Miss Klair
assisted by Cathy & Joyce
CURRICULUM
OVERVIEW
Click here for Year 4 overview
READING
During Guided Reading lessons, children will continue to build on the eight reading comprehension skills (a copy of which can be found in your child’s reading record) through discussion, key questioning and follow-up tasks. We will begin the year with The Humans: Ancient Civilisations and the Astonishing Things they Taught Us by Jonny Marx and Charlie Davis. Spanning all of history's known ancient civilisations, children will compare achievements, stories, language, myths and more from each era.
RECOMMENDED READS
Click here for Year 4 book list
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 Thursday and you are to come to school wearing your kit.
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Our library session is on a Tuesday 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
We will begin the year with the book Escape From Pompeii written by Christina Balit. The class will explore the main characters, including how their feelings change through the story, and will write letters of advice to help save them from the eruption. Through collecting banks of powerful vocabulary, children will write a vivid description of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In the final part of the learning sequence, children will become journalists and write a newspaper article to report on the eruption, including quotes from survivors in the town.
R.E
The first RE topic for this term answers the question ‘What makes an Old Testament hero?’
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 Dreams and Goals. In this unit, children will think about their aspirations, how to achieve goals and develop their understanding of the emotions that go with this.
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 spring term, we will be working through the ‘cognitive’ cog in our weekly PE lessons.
Our PE day is: Thursday
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
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.