Welcome to Year 4

Teacher: Mr Villarrubia

Key days

PE: Tuesday

Year 4 swimming: Wednesday

Spring Term 2024

Welcome back Year 4! I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and had the chance to relax in preparation for a busy and exciting new year!

On this page, you will find information about any keys dates such as, PE days and assemblies, as well as lots of information about what we will be learning about in each subject this half term. There are also lots of useful links to help you with your learning.

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

During this half-term, we will explore Escape from Pompeii by Christina Balit to write a narrative text from the perspective of Tranio, a young Roman boy who manages to escape before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius as well as a poem based on Pompeii. We will be using direct speech, noun phrases, fronted adverbials and similes. here will also be a focus on using oracy to promote meaningful, engaging and respectful conversations between pupils. Pupils will use oracy skills to analyse characters' personalities, their motives and intentions.

For our Guided Reading sessions, we will continue to focus on our VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summarising) skills. We will continue to apply 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 their spellings and sounds, and where these occur in the word. 

Maths

This half-term, we will continue to learn about multiplication and division, area, length and perimeter. .

We will look at real-life problems that require reasoning and problem-solving skills.

As ever, knowing your multiplication and division table facts will help you to be an efficient mathematician who can notice connections and patterns.

Throughout the year, we ask that children try to play on TTRockstars each week. Even 5 minutes, 3 times a week can make a huge difference to your times table recall.

All children have been provided with logins for TTRockstars and My Maths but if you have lost your logins, please see your class teacher.

Topic - Geography- Earth's structure, volcanoes and tectonic plates

This term, we will learn about:

- the different layers of the Earth - the main tectonic plates

- how volcanoes are formed   

-types of volcanoes, their structure and consequences of eruptions.

- Compare the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius and Krakatoa

Science 

This term we will be exploring living things and their habitats.

We will:

- identify and classify different animal groups

- group vertebrates and invertebrates

- create classification keys

- how animals adapt to their environments

- natural & human environmental issues

Religion

This half-term, we will be learning about our local church and our community 

Home Learning

All Y4 children bring home their red homework book on a Friday. Homework should be returned by the following Thursday.

- 1 spelling sheet to practice this week's words

- Weekly times-tables practice

As well as this, all children are expected to read and complete online activities as described below. 

Every other half-term, we also send a Learning Log project with a range of creative tasks for children to complete at home.

PE

This half term you will need to come into school wearing your PE kit each Thursday.

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 - 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 lessons.  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 an Optician to state that your child has a medical condition and is required to wear goggles in the school swimming lessons.

Thank you for your continued support.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the school office.