Year 4

Hello and welcome to the Year 4 webpage!

Staff

4 Beech

Class teacher - Miss Mumby

Teaching assistants - Miss Richmond & Mrs Clark

4 Ash

Class teacher - Mrs McGuinness

Teaching assistants - Miss Murphy & Miss Roberts

P.E.

As we go swimming in year 4, we have one other PE session in school which will either be indoor or outdoor for a half-term, so that by the end of the year the children will have spent equal amounts of indoor and outdoor PE.

Indoor PE - Thursday – plain black shorts, plain white t-shirt, plain black jumper or zipped jacket and trainers. No earrings.

Swimming – Friday – swimming costume (no bikinis) and swimming shorts (above the knee), towel, bag to carry things in. No earrings.

Swimming

Children may bring goggles for swimming if they prefer to wear them. Unfortunately, Bramley Baths are unable to lend any goggles at this time. Children are also allowed to bring a brush or comb for their hair; however, deodorant is not allowed. Long hair must be tied up for swimming lessons.

As we walk to and from Bramley Baths, it is essential that the children bring a waterproof coat and sensible footwear in case of bad weather.

Children need to come to school in their PE kit on Thursday and will stay in it for the whole day. In colder weather, it would not be appropriate to wear shorts all day, so we recommend that children come to school with their outdoor jogging pants over the top of their shorts and that they wear their school cardigan or jumper to keep them warm.

For all PE sessions, earrings must be removed, so if your child cannot take them out themselves, then it is best not to wear them on PE days.

Homework

Reading

Please make sure you read your child's school reading book with them as often as possible. We recommend at least 20 minutes per day. Reading is a 'building block' on which much of their other learning rests, and regular reading at home makes a huge difference in the classroom. If you sign their diary when they have read with you, they can earn a sticker on the class Reading Leaderboard and earn prizes.

Spelling

Each week, spellings will be given out for the children to learn. This will be a combination of words containing specific letter patterns that we are working on and some of the year 3 and 4 common exception words that they should be able to spell by the end of this year. They will be tested on these words the following week and be given new words to learn.

Maths - Times Tables

Each child has an account on ‘Times Tables Rockstars’ (login details can be found in the front of your child’s reading diary) that they can access at home - there is also a 'Times tables Rockstars' app that you can download to your phone or tablet https://www.ttrockstars.com. Homework is set weekly on ‘Times Table Rockstars’ at an appropriate level.

Teachers may also set homework on TTRS and Class Dojo and other tasks as they arise.

It is a school expectation that this homework is completed on time each week.

Curriculum

Spring Term - The Maya

In reading, we will be reading the Maya myth ‘The Chocolate Tree.’ We will also read ‘Meet Me at the Steelmen’ and ‘The Bolds.’ In writing, we will be creating newspaper reports and explanation texts. Grammar will include continued work on using conjunctions and fronted adverbials. We will also continue to develop the use of speech punctuation and the possessive apostrophe.

In maths, we will continue to develop arithmetic work around using the four different operations. We will also focus on the quick recall (within 6 seconds) of times tables up to the 12 times table. Fractions and decimals will form a large chunk of maths in the half term.

In science, we will continue with our topic of states of matter. We will then move on to living things and habitats, where will look at grouping animals in a variety of ways, using classification keys and recognise that environments can change, posing dangers to living things.

In history, we will continue our work on the Ancient Maya.

In geography, we will start to look at Mexico, thinking about the human and physical aspects of its geography.

As part of our D.T. food curriculum the children will be making cheese scones. We will also be designing and making a clay sundial.

In PE, we will continue with our Friday swimming sessions. For indoor/outdoor PE, we will be learning cricket skills.

In computing, we will be continuing to learn about spreadsheets, and we will use them to create graphs.

Our musical concept focus will be to develop pulse & groove through improvisation to create simple melodies. We will continue learning to play the recorder.

Spanish, this half term, will be ‘en mi pueblo’ – in my town. We will learn the names of different building/places and use these in sentences.

In PSHE, we will be linking with another school in Leeds. We will be introducing ourselves and getting to know them through exchanging names, telling them about ourselves and learning about them. We will look at our similarities and differences, and celebrate these.