Welcome to Year 4

**Swimming takes place every Friday afternoon. Children will need a swimming costume or swimming trunks, a swimming hat, a towel and goggles (optional) in a separate bag to take with them. Please make sure your child has their full swimming kit in school every Friday so that they can take part in the lesson as part of their PE curriculum. Thank you!**

This webpage outlines important information for Year 4.  It contains a breakdown of the curriculum for the term and contains a weekly timetable. The timetable sees the school day divided into 4 main teaching sessions.  Assemblies will be held in the afternoon session to maximise the use of prime teaching time in the morning. Because of this, it is crucially important that children are in school on time and not late.  Lessons will start promptly at 9.10am. This year, the Year 4 class teacher is Miss Sumner.  Please do not hesitate to contact me if there is any concern about your child.  The class will also be taught by Mrs Roff for Maths, English and French on Thursday morning and Mr Ward for PE on Thursday afternoon. Spelling Groups will be taught across the Key Stage with spelling lessons and tests every Wednesday. Even though our PE day is on a Thursday, the children do need their kit in school every day in case of unexpected activities being scheduled at the last minute.

Lunchtimes start at 12:15, with Cafe Crunch offering fantastic, balanced meal choices.  Lunch orders must be organised a week in advance and children will not generally be able to order on a daily basis.

At the end of the day, children will be dismissed from their ground floor classroom and will need to collect their lunch boxes from the lunch trolley before joining parents in the playground.

Curriculum

We have a very exciting term ahead and we are all looking forward to it.

Our topic this term is 'Road to Rio' covering the Olympic Games and life in Rio. This ties in with our Year 3, 4 and 5 production in May 2016. We will be looking at the history of the Olympic games, current sporting events and Great Britain's sporting achivements. As part of this topic we will also cover some geographical and cultural aspects of Rio, including research and art skills. 

Homework

Children in Year 4 will typically have 4 pieces of homework per week.

Spelling will be set every Wednesday by their spelling group teacher and will need to be learnt for the next Wednesday.

English homework will continue to take the form of either grammar practise or a reading comprehension and will be given out on Friday and taken in the following Wednesday.

Talk homework will be set on a Monday ready for Big Write on a Friday.

Maths homework will set either on ActiveLearnPrimary.co.uk or in their maths homework books. This will be set on a Friday to be handed in on the following Wednesday.

In addition, children need to be able to confidently recall up to their 12 times table. As well as practise in the classroom, some children will need to practise their times tables at home.  Where this is the case, those children will be sent home with a practise sheet on Monday for testing the following Monday.

Reading

Children will need to read regularly to an adult. They will take part in weekly guided reading sessions in school but children should be still reading at home. Our book changing days are Monday, Wednesday and Friday so that the children have time to read and discuss the longer texts. As children become free readers, it is important that they continue to note down the books they have read in their record book so that we can monitor the types of literature they are reading. If anyone is available to listen to children read then please let us know.

ClassDoJo

This year, we will be using ClassDoJo to support our behaviour policy. The children have already discussed the class rules and when they believe they should receive ClassDoJo points. Parents and carers, who register on ClassDoJo, will receive a weekly summary of the points that their child has earned plus any comments made by teachers.  The points will count towards class and personal awards and rewards.

If you require any further information about our day, then please do not hesitate to ask.

Thank you

Miss Sumner

Camping July 2016

On Thursday 14th July 2016, Year 4 went camping for one night at Rushall Farm to tie in with our 'Wolf Brother' novel study in English. We split ourselves in to 'clans', designed our clan name, clan tattoos to identify ourselves and created our own words for items we would use camping (tents, fire, woods etc). Like the character Torak, we slept outside and cooked our own food over a fire. We put our tents up ourselves (with a little guidance from the adults!), played team games in the woods, painted on our tribal tattoos, cooked dinner over the campfire and toasted delicious smores for pudding! Sleeping in a tent was new for some of us but we all enjoyed ourselves! It was a lovely way to end the school year.

E-Safety

E-safety is the topic for our current ICT module on word processing and using Microsoft programmes. We are in the process of producing our own PowerPoints on how to keep ourselves safe online. There are two very useful websites below that we have been using that have age appropriate information on e-safety:

http://www.kidsmart.org.uk/beingsmart/

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/8_10/

As a class we have spoken about keeping our personal information safe when online, particularly when using games that involve talking to other people. We discussed the importance of keeping personal information private - our full name, age, address, the school we attend and our email address.

The children have also watched the following two videos on the importance of e-safety that have been reccommended for their age group (8-10 years):

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/oldparents/Primary/Conversation-Starters/Go-to-the-movies/Jigsaw/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5kW4pI_VQw.