Welcome to Year 4 Otters!
The class teacher is Miss Booth and we are very lucky to be supported everyday by Miss Fenwick!
We are expected to read, at home, three times a week and books will be changed on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Children are expected to bring their reading packs in to school every day.
Homework will be sent through our Google classroom, every Friday and will be expected to be returned by the following Wednesday.
In Year 4, we will be carrying out the Multiplication Check. This is a test, towards the end of the year, that challenges children by setting them numerous times tables questions. In Otters class, we are practising hard for this by learning a new set of tables each week and practising on Times Tables Rockstars each day. We would love it if this part of our learning journey could be continued at home! The login page can be found using the link below and all children’s login details can be found in the back of their home reading journal.
https://play.ttrockstars.com/auth
Our Daily Routine:
In the morning we have:
Spelling, Guided Reading, Maths and Literacy
In the afternoon we have:
Worship and Wider Curriculum (Science, Art, DT, French, History, Geography, PSHE and RE)
On Thursday mornings, we have Junior Jam to help us with our learning. In Junior Jam we do Computing, PE and Music. On Thursday mornings in the second half of the Spring term, we will be going swimming.
Child-led Class Worship
Every half term, three children are chosen to be on the worship team. Every other Wednesday, these children plan a worship to deliver to the class the next day. Any thoughts, feelings or points to remember are recorded in the class worship book that belongs in the reflection area.
We love to see what you have been up to outside of school. If you have received any achievements in your out of school activities, please feel free to bring them in for our celebration assembly on a Friday!
Year 4 Curriculum Map
Our Learning Journey:
Spring
We have had a busy Spring term so far!
In literacy we have looked at both fiction and non-fiction writing. We have watched the film: 'A Matter of Loaf and Death' and used this to write a dilemma story and make predictions about what we thought would happen to Wallace and Gromit. We also developed our grammar skills and used fronted adverbials and inverted commas for dialogue when writing our own versions of the story.
We have now moved on to writing a persuasive adverts and have learnt about the importance of various persuasive features such as being memorable, using exciting vocabulary, hooking the reader in with rhetorical questions. We are looking forward to writing our own adverts for a shoe which we have designed.
In maths, we have continued developing our confidence with key skills. Topics have included place value, tenths, hundredths and thousandths, doubling and halving and finding missing numbers in sequences.
In our wider curriculum, in the afternoons, we have been thinking and writing like designers!
In DT, we have made aprons using our sewing skills. We learnt about the different types of aprons (bibs, skirts and tabards) and practiced different sewing techniques such as running stitch, chain stitch and back stitch. Our finished aprons looked really bright and colourful with lots of extra decorations and useful features such as pockets and ribbon ties. We have evaluated our finished products and learnt about the importance of being iterative and testing our designs once finished to check they were suitable for their purpose.
In PSHE, we have looked at communities and how important it is to have diversity. In R.E. we have been researching the miracles of Jesus and how they show his power and authority. This has helped us to investigate why Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
We have also started our History topic on the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. We have learnt about their settlements and homes and why they came over to Britain from other areas of Northern Europe. We are looking forward to finding out more about Anglo-Saxon and Viking battles and how the Vikings lived.
We have ended this part of the half term with it being Children's Mental Health Week and have done various activities relating to how our voice matters. We have thought about this in the context of friendships with boundaries and expectations and respecting these and being kind. We know that trust is also important and agreed that we must use our voice to speak out if we are ever in a situation where we don't trust somebody. We also thought about how we can convey our thoughts and feelings without physically using our voice because we might not be comfortable to say it out loud. To help with this, we made emotion wheels that we can use in class to show how we feel.
Autumn
So far this Autumn term has been a very busy one!
We have started our new Literacy topic based around the legend of the Loch Ness Monster. We are currently in the stages of gathering and reading lots of different types of texts to collect lots of information about Nessie to support our writing.
In Maths, we are continuing to develop our skills and this term we will be covering; place value, perimeter, statistics and addition and subtraction!
For our Wider Curriculum afternoons, we have been looking at Living things and their Habitats in Science, we went on an investigative hunt to look for invertebrates in our outdoor resource area and they have been really inquisitive! We will also be learning about Mountains in our Geography lessons this term, where we will be learning about what a mountain is, the features of a mountain and how they are formed. We will also be looking at the highest mountains in the UK and the world, and the why the Himalayan Mountains are so important!
We will also be carrying on with French as our Modern Foreign Languages learning! In which we will be learning how to describe our school environment, and all the things in it in French!