Year 4

Hello and welcome to the Year 4 class page! 

Below are some key things to remember, hopefully this page gives you an overview of what we will be getting up to in school.

I am always available before and after school if you have any questions or queries.

Thank you,

Miss Barlow

Our Class Saint is St Vincent De Paul.

Our class saint is St Vincent De Paul. 

He inspires us to use our Catholic Social Teaching of looking after the poor and vulnerable. 

We will be learning all about St Vincent's life and how we can learn to use our gifts and talents to support those who are unable to support themselves.

Dates to Remember

Monday - Homework must be handed in. 

Wednesday - Homework handed out. 

Important Times

Start of the day - 8:40am (KS1 Playground)

End of Day - 3:25 (KS1 Playground)

Our first English unit will be based on grammar and punctuation. We follow a Place Value of punctuation curriculum which will aid the children to form sentences correctly. We will then move on to writing a non-chronological report which will be based on our Vehicle focus, Caring for Creation. This unit will explore the purpose of a non-chronological report and encourage the children to use conjunctions and technical vocabulary within their work.

Guided Reading

In addition to our English lessons, the children will also have daily Guided Reading sessions a week. The text focus will change every few weeks (meaning we get to read a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.) In these sessions, we will focus on using our VIPERS skills.

These consist of vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summarising.

Maths

Our first Power Maths unit is all about place value. Within this unit, we will partition four-digit numbers and represent them in different ways (including manipulatives.) We will start to consider how to count in multiples of 1000 and use number lines to represent 4-digit numbers.

RE

Year 4 will be beginning their RE learning with a Creation Unit. During this unit, the children will be building on their knowledge of Creation from previous years. The children will be examining the two stories of Creation in the Book of Genesis. They will also be exploring the meaning of being made in the image and likeness of God and our responsibility to use our God given talents. Finally, the children will begin to explore reasons for praising God, the creator of the world.

Geography

In Geography, our unit is all about Mountains. We will use key vocabulary to describe a mountain and its features. We will also compare a range of mountains across the world, considering how they are similar and how they are different. Some key terms which we will consider are: weather, climate, mountain range, summit and tourism.

History

In History, Class 4 will be focusing on the Anglo-Saxons. We will consider where this is placed on our historical timeline and how it links to our previous learning (particularly to our Roman learning from Year 3!)  Through the unit, we will be focusing on chronology and significance. We will consider why the Anglo-Saxons invaded and the importance of this in England. It will also be incredibly exciting to explore the close links which our local area had on the discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard.

Art

In Art, the children will be focusing on an impressionist artist called Claude Monet. Through this unit, the children will experiment with different materials, such as pencil, water colour and pastels. This will help the children to develop their skillset and to evaluate which material is the most effective in achieving a desired outcome.

Science

 Year 4’s first unit is called Animals including Humans. In this unit, the children will learn about the digestive system (with some very fun experiments!) and explore the function of teeth. Over the course of the unit, the children will take part in scientific enquiries and will set up their experiments using scientific knowledge and vocabulary.

French

Bonjour! In French the children will learn how to pronounce, read and write key words to talk about themselves. This will include being able to say how old they are and where they live.

P.E

In Year 4, we get to go swimming! Throughout the year, we will alternate between swimming and P.E sessions to ensure the children get the most out of the curriculum. 

Computing

The first unit we will focus on in Computing is coding. The children will learn how to design codes to make the bot create a pattern or to make a change. 

DT

We will cover a range of units across the year, with our first unit being all about food! We are going to be testing and improving recipes and then designing our brand to ensure we can make a profit from our fabulous cooking! 

In year four, the children will take part in a multiplication check. This will take place during the Summer term. Please make sure that your child is practicing their times tables as often as possible!

At St Mary's we love to read! We want to promote a love of reading in all of our children. Try to encourage children to read for pleasure. Choose books that interest your child and encourage them to read to you.

Year 3 and Year 4 Curriculum and Expectations

With the new National Curriculum, the Department for Education has produced new expectations for the end of each curriculum year. These will replace the old system of levels and provide you as parents with a clear idea of what the children should be achieving at the end of the year.

Below you will find the expectations for Year 3 and Year 4  in Reading, Writing and Mathematics. We have also produced ‘deepening’ targets for parents to show you the targets that the children will be working towards if they have met all of the ‘expected’ targets to master their learning skills.

As a school we shall report your child’s progress against these end of year expectations at parents' evenings during the year. The following terms will be used:

·         Your child is not on track to meet the end of year national expectations.

·         Your child is on track to meet the end of year national expectations .

·         Your child is on track to exceed the end of year national expectations.

Any extra support you can provide in helping your child or children to achieve these will benefit them greatly.