geography topic in our Theme lessons. We will find out about our local area using maps and compasses to create our own maps. Later on we will have the opportunity to extend our knowledge of physical and human geographical features that can be found in our local area. In our science lessons we are also using our local area, but to explore living things, understanding the characteristics for life and how living things adapt to their habitat. We will learn how to classify living things after under taking a closer inspection of those things living close by to our school.

Autumn