Welcome to Year 4!

Who's Who?

Mrs Wardle - Class Teacher

Mrs Stothard - Teaching Assistant

Mrs A - Teaching Assistant

Reading

Children should be reading regularly to an adult at home - a minimum of 3 times per week. Children are responsible for changing their own reading book at any suitable time throughout the week. Reading records are checked every Friday and the number of times your child has read is noted down. Reading is rewarded with a reading certificate after every 20th log in their record.

Homework & Spellings

Children will be given spellings and a sheet of homework on Fridays, this will be something we have been looking at in either maths or English. Spellings will be tested on the following Thursday. It is recommended that spellings are practised for a short period daily. When testing times tables, focus on facts that children are unable to recall automatically. I will be keeping a running record of children's scores throughout the year.

PE 

PE lessons will take place every Tuesday afternoon. Children should come to school wearing their full PE kit (navy/black joggers or shorts, house colour/white t-shirt, and dark jogging top or blue school jumper). If children arrive in the wrong PE kit, they may be asked to change into a spare school PE kit.

Forest School

Forest school will also be taking place on Tuesday afternoon. As they also have PE this day, they should already be in full PE kit (see above). But please also pack them waterproof clothing, such as wellies, rain coat, and over-trousers. As the weather turns colder, please also supply gloves and hats.

Autumn 1 Term - 2023

English

This half term, we will be reading the book ‘Operation Gadgetman’ by Malorie Blackman. We will be using this book as inspiration to write a character description, then a persuasive letter convincing children to but Gadgetman’s latest invention – Spy Kits!

Maths

We will begin our maths curriculum by learning about place value. Children will be using numbers up to 10,000! We will read, write, partition, compare, order and round numbers up to 10,000.

We will be having a timestable assessment at the end of year 4, as all children in the country will, we have been practicing our timestable in a weekly quiz and on times table rockstars.

Our next unit will be Addition and Subtraction.  Please find websites further below which offer valuable practice for maths.

Science

Our first science unit is Electricity. The National Curriculum states children should be taught to:

• Identify common appliances that run on electricity.  
• Construct a simple series electrical circuit, identifying and naming its basic parts, including cells, wires, bulbs, switches and buzzers.  
• Identify whether a lamp will light in a simple series circuit, based on whether or not the lamp is part of a complete loop with a battery. 
• Recognise that a switch opens and closes a circuit and associate this with whether a lamp lights in a simple series circuit.  
• Recognise some common conductors and insulators, and associate metals with being good conductors.  

Discussion or observation at home around these topics will support children in school. A fantastic online resource to explore circuits can be found at: learningcircuits.co.uk/circuit_builder

Topic

Our geography topic, Farm to Fork, is all about how our food gets onto our plates. This topic will run throughout the whole of Autumn Term. This will explore how our food is either grown or reared, how the raw food is processed in factories to create things like bread. As well as this, we will be looking at how and why some foods are imported to Britian due to the climate of Britian in comparison to other countries.

Religious Education

In the first half term, we will be exploring how we can learn from religions to decide what is right and wrong. We will be exploring the importance of rules and particularly looking at Judaism to see how their religious books helps decide what is right and wrong.

Computing

This half term, we are looking at the internet and how information is transferred to different databases, we are also exploring how to stay safe on the internet and what websites we can use to find good information.

Online Maths Games

Please find a range of resources to support your child in maths.

Times Tables Rock Stars – Times Tables Rock Stars (ttrockstars.com)

Year 4 Maths - BBC Bitesize

Hit the Button - Quick fire maths practise for 6-11 year olds (topmarks.co.uk)

Daily 10 - Mental Maths Challenge - Topmarks

1-Minute Maths App | White Rose Maths

5-a-day – Corbettmaths Primary

Autumn 1 Highlights

What have we been up to?

We take every opportunity to engage in hands-on, enjoyable learning experiences. Take a look below to see what we have been doing this year!