Welcome to Year 4!
Miss Wilkins is the Year 4 Swift class teacher, joined in the team by Sonia, our class-based LSA, and Amy and Tagna supporting pupils with SEN and other high levels of need. During the week, Ms Naushahi will come in to cover Miss Wilkins while she prepares lessons for the week ahead.
Learning
The children will be mathematicians and writers for an hour and readers for half an hour every day. We will be developing our enquiry skills during dedicated weekly sessions as well as enjoying regular book time in the Hub, handwriting and spelling practice. There will also be daily reflection sessions where children can calm, settle and share positive feelings as well as wellbeing sessions and PHSE lessons.
Maths
Maths lessons will continue to build on learning from last year. Children will focus on one specific block of work (such as adding, subtracting, fractions, shape etc.) over a few weeks. We have a big focus on children learning to recall number facts quickly and learning their times table facts from 1-12 fluenty.
Year 4 children will take an assessment later this year – the Multiplication Tables Check. This government-run exam will test them on their knowledge of the multiplication tables up to 12 x 12. We will give more information about this later on in the year.
Writing
This year we will be teaching writing around various texts which fit into our enquiries. We will be challenging the children to produce a large piece of writing of a different genre every week such as non-chronological reports, diaries, stories and poems. We have high expectations for the quality of writing produced in Year 4 and we are looking forward to seeing the creative outcomes. We have a particular focus on neat, joined up handwriting and correct spellings and punctuation used in every piece of writing.
Reading
We have frequent reading sessions through our 'guided reading', in addition to the reading work we do through our authors' work. In these lessons we focus on inference, retrieval and response questions, as well as other skills such as prediction, summary and vocabulary work. We encourage children to become the best readers that they can be.
Children can change their books as and when needed throughout the week . They can choose books from our class libraries as well as books in the Hub. The children can borrow up to 2 books; we would prefer them to take one 'level' and one free reading book. We have an electronic lending system which the children can operate themselves during their own time.
We encourage chidren to bring in their book bags daily so they can return and issue books whenever they would like to. Please also remind children to comment about their books in their reading record books.
BOOKS WILL BE CHANGED ON WEDNESDAY
Enquiry
This year we are continuing our Enquiry-led approach to the wider curriculum. We will be Musicians, Artists, Philosophers, Geographers, Historians, Engineers, Athletes, and Scientists. Each unit is based around an enquiry question which we will investigate over a number of weeks.
P.E.
On Friday, children should come to school in their P.E. kit - there is no need for them to change during the day. P.E. kit needs to be black or gray shorts or jogging bottoms, and the top needs to be either a house t-shirt in their relevant colour (which can be purchased from the office) or any t-shirt in the colour of the house they are in.
Homework
Homework is set every Friday and should be handed back in every Thursday. As the children are old enough to manage this themselves now, we expect all homework to be returned, or children may have to find time during break or lunch to complete it.
They will be set spellings, grammar and maths work to complete at home.
What to bring
Your child should come to school wearing their school uniform and with a book bag and reading book from home. They may also want to bring a piece of fruit only for snack time and a bottle of water.
Friday is P.E. day for Year 4 so they will need to wear their P.E. kit. On Thursdays until Christmas, children will go swimming. They should either wear their swimming kit under their school uniform or bring it in a bag to change into. They will also need a towel for drying off.
