Welcome to Year 4
Mrs Richardson is pleased to welcome everyone back to school after the holidays. The Christmas holidays are always the most busy and stressful out of all the school holidays. We hope you enjoyed any festive celebrations and spending time with those you love. Hopefully, you also found some time to rest and recover from the Christmas chaos!
Year 4 pupils have already settled well, slipping back into our routines and demonstrating that they are ready and keen to learn.
We continue to reinforce and praise pupils for following our school rules:
Be ready
Be respectful
Be safe
Year 4 Curriculum 2023-24
Year 4 termly Curriculum Newsletters 2023-24
Our curriculum newsletter provides information about what we will be learning in each subject area this term and we will also make links to our topic across other areas of the curriculum.
Our history topic for the first half term is Anglo Saxons: How hard was it to invade and settle in Britain?
After the half term break, our geography topic will be Rivers: What are rivers and how are they used?
To support our learning in school, we would also like the children to complete a termly homework project, based on our learning in school. As much as possible, please encourage the children to complete this project independently, but please do help them to practise their delivery, so that they are confident about speaking loudly and clearly to the whole class when presenting their project work.
Useful information about year 4:
P.E:
Our PE days are Thursday and Friday. Please ensure your child comes to school wearing PE kit on these days. Spring is always such a changeable season, layers are advisable so that pupils can add or remove a layer according to the weather. Please remember that earrings should be covered or removed (at home) for PE days.
Reading books:
The children should be bringing their Accelerated Reader reading books into school every day, so that we are able to read with them whenever there is the opportunity. They should then take their reading books home each evening, to allow you the opportunity to read with them as often as you are able to.
The general recommendation for reading at home is twenty minutes a day, however we do recognise that this is not always possible. Please do read with your child as often as you are able to, making a note of this in your child’s reading record whenever you have read, even just a date and signature can help us to see who is reading at home.
You will be amazed to see the difference that regular reading can make on a child’s progress, and not just in reading itself, but across the whole curriculum.
Feel free to explore a variety of texts with your child, as well as sharing their school reading book.
There are lots of magazines and newspapers written specifically for children, and having access to a wide range of texts can help to keep reading interesting and exciting.
Spellings:
Each Tuesday we will send home ten new spellings to learn, ready for a spelling test on the following Monday. There are lots of different ways to learn spellings, so perhaps experiment with various methods until you discover the most effective method for your child. As a minimum, the children are expected to complete the sheet that we provide each week, where they should write out their new spellings repeatedly. Fun games are also available on EdShed (Spelling Shed), which match their weekly spellings.
For those children who seem quite confident with spelling words, encourage them to also find out the meaning of words and demonstrate an understanding of how to use the word in a sentence.
The statutory spellings word list for Year 3 and 4 are below, children are expected to be able to spell these by the end of Year 4.
Times Tables:
In Year 4, pupils take part in a Multiplication Tables Check (MTC). This is not until later in the summer term, but in order to allow pupils plenty of time to become fluent and confident with their times tables, we have times tables to 12 as a continuous focus throughout the year.
We will regularly introduce one new times table as a focus, but will continue to revise and reinforce the tables that we have previously learnt.
This will be through a range of lessons and activities, but also through regular use of Times Tables Rock Stars (TTRS), so that pupils can improve their speed and accuracy in preparation for the official MTC which will be a very similar format to the TTRS 'soundcheck' game.
Please encourage your child to use TTRS at home as often as possible. Games take only a few minutes, but it is amazing to see the difference that regular practise can make and of course being familiar with the format can make the official MTC much less daunting. We really appreciate your support with this.