Welcome to Year 4 Newsletter

Welcome to Year 4

First of all, may we both thank you for your support and patience as we have settled into the school, taking time to answer your questions and organise new systems. It has been much appreciated.

Here is some information about curriculum and arrangements for this term, to keep you informed.

Our main topic this term will be The Enigmatic Egyptians. Our Science, Art, Music and Geography will all be taught by links through this topic. Whilst we were unfortunately unable to go on our planned trip to Dorchester, we will be thinking ahead to visits for the Spring and Summer terms; so please look out for details about these in due course.

This term in English, we have begun with recount writing, to enable the children to develop their personal experiences and learn the techniques of using detail within past tense. Over the next few weeks, we plan to read and write non-fiction texts focussing on explanation writing about our topic of Ancient Egypt. The children will be encouraged to use a range of sentence types and to ensure that their writing contains detail, adventurous vocabulary and shows good effort in presentation. Our main focus for reading will be comprehension skills, especially reading for inference (reading between the lines) and deduction (finding the answers within the text). There will also be a daily spelling lesson from the Read, Write Inc Spelling scheme.

Our spellings will be given out on Mondays, then tested the following Monday.

In Maths, we will be developing the children’s understanding of place value up to 4 digits. We will be working on formal written methods for addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. There will be a strong focus on problem solving in maths, enabling the children to develop their learning in real life situations through word problems and investigating.

Home Learning

All children have been given a new planner. Please ensure you sign your child’s planner every weekend. The children are now expected to write a few sentences about what they have read each day at home in order to improve their comprehension skills. This will be monitored weekly and will be rewarded through their INSPIRE page. The children have all been allocated a book from the Accelerated Reader system, which allows them to access comprehension quizzes to complete, when they have finished a book. This can be done at home (with internet access) or at school.

Our homework tasks this year will take various forms:

• Weekly tasks to consolidate learning or to prepare for the following week’s learning
• Projects (taking several weeks to complete)
• Times table practice through Times Table Rockstars
• Weekly spellings

School Uniform

At Shaftesbury Primary, we believe it is important for the children to take pride in their appearance. We would be grateful if you could ensure that your child is wearing the correct uniform, including black school shoes. Long hair should be tied back neatly, for health and safety reasons - especially during PE - Games. For further details of our uniform policy, please see the school website.

PE

PE/Games in Year 4 will be on Thursdays (Tag Rugby) and Fridays (Dance). PE kits should generally be kept in school. Your child will need a named:-

• red t-shirt
• black shorts
• a pair of trainers
• tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt for colder months

Snacks

As we are a healthy school, please ensure your child has a healthy snack at break time. This could be fruit, vegetables or a healthy snack bar.

A last reminder: If you are happy for your child to walk home alone, please write us a letter so we know you have given consent.

Don’t forget, check out our class blog to find out about the work we have been doing and any future projects we might be undertaking.

If you have any queries, please feel free to come and speak to us.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sarah Ware Tom Barnett

Miss Wells     Miss Lewis       Mrs Pike      Mrs Luffman