Welcome to Ash Class!

Meet the team:
The teacher in Year 4 is Miss Doroftei

Teaching Assistants: Mrs Jarman (Mon-Wed) and Mrs Ellis (Thu-Fri) as well as Mr. Van der Leeuw (afternoons only)

Important Information:

P.E Tuesday and Friday

Please ensure your child comes to school in P.E kit on these days.

Forest School and Music - alternate Wednesdays (see rota below)

For Forest School please ensure you have waterproofs to cover your PE clothes and wellies.

Autumn Term Topic: Hola Mexico! The Marvellous Mayans

We are very excited about our autumn term topic all about the incredible Maya civilisation. As part of this unit our class will learn all about this extraordinary civilisation who created beautiful writing using logograms and hieroglyphs. We will also discover their fascinating inventive maths and calendar systems and we will study the impressive buildings of this very early civilisation whilst creating a Maya mask and headdress based on original Maya designs. During this topic we will investigate how the Maya lived, their culture and their legacy. We will uncover the wonders of The Maya by learning about their beliefs and art work, their religion as well as looking at their food and drink. 

English 

We will be learning how to create suspense by exploring a variety of techniques such as the use of short sentences to create tension, spooking descriptions and by using carefully selected words to create a threatening atmosphere. We will also explore the use of expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials, time connective, figurative language as well as using 'show not tell' sentences.   

Reading is such an important skill; it really unlocks all areas of the curriculum. We would ask parents to hear their child read at least three times a week (but ideally daily), 5-10 minutes an evening is all that is needed. As well as supporting your child read, it is also useful to ask questions and check your child’s understanding of the text. In class, will be practising a variety of comprehension (VIPERS) skills including: inferencing, predicting, explaining and retrieving.

Science

Animals including Human

Pupils will be taught to:

• recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways.

• explore and use classification keys to help group, identify and name a variety of living things in their local and wider environment.

• recognise that environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things.

States of matter: Compare and group materials together, according to whether they are solids, liquids or gases. Observe that some materials change state when they are heated or cooled and measure or research the temperature at which this happens in degrees Celsius. Identify the part played by evaporation and condensation in the water cycle and associate the rate of evaporation with temperature.

Maths

Throughout this term, we will be covering: place value, addition and subtraction as well as multiplication and division.

We will also have weekly sessions, whereby the children will practise and develop their mental arithmetic skills and times tables.
Please continue to support your children’s learning by regularly asking questions or allowing them to play TT Rock Stars to improve their instant recall of the multiplication and division facts of all times tables (up to 12 times tables by the end of the year).

In the first week of June, the children will be completing an online Multiplication Tables check which will determine whether the children can fluently recall their times tables up to 12.

R.E.

This term we will look into moral and ethical issues and develop our understanding of Christianity and Hinduism. We will also consider diversity in religions including the different views, beliefs and traditions in each religion. 

P.E

We will have P.E. every Tuesday and Friday. Please remember on the day children have P.E. they will come to school wearing their PE kit. They will need to wear shorts under jogging bottoms or bring in shorts with them as we need them to be dressed appropriately for the sport they are doing.

Forest School and Music:

Forest School and Music will alternate each week on Wednesday morning (see the class timetable below). Please see the rota below and remember to wear your Forest School clothes and Wellies on Forest School days.  

Home Learning: in Year 4, doing homework from the grid is optional (see document below which is also stuck in the children's homework books). Should the children wish to do a piece of homework, it should be completed and handed in on Wednesdays. 

The children are asked to complete the following:

1. Read daily 10-15 minutes and document in their Reading Record at least three times a week.

2. Practise their Times Tables on Times Tables Rock Stars each day for 5 minutes.

3. Practise their weekly spellings using the Activity Menu (please see attached and also glued in the children's Learning Logs)

4. On Fridays choose and complete a task from the grid and hand in by Wednesday.

Timetables:

Trips:

We are very excited about our upcoming residential trip to the Frontier Centre in Northamptonshire on the 15th-16th October. Information pack will be sent in due course. More in-person information will also be provided during the 'Meet the teacher' session  (date tbc).