Year 4
THE YEAR 4 TEAM
Year 4 Teacher: Mrs Shone
Teaching Assistant: Mrs Dennis and Miss Birchall
If you have any queries or need any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us. You can leave messages for us at the school office, talk to us at home time and you can also write in your child’s planner.
You may find the following information helpful, so your child is organised.
PE Kits: PE will be on a Tuesday morning. Please send PE kits in to school as soon as possible and they can be left in school until half term. Please make sure all PE kit items are named and that the children have suitable outdoor and indoor clothing. Trainers are advisable.
Reading: Year 4 children are expected to read independently every night and they are able to write in their own planners. We ask that children write one quick sentence about what has happened in the book they have been reading. Parents need to sign your students planners once a week.
Pupil Planners: Planners are required in school every day. Reading aloud at home should be done at least 3 times per week, even if you only have time to read a few pages. Children can write in their own planners in KS2 as long as a parent confirms this reading at least once per week. When children write their own comments if they can just write a sentence about what they have read. In the planner, there are several sections that must be read and completed by parents/carers. It is important that you complete these sections as soon as possible and encourage your child to look at the sections they can complete.
Outdoor Coat: Please ensure your child has a warm and preferably waterproof coat to wear at break and lunch times even in sunnier weather as the British summer oftens brings rain.
Book bags: Space in the cloakroom is very limited so we store book bags in the classroom; it would be helpful if children could use the school book bags and not large rucksacks or bags.
Snack: Children can purchase a healthy snack every day, it costs 30p for toast and 35p for juice and it would be REALLY helpful if your child could bring the correct change.
Lunch: Lunch will cost £2.80 per day and should be paid for online via parent pay, the menu is published on the website.
Homework: Homework will be set on a Friday to be completed by Friday the following week. Homework is set online and is usally set on Learning By Questions, Spelling Shed and TT Rockstars. Children will be expected to complete 2 lessons of Reading Plus each week and this will be monitored by the class teacher.
Writing: We teach contextual grammar as much as possible to ensure that grammar knowledge is retained and become sticky. We also use this method to significantly enhance outcomes in extended writing with grammar knowledge being applied more proficiently. Please see our Whole School Grammar Writing Journey to see the writing opportunities that will be covered.
We cover a wide genre of writing styles which will include letters, diaries, newspapers, character description, historical narrative and poetry.
Reading: In class, we will be reading a text as a whole class each half term and your child will be given the opportunity to access a high-quality, challenging text, dissecting this, along with the class teacher, using a range of reading skills.
Your child will be given a challenging personal reading book selected by the teacher which will be changed regularly. There is a selection of Must Read Year 4 books - during the year, your child should have read several of these at home.
Your child will also have a love of reading non-fiction book in their book bag, which will be changed regularly. We need to encourage the children to recognise that they read for different purposes: children will therefore also have a Love of Reading fiction book in their book bag, which can be collected from the Book Donation Station (in school), the Genre Section (in school), the reading area (in school) or it can a book that your child personally owns or has borrowed from a local library. To support your child at home when they are reading, children will also have a bookmark in their book bags with key questions that parents could ask to generate discussion and check understanding.
Please see our Reading Journey to find the books covered during Whole Class Shared Reading and if you wish to see the Must Read books covered in each year group.
Maths: In Year 4, times tables are a big focus. We will be practising times tables recall almost daily through the year in preparation for the Times Table Skills Test at the end of the year. We also ask that children practise time as much as possible: telling the time and duration questions.