Welcome to Year 4
Teacher : Mr Hibbard
Support staff: Ms Payne & Mrs Kumar
Welcome back, Year 4!
I hope you have all had a lovely summer break! It is lovely to see the children back, and all of them eager to learn. I look forward to seeing all the fantastic learning and brilliant pieces of work that they will be producing over the next few weeks.
Reading
In Year 4, once your child has moved beyond ‘Lime’ they will chose reading books from the Year 4 classroom bookshelf; they can also take home books from the KS2 library. It is really important to develop their reading skills and love of reading, so reading with an adult at home is important. This will need to be recorded in their reading records as usual. Please make sure you listen to them read these books regularly at home (a few pages or a chapter at a time, depending on the book length) and put your signature in their reading record each time you do. Signed Reading Records will earn them merits. Whenever they finish their reading book, they will take another from the classroom bookshelf and record it in their reading record. This can be swapped whenever they wish to move onto a new book.
For children who have ‘White’ or ‘Lime’ as their reading book, they will read each week with an adult one-to-one at school, as well as reading regularly at home with an adult. Their ‘shared reading’ book will be a chapter book they’ve chosen from the classroom bookshelf.
For children who are reading books from ‘Gold’ or below, they will read each week with an adult one-to-one at school, as well as reading regularly at home with an adult. Their ‘shared reading’ book will match the colour of their reading book. During independent reading at school, they are welcome to read books from our classroom bookshelf.
Your child may read with an adult at any point during the week, therefore, please make sure your child keeps their reading book and reading record in their bags at all times.
Multiplication Tables Check (MTC)
In Year 4 children are expected to take a times tables test in the Summer Term. This involves taking a test to show that they know and understand their times tables in order to aid other areas of mathematical calculations. In light of this, times tables will be included in their homework each week and closer to the time we will undertake ‘mock-tests’ to see how prepared the children are for it. Whilst there is no pass mark for this test, the expectation is that they will get all 25 questions correct. Further information will be given later in the year.
Homework
Homework will be handed out every Wednesday and will consist of maths and English tasks, which will help to consolidate the children’s learning. The homework will need to be handed back in on the following Monday, along with their Reading Records. Homework that is not handed in or completed to a satisfactory standard will have to be completed at lunchtime.
PE kits & Swimming
For this term, Year 4 will have PE lessons every Thursday. Please ensure that they have their named PE kit at school at all times and that it is suitable for both indoor and outdoor PE. Each child will need a pair of trainers, a white t-shirt, and blue or black shorts. As we transition into the winter months, children can wear blue or black tracksuit bottoms and a blue.
Swimming will take place every Thursday morning for the Autumn term so please ensure that children bring their swimming kits each week. Swimming kits need to consist of a fitted swimming costume, towel and swimming cap for those with longer hair. Goggles may be worn if desired.
Water Bottles
Please make sure that your child has a named water bottle in school so that they can keep hydrated during the day. Due to hygiene reasons, it is difficult to provide cups for the children, so it is important they have their own water bottle.
Please see below for our weekly timetable and the KS2 Long Term Plan, which shows what the children will be learning this year in Year 4.
If you have any questions or queries about the above, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Thank you for your support,
Mr Hibbard
Year 4 Autumn Timetable 2024
Reading in KS2
In KS2 children have daily whole-class reading lessons. At Monksmead, we use VIPERS from Literacy Shed Comprehension Plus to help structure the learning and ensure that all key skills are being learnt.
VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum. They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc. As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions. They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these which allows for targeted questioning afterwards.
To support the children in accurately answering comprehension questions, we use A.P.E. This stands for 'Answer', ' Prove it' and 'Explain it'.
Science Knowledge Organisers - Autumn 2024
Click on the images below to enlarge the knowledge organiser for the individual topic area.
