Year 4

Updated: 25/9/20

Welcome to Year 4!

Self-isolation / instant lockdown activities

Should anyone have to enter a period of isolation, we have added more activities to our learning links for Key Skills. You will find areas for English and Maths. At the bottom of the page there are more activities linked to the topics too.

If you have any questions, please contact us and we will try to help out the best that we can.

THANK YOU!

What a great start back to Year 4! The children have been amazing and have quickly got back into/learned then new routines.

Although we set homework this week, we have had a school discussion about how we are going to proceed this term. We will not be setting the homework in the way we have previously, but asking for more focus on skills. We will still send home learning, but you will not need to return this to school as we had been. We do ask that you still encourage your child to complete their tasks, as everything they do will impact their progress.

Timings reminders

Year 4 start at 8:50 and will be collected from the playground in classes by the adults from our year group. You can line up with us from 8:40 if you have other siblings that start at 8:40 and your adults need to get going to work.

Our days ends at 3:15, and again, we will take you to the playground as a class.

If you or your families have any questions, please feel free to ask us at some point this week.

Best wishes,

Mr E, Mrs C, Miss Friend, Mrs Godfrey and Miss Gee

General Information

Welcome to the Year 4 page. You will find all of the things you should need to know for the year.

In Year 4 the teachers are Mr Easterbrook and Mrs Coulton. We are supported by Miss Friend, Mrs Godfrey and Miss Gee, who are our teaching assistants.

Year 4 is a key year and involves the children taking greater responsibility for their own learning. Despite this we are very keen to work together as a partnership, with the children, parents, teachers and school of all working together to help us 'to be the best that we can be'.

Please feel free to contact the Year 4 team if you have something you wish to ask or would like to discuss. We have an open door policy and will see you as soon as possible. Please ask at the office if you would like to see us in person or would like to pass on a message, or catch us in the playground at the start or end of the day.

Thank you,

The Year 4 Team

INSTRUMENTAL LESSONS - a message from Miss York!

We are currently working really hard to make the necessary arrangements for instrumental lessons to restart and are very hopeful that this can be within the next few weeks - keep an eye on the website's Music page (under 'Curriculum')! The good news is that you have already paid for these in advance - any Zoom lessons your child may have received from some of the tutors during the summer were free of charge and through their goodwill to keep some sort of provision going. We are also hoping to be able to start some new Year 4 instrumentalists off on their own musical journeys at some stage - again, keep an eye on the Music page! Thank you for your ongoing support with Manadon Vale's musical tradition!

If your child is a guitarist, please can you check that their guitar is at home and not still in the music room? If it is still there, please can they collect it!  At the end of last term, there were 8 beautiful guitars unclaimed! From this term, no instruments can be left in the music room, due to us needing the full space for appropriately distanced instrumental lessons. Class teachers know that the children's instruments will need to be kept in their classrooms during the day of the lesson and taken home again that afternoon. If any of the guitars are still in there at the end of next week, I shall assume they are left by ex-pupils and offer them to the guitar teacher as spares/second-hand instruments. Many thanks for your assistance with this. 

We are very excited about returning to some sort of music at Manadon, even if it won't be able to look exactly the same during the current restrictions.

Miss York

Home learning

SEE REVISED NOTE ABOUT HOME LEARNING ABOVE

• Each Friday, children will be given spellings based around the expectations of their year group. They will have a suitable number based upon their ability level. The test will be on the following Thursday.
• The children are expected to read regularly throughout the week, with parental completion of the reading record on three occasions. This should indicate when and how much the children have read. It would also be helpful to include a very brief comment on any problems or successes from the activity. This is to be handed in EVERY Friday and counts towards our class rewards.
• Maths and English homework is set once a week, on a Monday. It is due in on the Thursday of the same week.
• Our expectation is that the children should be able to complete their homework on their own and that it should take approximately 30/40 minutes to complete. If it is problem, please speak with the class teacher and we will try to help out. The learning is almost always based on learning we have done in class already, so it should be possible for all children to attempt and complete their appropriate level of challenge.

PE Kit and days

• Monday Games kit - (Preferably) long sleeved plain BLUE football top, white shorts, BLUE football socks and trainers. Shin-pads are not necessary.
• Friday Gymnastics kit - white shorts and a plain t-shirt. Trainers may also be needed.

Planning Days

• Mrs Cowin and Mrs Mitchell cover Year 4 every other Thursday.

English

Current learning

We are currently using a new text called 'The Book of Hopes', an anthology of short stories and illustrations from over 110 famous authors and illustrators, collated over lockdown and edited by the amazing children's author, Katherine Rundell. The book aims to comfort, inspire and reassure our children, something we will be focusing on during this term especially.

In guided reading, we are will start by looking at some of the stories in 'The Book of Hopes' and will get back into developing reading skills and the fluency of the children when reading aloud. This skill is key to be embedded as it will allow better access to the kinds of texts that we will be working on this year and beyond.

Reading

On our return, all children are heard reading and we will decide if they need to remian on the reading scheme, and at which level, or if they should be a free-reader.

Regular reading at home is essential. The children should be heard reading aloud at least 3 times per week, even for those children who are free-readers. Discussions between the child and the adult are key to helping to improve and develop their understanding but also allows the children to work on their expression when reading aloud. 

Free readers may read anything they like but we would like you to always have a challenging fiction book on the go at all times. We are more than happy to recommend texts for you.

Children on the reading scheme must read their scheme books but can also add any additional reading you have done (non-fiction, magazines, other books etc).

Each child has their own reading record and these need to be completed with three adult signed entries per week, indicating when the child read, what they read and anything that arose from the discussion. If the record has been misplaced or left at school, the entries should be completed on a piece of paper, which can be stuck into the book.

We have given Year 4 access to Oxford Owl and the reading materials within their website. This wonderful resource has a small range of texts and extracts that the children can read on a digital screen, choosing to read the text themselves, or allowing the text to be read to them and for them to follow along. This is a useful resource if your child has forgotten their reading book, or if you would like a different text to one that you have already. The login details are in the front of the reading record and can be found on the Year 4 'Welcome to Year 4' PowerPoint/PDF.

Spellings

Spellings will be handed out on a Friday and tested on the following Thursday. We will teach the spellings patterns and rules throughout the week. These are to be found on the spelling section below.

Handwriting

Throughout the week we will ask the children to practise their spellings through handwriting. Part of the curriculum expects all children to be joining their handwriting.

We keep the children's best handwriting on their tables so that they are always trying to improve their work to be the best that it can be.

Maths

Current Learning

The main focus for us to start with is place value and learning the value of digits in a number. We will be revisiting some of the aspects of the Year 3 curriculum to recap and refresh our memories, before moving onto the Year 4 curriculum.

Times tables facts

The national expectation for Year 4 is that ALL children will know every times table fact from 1x1 to 12x12 by heart and with instant recall. The Government were due to introduce a national assessemnet of this skill last year and it was last year's Year 4s who were due to be the first year group to be assessed on their times table fact knowledge. Obviously, this did  not happen, so it will now be this year group.

As a school, we piloted the process in the year before and our pupils performed incredibly well and this was in main due to regular learning at home of the tables, either through playing the TTRockstars app or by repeated questioning by others. Both can be a fun way to learn and enhance the knowledge of the tables, making all of their maths skills much quicker and accurate. The only way to embed this essential skill is to repeatedly practise them. Just a few minutes learning them each day will have a massive impact. Our best mathematicians know all of their tables by heart and it will be invaluable for moving into Year 5 and beyond.

All children have been provided with their own TTRockstars username and password. It would be helpful if they could learn these so that they can use them at home, but also in school, where we will be using the app to keep our skills topped up.

In Year 4, the expectations in maths have changed significantly. The new curriculum focuses heavily on calculation strategies, particularly for addition, subtraction and multiplication. We also start to develop our division skills, so it is essential that the children work at learning these at home. They are a key life skill which will be essential throughout adulthood.

We are having a huge push on our times tables at the moment as it forms a key part of what we must know to move forwards in our learning. We would really appreciate any help with the learning of this key skill please. If you need some help with suggestions, please see the resources below or come and ask one of the team for some support.

RE

For our RE lessons in Year 4 we study Christianity and Hinduism.

Below is a copy of the units of work we follow and use.