Welcome to Year 4

1. Home
2. Class Pages
3. Class 4

Dear Parents/Carers,

We are back! It is lovely to see all of your children again and to have the chance to pick up where we left off. Your children feel the same way as we do. Despite the inevitable initial nerves everyone is clearly happy to be back. Amongst other things children mention they have missed friends, the structure the school day brings, learning new things and a few have even missed us! Your children are clearly very adaptable and amazingly resilient. They seem to be quickly adapting to our ‘new normal’.

The Romans – Our history focused topic this half term is ’The Romans’. We will be finding out all about their legacy. Who were they? Why were they so powerful? How they still influence our lives today? In particular we’ll be researching how a child’s life in Roman times differed from our own.

Maths – We begin by focusing on place value, working with much larger numbers including thousands. It will be extremely important for us to secure basic number facts and the core operations including addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.

Times Tables – At the end of year 4 children are expected to sit a new Multiplications Tables Check. The purpose of the check is to determine whether pupils can fluently recall their times tables up to 12. This reflects just how important the rapid recall of times tables is in supporting children’s mathematical knowledge and their ability to solve trickier problems. Children can still access TT Rockstars from home. A free and fun resource that supports this learning. Please encourage them to do so and regularly.

Reading – We want to get children into a regular reading habit. At the very beginning of school we ‘learn to read’. As we progress throughout school the emphasis changes and we ‘read to learn’. Children are clearly at an advantage if they can become fluent competent readers with a good understanding. But we also want children to read for pleasure. There is nothing better than losing yourself in a good book. We aim to get lost! Regularly!

Writing – This half term our focus is writing to entertain. We begin by writing poems and move on to writing letters and diary extracts in role as the characters from the class texts we are studying. We will also send spellings of common words for your child to learn for a weekly spelling test every Monday.

PE – Please send kit to school on Mondays and Thursdays, it will return home on the same day. We are asking that your child does not keep their kit in school throughout the week, as we are currently storing them in the classroom and are limited for space. We hope to work outside as much as possible so please check plimsolls/trainers still fit.

Snacks and water bottles – Please send your child with a freshly-filled water bottle each day as we can no longer provide drinks at school. We are also not selling snacks, in order to avoid having cash at school. Our morning is a little longer than it used to be, with lunch at 12:30, so we encourage you to also send a healthy snack which your child can have at break time.

ClassDojo – We will continue to use ClassDojo this year. As well as recognising the children’s efforts, we will use it to keep you updated. You are more than welcome to message us. This is a handy (as well as socially distanced) way to keep in contact.

As always, if you have any concerns at all, please get in touch. We are here to help.

Kind regards,

Mr Donegani and Miss Chantrey