Welcome to Year 3/4Z - St Martin de Porres

Teacher: Miss Zaman

Key dates

PE: Tuesday

Year 4 swimming: Wednesday

Year 3 Forest School: Wednesday

Class Assembly: Tuesday 23rd January 2024

Class Mass: Thursday 23rd November 2023

Autumn 1 2023

Welcome to Year 3/4Z! I am very excited to be working with you all this year and to start working on all our fantastic topics. We are going to have a fabulous Autumn term. 

On our class page, you will be able to find information about this half term's learning.

At the top of this page I have attached this year's topic overview and this half-term's spelling sheet.

English

In English, we will be developing our reading, writing, spellings and grammar skills through a range of fiction writing and non-fiction opportunities. The focus this half term will be on strengthening our learning from this year through texts such as biographies and instruction writing. Key speaking and listening skills will be extended through role plays and drama. This half term we will be looking at the text, 'Egyptian Cinderella' in class.  Our class read for this half term is Bill's New Frock by Anne Fine.

For our Guided Reading sessions, we will be focusing on applying our growing knowledge of root words, prefixes and suffixes, both to read aloud and to understand the meaning of new words that we discover. We will also be reading further exception words, noting the unusual correspondences between spelling and sound, and where these occur in the word. An important focus of our sessions will be checking that the text makes sense and discussing our understanding and explaining the meaning of words in context. 

Maths

This half-term, we will be learning about place value. We will use different manipulatives to help us represent and partition numbers to 10,000. We will learn how to find 1, 10, 100 and 1,000 more or less than a number. We will compare and order numbers, and learn how to round to the nearest 10, 100 and 1,000.

After that, we will work on mental and written methods of addition and subtraction.

Throughout the year, we ask that children try to play TT Rockstars for a minimum of 5 minutes a day. The year 4 children will be having their times table end of year quiz in June. 

Topic - History

In Topic we will be studying the Ancient Egyptians.  We will be placing key events in chronological order, discovering what life was like in Ancient Egypt, learning about mummies and Egyptian gods, and investigating Egyptian writing. We will also find out about Tutankhamun and his impact on Ancient Egypt.

Science 

This term we will be exploring Forces and Magnets. Firstly, we will define forces as pushes or pulls that act upon an object, and identify forces in everyday life. Next, we will investigate the amount of friction created by different surfaces. Then, we will learn about magnetic forces and conduct our own investigations to help us learn about magnetic poles.

Religion

This half-term, our topic is Homes. We will be exploring what it means to be part of a family, and how, as Christians, we are all part of God's family. We will consider what it means to love and serve others, and think about how we can make our home and school families happy and caring communities. 

Home Learning

PE

This half term you will need to come into school wearing your PE kit on your PE day which is a Tuesday. You will have 2 PE sessions each day: one in the morning with me and one in the afternoon with our sports coach.

Swimming

All Year 4 children will be swimming every Wednesday - children should come to school dressed in their school uniform on this day.

Clothing requirements for School Swimming are as follows:-

Girls:-

• One-piece swimming costume – no bikinis*
• A swimming hat is required to be worn if the hair covers the eyes or airways
• A towel

* Please note that in order for your child to benefit from the swimming lessons appropriate aquatic clothing must be worn. Should your children wish to wear items of clothing that cover up parts of the body, there are specific aquatic clothing designed for this purpose. Cotton leggings are detrimental to teaching and are a risk to health and safety.

Boys:-

• A pair of traditional swimming trunks
• A swimming hat is required to be worn if the hair covers the eyes or airways
• A towel 

No Bermuda or long shorts are allowed, as these can be dangerous - for reasons of safety the swimwear should be sufficiently tight fitting to allow the freedom of body and limb movement without causing unsafe water resistance.  

Jewellery of any description should not be worn in the School Swimming lesson.  It is important that earrings in particular are removed.

Goggles are only permitted for medical reasons.  Parents must produce a letter from either a Doctor or Optician to state that your child has a medical condition and is required to wear goggles in the school swimming lessons.