Happy New Year to you all!

We hope you have all enjoyed your Christmas holidays and we are looking forward to welcoming you back to Meerkats for our spring term with lots of exciting learning adventures.  

Moving forward into the new year, we have made some slight amendments to our teaching days,

Mrs Hobbs will be teaching on a Monday, Thursday and Friday.

Mrs Bright will be teaching on a Tuesday and Wednesday.

Mrs Coley and Mrs Fisher will also be supporting across the year 4 classes. 

In English, we will begin by looking closely at the text 'Our Tower'. We will be developing our reading and writing skills throughout our lessons and will use the text as a stimulus to write our own journals of an adventure.  

In Maths, we will continue to deepen our understanding as mathematicians. We will be learning a variety of methods including column and bus stop to support multiplication and division calculations. 

As scientists, we will be exploring the area of physics further as we build on our knowledge and understanding of electricity. While in History, we will be looking back at Ancient Rome.  

Important reminders

Forest School will be on a Friday afternoon this half term. Please send your child to school with appropriate clothing (long sleeves and trousers) and remember to bring an extra pair of shoes that can get muddy (wellies are perfect for this!) - these can stay on the children's pegs throughout the term if this is helpful. It is going to be much colder in the forest this half term, so please ensure children also have hats and gloves. 

PE is on a Wednesday afternoon. Please ensure children have the appropriate PE kit with them on this day (plain black shorts or jogging bottoms, plain white t-shirt and trainers). 

The Year 4 team will be outside to greet the children and speak with parents and carers at 8.30 each morning. Children will line up at 8.35am ready for registration at 8.40am. Our first lesson begins promptly at 8.45am. The school day finishes at 3.25pm for Key Stage 2. 

We will be setting home learning each week to complete online, including Spelling Shed and Times Table Rockstars. Children should also aim to read at least five times a week. 

Please continue to keep an eye on our class page as we will be updating it with pictures and write-ups of our learning as the year progresses. 

We can't wait to see you all on Monday 8th January 2024 . 

In RE, we have been learning about Hindu beliefs about reincarnation. The children enjoyed playing snakes and ladders as the considered the cycle of samsara. When they went up a ladder it symbolised good karma. They thought of an example of why they might receive good karma. When they went down a snake, it symbolises bad karma. The aim was to reach Moksha and escape the cycle of reincarnation. 

In Science, we have moved on to exploring volume and pitch and how this changes. This week, the children used straws to see if they could make their own pan pipes. They experimented with different lengths of straws and noticed how the pitch changes. 

Meerkats have been learning about the seasons in French this half term.They have learnt how to say a sentence about each of the four seasons and finished their learning on seasons today by answering the question ‘Quelle est ta saison préférée?’ 

We're already learning so much in year 4. We've completed our first Maths unit on place value, enjoyed our first focus text in English- Gorilla and been making structures in DT. We loved exploring the digestive system in science using the VR headsets and have been really thoughtful in understanding what the trinity is. 

Welcome to Meerkats!

We are ready and raring to go for the exciting year ahead in year 4 and can't wait to welcome you into Meerkats class. 

Mrs Hobbs will be teaching on a Monday, Wednesday and Thursday (pm).

Mrs Bright will be teaching on a Tuesday, Thursday (am) and Friday.

Mrs Sullivan, Mrs Cowley and Miss Fisher will also be supporting across the year 4 classes. 

We begin our year with some wonderful topics across the curriculum with lots of exciting new knowledge to learn and explore, including the topic of Ancient Greece in History. 

In English, we will begin the year by enjoying the book 'Gorilla' by Anthony Browne. We will be using the text as a stimulus to write our own fantasy story and will have lots of opportunities to develop our reading and writing skills in the process. 

In Maths, we start our learning with a unit on place value, beginning with securing and extending our understanding of numbers to 1000 before moving on to numbers to 10,000. We will be ordering, estimating, comparing, partitioning and rounding too! We'll then move on to addition and subtraction. 

Forest School and Swimming will be on a Tuesday afternoon. Please send your child to school with appropriate clothing for forest school (long sleeves and trousers) and remember to bring an extra pair of shoes that can get muddy (wellies are perfect for this!)- these can stay on the children's pegs throughout the term if this is helpful. For swimming, children will need their swimming costume, a towel and a swimming hat. Please ensure earrings are removed for swimming. Meerkats will be doing Forest School for Autumn 1 (until October half term) and Swimming during Autumn 2 (following October half term until Christmas)

PE is on a Wednesday afternoon. Please ensure children have the appropriate PE kit with them on this day (plain black shorts or jogging bottoms, plain white t-shirt and trainers). 

The Year 4 team will be outside to greet the children and speak with parents and carers at 8.30 each morning. Children will line up at 8.35am ready for registration at 8.40am. Our first lesson begins promptly at 8.45am. The school day finishes at 3.25pm for Key Stage 2. 

We will be setting home learning each week to complete online, including Spelling Shed, Times Table Rockstars and Complete Maths. Children should also aim to read at least five times a week. We will no longer be having reading records in year 4. More information regarding this will be given in the first week back at school. 

Please keep an eye on our class page as we will be updating it with pictures and write-ups of our learning as the year progresses. 

We can't wait to see you all on Monday 5th September.