Welcome to Year 4

Ensuring the children feel safe, happy and engaged is our priority and therefore making them feel part of the Year 4 team is incredibly important. In year 4 we aim to advance our learning by having exciting, fun experiences, setting high expectations of each other and ourselves. We enjoy challenging ourselves and we look forward to discovering new learning experiences throughout the year. Year 4 is a phase of consolidation and preparation. Children will cement the skills learnt in Year 3 and the groundwork is set for more independent learning in Year 5.

In Year 4 we aim to foster increased independence in our pupils. This applies both to their learning - discovering new things for themselves and finding ways to overcome difficulties, and in their social and emotional development - dealing with friendship issues, showing consideration for others and understanding the consequences of their actions.  We have elected pupils to represent our class on the School Council and on the Eco-Committee.

In Year 4 the children experience a range of teaching and learning styles. Whole class, group and 1-to-1 teaching takes place as appropriate. In addition to giving pupils confidence to work individually where necessary, they are also provided with opportunities to work in pairs and in larger groups. We make full use of the school environment for our lessons e.g. learning in our Forest School.

Year 4 pupils are given opportunities to be as active as possible throughout the school day. As well as regular PE lessons, we have frequent “5 –a-day-" activities to get the children's hearts beating faster.

English

Our Year 4 English units cover a wide range of genres including; stories from other cultures, stories with historical settings, poetry using imagery, explanation texts and persuasive writing. Throughout each of these units pupils are taught the literacy skills of spelling, punctuation and grammar. We base our English units on a specific book per half-term, which helps the children to immerse in this topic. Those books establish links to our foundation subjects, e.g. in Autumn 1 we are reading 'Escape to Pompeii' which links to our history topic, the Romans.

Reading

Our Reading lessons follow the whole class reading format, each week focusses on a different theme and we cover a range of genres. We have a class book that we enjoy reading at the end of each day and also allow the children time to read for pleasure independently.

Maths

Year 4 learn how to calculate with larger numbers, using all 4 'rules' and both mental and written methods. We use negative numbers, fractions and decimals. We measure using metric units and learn about the properties of 2D and 3D shapes, applying what we have learnt to present data clearly and solve mathematical problems.

Themes

In the Autumn term our overarching theme is Explore Our People and our question is Do we have the right to invade? (History and Geography)

In the Spring Term  the theme is Create  Our Choices and our question is:  Is it better to stand our or fit in? (English, Music and Art)

In the Summer term the them is Discover Our World and our question is Where can a journey take you? (STEM)

See our Curriculum Overview below for a summary of this year's teaching.

Things to know

Weekly homework in Year 4 consists of regular reading and times table practice. Whilst children will not receive weekly spellings, we would still recommend that they continue to practise reading and spelling the year3/4 common exception words (found in their planners). Please record all learning in the planner. 

The Staff

Miss Tickle - Class Teacher

Ms McQueen - Teaching Assistant

Please see below for information about our learning in Year 4