Welcome to Lions class!

Maths

Times tables is a big focus for Year 4 to help prepare for the Multiplication Tables Check in Summer 2024. 

The link below has a collection of times tables songs children can play and dance along to which will really help them learn times tables in a fun and active way. 

The following website is useful for children to get used to the format of the Multiplication Tables Check.

English

In English we will spend the year looking at a variety of books and carrying out a wide range of reading and writing activities based around them.  We will also be developing our reading and writing skills through a range of both short films and longer chapter books.  Spelling is a big focus this year, so we will be looking at mnemonics, tricks and tips to help us improve our knowledge of how words are written. Children will have the opportunity to enter Spelling Shed competitions to support this. Furthermore, we will be improving our reading skills to work on our comprehension of texts on a variety of topics. 

Reading

In Lions class, we love to read, with a cosy reading corner to enjoy quiet reading every day. Each child has a reading bookmark in school which we stamp every time they read at home. There are 6 bookmarks to complete and the children can collect a prize when they have finished each level (32 reads). We encourage any type of reading, including newspapers, magazines, even leaflets and recipes – it all helps! 

P.E

P.E is on Monday, though it is useful to keep P.E kits in school from Monday-Friday as the children regularly participate in additional PE and sports workshops.

Homework

The most important thing children can do at home is to keep up with their reading. Please remember to log any reading on your child's digital record (Boom Reader) so we can keep track and update the children's bookmarks in school. In addition, children should be practising their times tables, using either Times Tables Rockstars, singing along to multiplication songs or trying out one of the fun dances on the BBC Supermovers site.  Finally, we will publish weekly spellings on Tapestry for children to practise at home. Although we do not test children on these spellings, we do encourage them to have fun with them, looking for patterns, investigating rhymes and mnemonics for the ones they find tricky. Children can also log into Spelling Shed to play games and complete assignments linked to their spelling words for the week.

A summary of our year so far

In English, we have enjoyed investigating rhyming couplets and performing poems from Dirty Beasts and Revolting Rhymes. We have also enjoyed reading The Great Kapok Tree and writing our own rainforest stories. To complement our volcanoes topic, we enjoyed reading the brilliant Pebble in my Pocket which tells the story of a pebble, from its origins in a fiery volcano 480 million years ago to a busy, modern landscape.

In Maths, we are becoming more confident working with larger numbers and developing our mental arithmetic skills. We have been learning formal written methods for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and using these to solve word problems. We have also learnt how to round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1,000.

In History, we have enjoyed learning about the Romans and had a fabulous school trip to Kent Life for an immersive Roman Day. As a class, we used teamwork to make aqueducts, build Roman roads, found out about life as a Roman slave and also life as a Celt. 

In Geography, we learnt about volcanoes including finding out how the Earth is constructed, why and where we get volcanoes and also investigating earthquakes and making our own earthquake proof buildings. 

In P.E, we have been developing our tennis skills, practising our forehand and backhand techniques and getting to play on proper tennis courts. We also enjoyed a skipping workshop and really persevered to improve our skipping skills. 

Thank you for your support.

Miss Simmonds and Mrs Redshaw