Our Year 4 Class

A very warm welcome to our Year 4 class page.  In Year 4 we are looking forward to the challenges ahead as the children are now fully settled into KS2. During this year the children will be encouraged to be proactive in their independent learning as well as building good relationships in order to work effectively as teams. The children will be nurtured and encouraged to work alongside others in a variety of contexts with a focus on problem solving, research and sharing ideas. 

Our Year 4 Class 2024-2025

Class Information

This half term... Autumn Term 2 (October - December 2024)

English 

Over the next half term, our theme will be 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' by Roald Dahl.  

'Charlie Bucket loves CHOCOLATE and Mr Wonka, the most wondrous inventor in the world, is opening the gates of his amazing chocolate factory to five lucky children. It's the prize of a lifetime! Gobstoppers, wriggle sweets, and a river of melted chocolate delight await. Charlie needs just one Golden Ticket and these delicious treats could all be his. 

We will also be developing our comprehension skills and thinking carefully about our reading VIPERS (vocabulary, infer, predict, explain, retrieve, sequence or summarise) It is important that the children continue to read at home and develop their comprehension skills and vocabulary. This will help consolidate the reading work we will be doing in class.   

We will be developing our writing using our class reader as inspiration. The children will be thinking about characterisation, setting and how stories are structured. Developing a love of writing is extremely important and I feel that this is the perfect story to do this!  

In English  we will continue to use the writing lenses from the 'Writing Rainbow'. We will be moving on from our fantastic, ‘Nothing to See here Hotel’ work, and starting another brilliant book- 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. During the middle of this unit, we will also be focusing on some work around remembrance, leading up to Remembrance Day.  

After this, we will be starting our non-fiction writing unit based around the theme of animals. The children will have the opportunity to learn about the structure and layout of information texts and non-chronological reports as well as researching and producing their own piece of information writing (Writing to inform).  

Throughout this term we will continue to practice our joins (please continue to do this at home too!) in our handwriting lessons. Each week we will also zoom in on an aspect of grammar as well as looking at our weekly spelling rule. It is important that the children continue to practise the Year 3 statutory spelling words they found tricky. I will be assessing the children on these words before we break up for Christmas.  

We will also be continuing to develop our comprehension skills and thinking carefully about our reading VIPERS (vocabulary, infer, predict, explain, retrieve, sequence or summarise) It is important that the children continue to read at home and develop their comprehension skills and vocabulary. This will help consolidate the reading work we will be doing in class. 

Maths

In Mathematics we will are now moving onto addition and subtraction. We will continue to embed and consolidate our understanding of place value in our morning activities. It is very important that the children continue to practise rounding at home, as this is something that they found challenging, especially when rounding 4-digit numbers.  

Below is a breakdown of this half term: 

• Adding and subtracting 1s, 10s,100s,1000s 

• Adding two 4-digit numbers 

• Subtracting two 4-digit numbers 

• Equivalent difference 

• Estimating answers to additions and subtractions 

• problem-solving  

All of the activities will give the children the opportunity to develop their reasoning and problem-solving skills. We will also have a daily 'Number Ninjas' session that will focus on number bonds, counting and times tables. 

By the end of Year 4, the expectation is that children can recall all their times tables facts up to 12 X 12. You can support your child by regularly asking them times tables questions at home. Making this fun will have more impact! Topmarks is a great website for maths; the game Hit the Button is great at helping children to become quicker at facts recall. Please take the time to have a look - even compete with them! Also please continue to encourage your child to go on TTRockstars regularly (at least 21 minutes per week). This is a great game that really will have an impact on your child's recall of their times tables facts. 

Reading, telling and writing the time in analogue and digital clocks remains a key aspect for the children to practise regularly at home.                                                                                                                                                                                  

    
RE 

In this unit, pupils will find out about the events of Pentecost found in the Bible, considering which events would be needed to retell the story for someone else. They will begin to consider what the events found in Acts 2 might have meant for the first Christians and what they mean for Christians today. They will make links between the description of the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit, and the Kingdom of God. Pupils will learn how Christians today show their beliefs about the Holy Spirit in worship and the way that they live their lives.

Science 

Our topic after this will be 'Danger to Living Things.' 

During this unit the children will have the opportunity to: 

• To recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways. 

• To recognise how a simple key helps identify living things. 

• To ask questions that can be used to construct a key.  

• To observe key features of living things. 

• To recognise that environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things.  

• To examine invertebrates in their environment.  

• To identify invertebrates with a simple key.  

• To make careful observations.          
           

History - The Vikings 

This half term we will be looking closely at the Vikings and the impact they had on Britain. During this topic we will: 

• Focus on a key historical figure – Vortogern, Hengest, Horsa. 

• The introduction and role of Christianity in Anglo Saxon life. 

• Who were the Vikings, when and why did they invade Britain? 

• Key aspects of Viking lifestyle. 

• Anglo Saxon kings and their significance across the period, including King Ethelred II and Danegeld, and the last Anglo Saxon Kings. 

• Law, order and justice as an Anglo Saxon. 

Key Skills 

• Chronology, knowledge & understanding – When I talk or write about the past, I include details which show some understanding of what things were like before and after this at local, national and world level. 

• Chronology – I can place historical periods I have studied on a timeline, as well as information about my topic. 

• Significance – I can suggest which people and causes& consequences of change are more historically important. 

• Understanding historical interpretation – I can compare evidence to help me identify reliable information 

Computing – Programming: Scratch  

During this topic the children will:                                    

• Understand how to create a simple script in Scratch – be able to change the sprite and prevent the sprite from rotating. 

• Use decomposition to identify key features and understand how to decipher actions that make the quiz game work. 

• Understand what a variable is and how to use the ‘say’ and ‘ask’ blocks. 

• Create a variable and be able to use a variable to record a score. 

• Understand what a variable is and how it works within a program. 

DT  - Food (Cross-curricular link History: Vikings) 

During this topic the children will be covering the key objectives of design - make - evaluate. The children will: 

• Design and make bread using traditional Viking ingredients. 

• Evaluate existing products (breads) and learn about Viking breads, where bread comes from, how it is made. 

• Identify which part of 'The Eatwell Plate' bread belongs to: 

• Conduct a bread tasting session by blind-tasting five different artisan breads. They will investigate whether the most expensive bread is in fact the tastiest and record their findings. 

• Children will investigate types of food from Viking times which would be suitable to use in bread. 

• Have the opportunity to taste some traditional ingredients such as, honey, figs, pomegrantes. 

• Design packaging 

• Evaluate their own and each other's Viking bread recipes in a 'blind taste test'.  

French

Our first unit of French, ‘Moi et ma famille’ (Me and my family) got off to a promising start! We spent a lot of time on phonetical work, grasping the French alphabet and revisiting previous learning.  We also made some progress with early vocabulary learning (focusing on who is in our family), and hope next half-term to complete this unit with a look at how we talk about our pets in French! Work with possessive adjectives (mon and ma) and some further phonetical work will hopefully keep us busy before we take a look at a French artist and at Christmas traditions in France! 

Music

The children will be continuing with their WOPPS guitar lessons on a Thursday afternoon with Barry and Sam. 

HeartSmart - 'Don't Forget to Let Love In.' 

Visit the website www.heartsmartprimary.com for more information on what Heartsmart is all about. 

Self-worth. Learn how to love and value yourself well. 

You’re important, you matter, you’re one in a million and above all you’re loved. These are messages that we all need to hear, believe and remember – because sometimes we forget. The healthier our internal dialogue, the greater our sense of worth which is the cornerstone of character and resilience. How kind are the thoughts we listen to? How patient are we with ourselves? How often do we find ourselves listening to the Scrapman? 

Don’t Forget to Let Love In helps us grow in self-compassion. You’ll notice we don’t shy away from using the word love. It’s a big deal. Without it we’re no one, but no one is without it. The ability to receive or reject it in our lives defines us. Our actions, beliefs and very essence is shaped by our experience of it. Our hearts are made strong because of it. So in partnering with love, we partner with a strength that’s stronger than any challenge life might throw at us. Although it can be a challenge to receive it, love never fails. Don’t Forget to Let Love In!  
   

P.E 

Our sporting value this half term which will run throughout all our PE sessions is 'Self Belief'.  

To start this half term, we will be finishing our topic on invasion games, before moving onto our next topic 'Outdoor Adventurous Activities'. 

On Tuesday afternoons we will be starting our dance unit linked to the Romans. 

• Roman Round-Up 

• Roman Invasion 

• The Colosseum 

• Pompeii 

• Feasts and Festivals 

• Roman Revue 

Autumn Term 1 NEWS! .….(September - October 2024)

During the first half of Autumn Term, we have found our feet! We had a great half-term, developing routines and relationships and the children have amazed me with their work ethic and teamwork. We have shared learning in our Geography, Science and RE lessons as well as in English and Maths. We have shared our ideas and understand how working as a team or with a partner can help our own learning journey. I am proud of all the hard work the children have put into their learning this half term!

I have absolutely loved sharing The Nothing to See Here Hotel with the children and seeing their love for reading develop. The children have developed both their reading and writing skills through our class novel and it has been wonderful to see them engaged and reading for pleasure. The children are really growing into confident writers who are not afraid to challenge themselves. I am also pleased that they are beginning to proofread their work more and working hard to make sure all their sentences make sense. We will be introducing more editing this half-term, another important skill for a developing writer. The children's inference skills are slowly starting to develop and they are now starting to use evidence from the text which is pleasing to see. We will continue to develop our comprehension skills through our VIPERS questions.

In Maths, we have spent the half-term focusing on place value. The children have shown through their explanations that they are developing their reasoning skills and are able to show examples of their thinking. This is a key area we will continue to develop throughout the year. They have enjoyed using all the concrete equipment and have become more confident with 4-digit numbers. The children must continue to practise all the skills we have learnt to keep it bubbling! 

Our Science lessons have been a hive of activity. The children have loved our topic on teeth and eating, especially our lessons on the Digestive System. It is been wonderful to see them so engaged and enthused about their learning and thinking scientifically. They also worked well and participated fully in class discussions which was a pleasure to see!

In Geography we learnt more about the UK, understanding the difference between the UK and Great Britain, the different types of geography of the UK as well as looking at energy uses and the many renewable energy sources that we have in the United Kingdom. Through our RE, Heartsmart lessons and Picture News, the children have shown great sensitivity and really developed their reflective thinking. They have really thought about the choices they make and what God looks for in our hearts. We have also explored friendship and the qualities of a good friend.

Our first unit of French, ‘Moi et ma famille’ (Me and my family) got off to a promising start! We spent a lot of time on phonetical work, grasping the French alphabet and revisiting previous learning.  We also made some progress with early vocabulary learning (focusing on who is in our family).

I can't wait to get back and start Autumn 2!