Year
4

Welcome to Year 4!

Meet the Team -

Class teacher: Miss Hartford

Teaching assistant: Mrs Farmer

A typical day in Year 4:

Each day starts with a Busy Book activity, which may have a literacy, numeracy or creative focus, before we gather together in the hall for assembly or song practise. Back in class we have Mental Maths, followed by numeracy, working on our current maths focus through a range of activities. After break we have a session working on grammar, spelling or punctuation, followed by our main writing session for the day.

In the afternoon we normally have a chance to read together, plus activities exploring the wider curriculum, including science, history, geography, languages, P.E. and art.

In Literacy and Mathematics in Year 4, we follow the New National Curriculum. Much of our writing is linked in to our termly topic, using great texts and visual stimuli to develop our creativity and imagination and to grow our general knowledge, whilst also developing us as confident, fluent writers.

In science this year we will be learning about States of Matter, Animals (including humans) and Classification, Living Things and their Habitats, Electricity and Sound. To support our learning we have lots of practical investigations.

Our topics in Year 4 are:

Autumn – The Chocolate Rainforest

We will explore the rainforests this term, learning about these amazing areas of our planet, looking at the people and the creatures that call them home. We will use this as an opportunity to write in role as explorers, to write descriptions, poems and non-chronological reports. We will learn about the climate zones on our planet, developing map skills and comparing locales, and we will make rainforest biomes, demonstrating the water cycle.

After our visit to Cadbury World, we will look at the indigenous peoples of South America and the history of chocolate, then looking at the Quakers in Birmingham and the experiences of workers in Victorian factories.

Art will focus on developing observational drawing skills and looking at the range of media that can be employed in a still life. We will also explore pattern making through this.

Spring – Meet the Greeks and Roman Britain

We will start off with a rollercoaster tour of 5000 years of history, growing our understanding of timelines and gaining a mental picture of what fits where in history. We will then explore the world of the Ancient Greeks, discovering what we owe today to them, writing information texts and biographies. We will share some great myths and legends, using them as the starting point for narratives, descriptions and poetry.

From there we will travel to Roman Britain, seeing how countries continually transform and adapt. Minimus, the mouse from Vindolanda, will be our guide as we explore Britain at that time, learning Latin as we go!

Summer – Active Planet

It’s high drama in the summer, as Year 4 considers how it would cope in the face of a natural disaster, learning how citizens of other countries learn to be prepared for such emergencies. We will learn exactly how active our planet is, using famous events from the distant and recent past to develop our understanding. We will look at how writers have responded to the mysteries and wonders of our planet, and the challenges that face it. We will have the opportunity to write explanation texts, narratives, poems, persuasive articles and newspaper reports.