Mrs Brown
assisted by Sophie, Joyce & Mo
CURRICULUM
OVERVIEW
Click here for Year 4 overview
READING
Zombierella by Joseph Coelho is a playful and imaginative twist on the traditional Cinderella fairy tale, following a kind-hearted zombie girl who challenges stereotypes and shows that kindness matters more than appearances. Through the Literacy Tree scheme in Year 4, children explore character, setting, and plot while developing their skills in storytelling, descriptive writing, and dialogue, as well as learning how authors adapt and subvert familiar tales.
RECOMMENDED READS
Please click here to see our Recommended Reads for Year 4. All of these books are available to borrow from our school library.
USEFUL NOTICES
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Reading records must be in school every day.
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Bring a water bottle to school each day
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PE will be on a Tuesday and you are to come to school wearing your kit.
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Our library session is on a Friday so please have your library book in school to renew or change.
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Homework is set on a Wednesday and must be uploaded on Google Classroom by the following Wednesday.
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Spelling tests will take place each Wednesday and results recorded in reading records.
HOMEWORK
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Weekly homework is set. Please see the expectation for Year Four on the Home Learning Overview for more information.
ENGLISH
Varmints by Helen Ward and Marc Craste is a haunting and beautifully illustrated story about a peaceful natural world threatened by noise, destruction and change. Through the text, children explore themes of nature, hope and environmental responsibility while developing their skills in descriptive and persuasive writing. They build rich vocabulary, write instructions, letters and speeches, and explore the accompanying short film before culminating in a well-structured explanation of the life cycle of a plant.
R.E
The first RE topic for this term answers the question ‘What makes an Old Testament hero?’ Through our lessons children will have the opportunity to develop their understanding of theology, philosophy and sociology through the believing, thinking and living strand underpinning the units.
MATHS
During this half-term, we’ll be looking at Numbers to 10,000 then moving onto Addition and Subtraction within 10,000. If your child doesn’t already know their times tables (up to 12), please keep practising with them.
All children are expected to be able to recall all of these multiplication facts by the end of Year Four.
Click here for Year 4 Maths Methods Handbook.
PSHE
At Boutcher School, we teach Personal, Social, Health Education (PSHE) and relationships as a whole-school approach to underpin children’s development as people and because we believe that this also supports their learning capacity. We use the Jigsaw Programme which offers us a comprehensive, carefully thought-through Scheme of Work which brings consistency and progression to our children’s learning in this vital curriculum area. This term the topic being covered across the school is Being Me in My World. Children learn about their rights and responsibilities, how to work cooperatively, and how their choices and behaviour affect themselves and others in their class and wider community.
SCIENCE
Our topic this half term is States of Matter. Children will learn about the differences between a solid, liquid and a gas and take part in practical activities and experiments to learn about their properties.
After half term, the next topic in our science curriculum will be Electricity. Children will learn about what electricity is and how it was discovered. They will identify which appliances use electricity in their homes and how to keep themselves safe. Children will construct circuits, start to create pictorial circuits and conduct an investigation into how easily different types of switches can break and reconnect a circuit.
HUMANITIES
In Geography, we will be studying ‘Why are rainforests important to us?’ where we explore the key features of the Amazon rainforest and give examples of how humans are having a negative impact on it.
In History, we will be studying ‘How have children’s lives changed’ where we explore the working conditions of Tudor and Victorian children and explore different primary and secondary sources.
PE
At Boutcher, we follow the ‘Real PE’ approach. Real PE is a unique, child-centred approach that engages and challenges children in their PE lessons. It focuses on the development of agility, balance and coordination, healthy competition and cooperative learning. Real PE focuses on six key cogs, these are: Creative, Cognitive, Health and Fitness, Personal, Physical and Social.
In the autumn term, we will be working through the ‘personal’ and ‘social’ cogs in our weekly PE lessons.
Our PE day is: Tuesday
PE kit is as follows:
- plain white t-shirt or polo top
- navy blue jogging bottoms, leggings or shorts (no logos)
- school navy blue jumper or cardigan
- suitable trainers for PE
We will also be running the Boutcher Mile on Wednesdays so please wear trainers to school.
FRENCH
At Boutcher we will now be teaching French in our Modern Foreign Language lessons. French will be taught by Miss Simmons once a week and children will practise French throughout the week with their class teacher through daily greetings and classroom instructions.