Understanding the World
Our big question this term is ‘How have the Anglo-Saxons shaped our world today?’ We will be looking at Britain during the Anglo Saxon and Viking times and how things changed due to their settlement. We will focus on their customs, beliefs and cultures. We will understand how countries developed over time, including historical civilizations, colonial relationships and post-independence. We will also consider the causes and effects of immigration.
Mathematical Development
This half term we will be continuing with daily Big Maths sessions to boost our mental and oral skills. It is really important that your child regularly practises times tables at home to ensure they have a quick recall of their times table facts. Y4 is the year group that have a national times table test towards the end of the year.
In our main maths lessons we will be ordering numbers beyond 1000, recognising Roman Numerals and partitioning numbers to 2 decimal places. We will then move on to using the four operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Communication, Language and Literacy
To link with our Anglo-Saxon theme, we will be reading and interpreting a range of texts based around the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Our two fictional writing units this term will be based on The Write Stuff. For each unit we have a stimulus, such as a book or a short film, and the children use a number of writing structures to compose their own guided write. Afterwards, they show off their skills in a structured independent write based on everything they have learnt!
During guided reading, we will be reading The Accidental Prime Minister and Y4 will be a really important year for developing inference skills.
We are continuing to use our new scheme for spelling and will still have daily spelling sessions to support your child’s learning. Weekly spellings will still be recorded in journals for your child to learn at home.
Handwriting will also be part of your child’s routine. Even though your child will already have a really good knowledge of how to form the letters correctly within the lines, we will refresh their memories and continue as we mean to go on with beautiful presentation.
Physical Development
Our indoor sessions will be gymnastics and looking at how we can improve our fitness levels, over time. In our outdoor sessions, we will be developing the skills of basketball and bringing these together to play the game. Both sessions will be taught by the class teachers.
Personal, Social Health Education
Throughout the first half term, we will be discussing friendship and what makes a good friend, as well as exploring happiness. During the second half term, we will be using the annual Anti-Bullying week to learn about how to be safe online. All of these discussions and sessions will take place in weekly circle times, bubble time if needed and during lessons.
Expressive Arts and Design
As part of our topic we are going to be looking at a range of Saxon and Viking artefacts and recreating them using a range of techniques such as observational drawing, sculpture and painting. We will also be re-enacting battle scenes and designing and making Viking long ships.
How you can help!
Home Learning
Home learning is very important and will involve tasks to do at home over time. These tasks will take place with specific home learning tasks, weekly spellings, and reading at least four times a week. We are hoping to award every child a reading mileage badge for their 40 Autumn reads.
Please remember that home learning is set to allow for increased progression and the revision and embedding of key learning points, as well as to consolidate knowledge or skills.
Here is the Autumn home learning menu:
Multiplication Tables
It is a national expectation that your child knows all their times tables and the division facts that go with them by the end of Y4. We will be expecting your child to have this knowledge and will begin testing them in the first half term. Every child in the year group will already have a Times Tables Rock Star login, we will give these out again soon into the term (see your child’s journal), and this online activity is a great way for them to practise.
https://play.ttrockstars.com/auth
Spelling
Spelling tests will be on a Friday and there will be a number of words to learn each week. We are continuing with the new spelling scheme, which has lots of materials to help the children remember letter patterns. Please support your child in learning their spellings.
Here are the first half term’s spellings but these will also be stuck in your child’s journals for each week:
