Welcome to Year 4! We are sure that our Year 4 children will settle into school life quickly and continue to work hard to produce more independent and detailed work. We will be giving the children more responsibility in school and we will expect a greater amount of personal organisation to help them to develop as individuals.

Religious Education

 In R.E. we will be following the new Religious Education Directory 'To Know You More Clearly' and using 'The Vine and the Branches' scheme to support this. Our first topic we will cover is 'Creation and Covenant' where we will explore deeper into the Old Testament specifically following the life and promises given to Abraham and Joseph (the son of Jacob with the coat of many colours). 

The second topic we will cover is 'Prophecy + Promise' where we will continue to explore the Old Testament through Elijah and John the Baptist and then bring ourselves into the New Testament when we looking at Advent and the birth of Jesus. 

In Year 4, the children also lead the school's Harvest Service. We will prepare and learn about the importance of Harvest and share this with our school and local community in Church.

P.S.H.E

In P.S.H.E this term we will be having the delivery of KidSafe UK by Mrs Ronson. 

'KidSafe UK is a leading provider of children’s mental health and safeguarding training for schools and has helped hundreds of schools across the UK, from EYFS to Y6, to deliver age-appropriate, engaging, fun and effective safeguarding programmes to their pupils.' - KidSafe UK Website

English

In the first half term our theme will be the Loch Ness Monster. We will be exploring whether the Loch Ness Monster is real or fake, creating an article to present our research. We will also focus on adventure stories using 'The Treasure of the Loch Ness Monster' by Lari Don and also 'The Family Ness' cartoon as our basis for creating our own adventure story.

In the second half of this term, we will first look at writing our own fairytales. We will look at the different features fairytales use identifying similarities in themes and structure. To support our learning we will use the fairytale 'The Pied Piper'. They will also recount events through newspaper articles and write acrostic poems based on the theme of winter. 

Throughout our English lessons we will immerse the children in different styles of writing using children's fiction and non-fiction texts as sources for our writing. We will be concentrating on punctuation: full stops, capital letters, commas, question marks, exclamation marks, apostrophes and inverted commas. We will be linking spelling and handwriting activities to develop a good cursive handwriting style.  

In addition, in the first half term our whole class guided reading text will be 'The Water Horse' by Dick King-Smith and in the second half term it will be 'The Butterfly Lion' by Michael Morpurgo. We will base our comprehension work around this text.

Spellings will be sent home on Fridays and tested the following Friday. 

Mathematics

In Maths our number work, both mental and written, will focus on place value, addition and subtraction, perimeter and multiplication and division. 

We will continue our focus within school of our 1-12 times tables in preparation for the times table check in the Summer Term.

Science

During the first half term in Science we will look at the topic of 'Electricity'. Pupils will learn the names of devices used in simple circuits and test materials to find out which are conductors and insulators. The children will be using diagrams and drawings to label and explain these circuits.

In the second half term, our topic will be 'States of Matter'. The children will learn what solids, liquids and gases are and how they can change state when they are heated or cooled. The children will also look at evaporation and condensation and how they contribute to the water cycle. 

Throughout science we will be conducting experiments to support our learning, whilst also understanding how to write up our findings.

Geography and History

In the first half term, we will be doing Geography. Our topic will be 'Land Use'. We will look at what settlements are and what are the needs of settlers. We will also look at the natural resources that we have on the earth and the pros and cons of natural resources.

In the second half term, we will be learning about the Great Plague in History. We will look at where the Great Plague came in British history and how it affected the country. As part of our learning, we will look at what the Great Plague was, the causes, what the consequences were and what people tried to do to save themselves. We will study Eyam where they had to make great sacrifices to save others in the country. We will use sources of evidence, books and our own research to support our learning. 

Art and DT

In the first half term our focus will be on 3D Models in D.T. The children will be asked to create a 3D model based on the Blackpool Illuminations. They will be drawing sketches and labelling their diagrams. They will be using their knowledge learnt in science to incorporate an electrical system to their product and use vocabulary related to the electricity topic.

In the second half of this term our theme will be the 'Art of Food'. We will be looking at collage and will create our own fruit portraits in the style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

P.E. and Games

Autumn 1 -

- Gymnastics

- Athletics 

Autumn 2 - 

- Swimming

• swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
• use a range of strokes effectively [for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke]
• perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations

- Dance - 'Sparks Might Fly' which links into our science topic for the previous half term of 'Electricity'. 

Music

In music, we will be focusing our attention on the music from 'Mamma Mia' learning to sing the songs and also learn how to play the glockenspiel through the use of Charanga. We will also be focusing on our knowledge of musical theory e.g. looking at the different types of notes and their length, pulse, pitch etc. We will also be practicing our singing for our Harvest Festival. 

Computing

Autumn 1 -  'Computing Systems and Networks - The Internet'

Autumn 2 -  'Creating Media - Audio Production' 

I look forward to your continued support in this very busy term.               

Miss Parkinson