Welcome to Year Four
Class 4 is an exciting, fun and hard-working class. This is a great class to be in because we never give up and are always brave, tackling new challenges. We work with Mrs Thompson, Mrs Bailey and Mrs Dubre. Together, they help make our learning exciting, ensuring that we get lots of opportunities to take our learning outside of the classroom.
When people visit our class, they notice how we all work to keep our classroom happy and friendly together. We improve our understanding and skills by working together as a team. We carry out ‘perfect partner’ work, helping each other to become the best version of ourselves. Working with a talk partner is an excellent way to explain our ideas to others; ask questions and clarify our learning. We value mistakes as they help us learn and unpick problems. We value resilience and fairness.
Class Timetable & Curriculum Information
Class Timetable: Class 4 weekly timetable Autumn 2022.pdf
Curriculum Yearly Overview: Year 4 curriculum plan long term overview updated Sept 22.pdf
English
During Spring term we will continue to focus on writing a range of quality texts such as diary entries, letters, an information text on foxes and a newspaper report all based on the ‘The Midnight Fox’ by Betsy Byars. To help support your child with their writing please encourage them to practice their spellings on at least 3 separate occasions throughout the week. Weekly spellings can be found on your child’s homework and common exception words can be found at the front of your child’s reading record for further support.
During Autumn term, our English lessons will based around ‘The Promise’ by Nicola Davies before moving onto focusing on Floella Benjamin’s autobiography during Black History Month. We will find out about her life through the incredible autobiography ‘Coming to England’ and will learn about the challenges she faced along with many others when she arrived in Britain. Throughout our units of work, we will explore several mediums of writing and focus on using relevant SPaG skills such as similes, expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials. In the run up to Christmas we will read the exciting ‘Christmasurus’ by Tom Fletcher to ignite the holiday magic. We will write character descriptions and create a persuasive travel brochure to encourage people to visit the North Pole Ranch we design.
Developing our love of reading
Class 4 develops its love of reading through a range of high-quality books. We look at classic books, contemporary fiction and non-fiction and even high quality no-text books.
Check out some of the texts that we use to promote engagement and excitement with reading:
Reading books can be changed on any day of the week as we place an emphasis on the children letting us know when they have finished their current school reading book. Please remember to write in your child’s book when they have finished so we know when to change their book. Additionally, if children have a book of interest they are reading at home, we absolutely encourage them to use this as their reading book to help foster a love for reading. The aim is for all children to read at least three times a week with an adult, and to record this in their respective reading record. Children who bring their reading record into school on a Friday and have read at least 3 times a week will get the chance of winning a small prize.
We also support reading in our class and at home using Oxford Reading Buddy.
We look to develop reading throughout the curriculum. Check out some of these recommendations for exciting ways that you can develop your subject knowledge through reading
18 Must-Have Historical Fiction Books For Kids | Children’s Books (penguin.co.uk)
Maths
In our school, we follow the White Rose Maths scheme of work with a focus on deepening our knowledge and understanding through the completion of daily reasoning and problem-solving activities. This half term we will be focusing on multiplication and division and being able to use our times table knowledge to solve associated division calculations.
We value the importance of physical education to maintain a healthy lifestyle, therefore we have 2 weekly PE lessons in year 4. This half term we will have PE on a Wednesday and Friday. On a Friday we will learn cricket with experienced coaches from Durham Cricket Club. Some children will have the opportunity to attend an additional swimming lesson on a Friday and those not attending will take part in Hockey. We also aim to participate in clubs, competitions and sports festivals throughout the year.
Please bring PE kits in on Monday and leave them in for the week so that children are prepared for any eventuality.
Communication
We share learning and resources through Classdojo. Parents and children are able to post messages, photos and videos and parents can see work and send me messages too. This is a really strong way of keeping our learning up to date and staying connected with our class. If you have any difficulties accessing Classdojo, please contact the school office for further support.
Homework
Homework tasks are communicated through the Classdojo app to families. Typical activities include: researching a topic; practising a given table; rehearsing a spelling pattern and completing an additional activity linked to our current learning. Responses are encouraged through Classdojo where possible or they can be submitted in paper form.
Additional activities, which will deepen your child’s learning include:
- Reading at least 3 x per week
- Practise x tables
- Rehearse telling the time using analogue and digital clocks
- Practise counting / using / identifying money/ making totals/ identifying change/ calculating multiples of/ solving practical money problems
Music
In the second half of year 4, our class learn to play clarinets and can also choose to learn how to play violin or saxophone too.
Further information about taking up musical tuition can be found at https://www.durhammusic.org.uk/sign-up
Altogether we believe teamwork makes the dream work.
