Welcome to Year 4! We have such an exciting year of learning ahead of us and we can’t wait to get started!

 

Our PE days are  Wednesday and Friday– children may come in wearing PE kit on these days.

Spellings – during term 1 & 2 we will be revising key spelling patterns and common exception words from KS1 and Year 3. A spelling list will be sent home each week with a spelling activity and will be tested each week.

Times tables – times tables are a really important focus during Year 4. We will be using Times Tables Rockstars for home and in school practice, as well as focussed times table lessons throughout the week. Once a week, we will do a Times Table Olympic session on a Thursday. All children will start on the first level and progress when they have mastered that level with the aim to complete all levels by Term 6. TT Olympic sheets will be sent home with the next times table to focus on.

How did the Romans change life in Britain?

The Year 4 Crew will kick off the year being historians during our first learning enquiry ‘How did the Romans change life in Britain?’. We will be exploring what life was like when Jesus was born, in Britain and Italy, and discovering who the Romans were, how they lived and why they chose to invade Britain. Finally, we will be learning about how the Roman’s defended their land, what they changed about life in Britain and we will be debating whether or not they should have invaded.

Science: Sound

As scientists, we will be exploring how sound is created, the way different sounds create different sound waves and experimenting to see what materials are best for muffling sound. We will be developing our scientific skills through planning and setting up fair tests, observing, measuring and collecting and interpreting data. 

English

Reading – During our whole class reading sessions we will be diving into the adventure of ‘Varjack Paw’ by SF Said, the tale of a house cat who finds himself in a busy city filled with street cats and mysterious vanishings. We will be deepening our retrieval and interpretation skills by analysing the text, asking questions and explaining our answers in detail.

Writing – During our writing sessions, we will be exploring the Pie Corbett text ‘Adventure at the Fort’. We be learning to write an adventure tale with a focus on building suspense, using skills such as sentences of three, show don’t tell and short sentences.

During Term 2, we will be learning how to be persuasive by responding to a letter from a Roman Emperor. We will add to our persuasive toolkit by developing our skills of exaggeration and use of rhetorical questions. We will finish off the term  by writing an informative piece about Hadrian’s Wall, using and developing our learning about the Romans. 

Maths  

During Terms 1 and 2, we will be deepening our understanding of addition and subtraction and place value. In our sessions, we will be learning about numbers up to 10,000 and will be revisiting our number bonds to 10, 100 and 1,000 and applying our knowledge to 10,000. Our times tables focus in these terms will be 3, 6 and 9 times tables.

RE

In our first unit – ‘How do people express their beliefs, identity and experience?’ we will be exploring ways that different people show their beliefs. We will look at similarities between different cultures and religions, and suggest what they might mean. We will be learning about some influential people such as the Maryknoll Sisters, and what it means to be part of a community.

Our value this term is thankfulness.

PSHE

Our term one Jigsaw unit is ‘Celebrating Difference’. These sessions will allow the children to learn and reflect on their place in both our community and the wider world. We will recognise that everyone is individual and important. We will look at different family units, bullying, using kind and unkind words and giving complements.

PE

In PE, we will be developing our fundamental movement skills focusing on footwork, coordination and static one leg balances. We will be applying our footwork skills during our hockey sessions, in which we will be developing our ball control, attacking and defensive skills