Welcome Back and Welcome to Year 4

Dear Children, Parents and Carers, Welcome to Year 4.

We are very excited to be starting a new school year and have some exciting work planned.

Home Learning We encourage the children to do some work at home to support their learning. The most important thing to do at home is to read. In addition, there will be 4-6 weekly spellings to learn at home each week along with a few personal spellings. We will give you a list of strategies that you can use to practise at home.

In Year 4, the children will take a Multiplication Tables Check in the June to determine whether your child can fluently recall their times tables up to 12, which is essential for future success in mathematics. Please use Times Tables Rock Stars to practise at home. We recommend that children spend a few minutes every weekday working on spellings and times tables. Even if it feels like slow progress, it all helps and every five minutes is worth doing.

We will set homework every Friday and children will have a home learning book in which to do their homework. The homework will be due in the following Wednesday. If you find homework is causing a lot of unhappiness at home or taking too long, please stop doing it and encourage your child to talk to us or you could let us know in their homework diary.

Handwriting The children practice handwriting each day. We have pen licenses at the ready for children who join consistently with correct letter size and formation. This means that they will progress from writing in pencil to pen. If you have any questions; if you would like to know more about what we are teaching or if your child is struggling with any aspect of school life, please feel free to get in touch via the Reading Record, the office or in person.

English ‘ Arthur and the Golden Rope We will learn about the structure of a quest story and write our own by using adverbial phrases, complex sentences and dialogue, A Question of History We will learn about information texts and create our own pages using key questions.

Maths . Unit 1 – We will review column addition and column subtraction from Year 3, as well as work on mental strategies for addition and subtraction. Unit 2 – We will explore numbers up to 10,000 by adding and subtracting multiples of 100, ordering numbers, rounding numbers, calculating

Science Through setting up scientific enquiries and making careful observations, we will learn about electricity and states of matter. We will identify common appliances that run on electricity, construct simple circuits, and identify common conductors and insulators. After half term we will start comparing and grouping materials together as solids, liquids or gases. We will be closely observing how some materials change state when they are heated or cooled and research the temperature at which this happens.

History In our unit "The Maya", we will explore the ancient Mayan civilisation through looking at primary and secondary sources, determining their reliability, and forming our own opinions on the Mayan society. We will explore the links between Ancient Mayan technology and current society and look at what happened to the Ancient Mayans in 900 AD.

Geography In our unit ‘The Americas’, we will travel the North and South American continents, and distinguish between the terms ‘continent’, ‘region’, ‘country’, ‘state’, and ‘city’ along the journey. Finding and using images and maps on the internet and in atlases, we will make notes on cities and record their countries and/or states. They will compare the built environments and settings of the cities and, through them, identify some key regions of the American continents.

Art Drawing and Sketchbooks Unit We will explore how we can create sequenced imagery to share and tell stories by studying the illustrations of Laura Carlin. We will explore how to create atmospheres through mark making, grey tones and colour.

Design Technology Cooking and Nutrition Healthy and varied diet Design, make and evaluate a healthy snack that contains a balance of the different food groups.

P.E. Before half-term we will be building on our netball skills that we learnt in Year 3, building up to competing in mini-games. After half-term we will building on our gymnastic skills through exploring movement and balance so that we can perform simple sequences. In addition to teacher led PE sessions each week, we are fortunate enough to have leaders from Achieve 4 All coming in to lead sessions.

R.E. In RE we are looking at Christianity for the first half of term, learning about the creation story. We will explore the "wow" of nature and ways In which Christians look after Gods creations. After half term we will be finding out about Judaism. We will look at the significance of family and festivals to Jewish people, and we are hoping to be able to arrange a visit to the synagogue In Plymouth so that children can experience the faith first-hand.

P.S.H.E. We will be learning about Relationships: Families and friendships Positive friendship, including online. Safe relationships Responding to hurtful behaviour. Managing confidentiality. Recognising risks online. Respecting ourselves and others Respecting differences and similarities

Computing In our unit ‘"The Interne.t" we will be learning what makes up the Internet as well as checking the validity of what Is published - can we really believe all that Is published on the Internet? After half-term we will be looking at creating media and audio editing. We will get to explore recording and editing sound, and planning, creating and evaluating our own podcasts

French In our first unit ‘Je me presente’, we will learn how to read, write and say our numbers from 11-20 In French, say where we live, what our nationality Is and say our age. After half-term we move on to explore our family In our unit "La famille". We will learn the nouns for family members In French, answer questions about our family In French and begin to learn our numbers up to 100.

Music In music we explore pop music through the works of Abba. We will identify some of the key features of Abba's music, learn a song from memory and learn how to play a musical instrument alongside an Abba song.

We always love to see the learning that children do at home inspired by our curriculum so please feel free to send it in or post it on Google Classroom.

Best wishes, Miss George and Miss Randall.