Year 4

Welcome to Year 4

Autumn 2 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back after the half-term, I do hope you and your families had an enjoyable and relaxing time together!  We started the year with a successful and enjoyable first half-term, and I am looking forward to carrying on our success for the next eight weeks before our Christmas break. 

In Year 4, we will continue to adhere to our school values of Respect, Good Manners, Patience, Perseverance and Honesty. We will understand the school rules of 'Be Safe, Be Kind and Be the best you can be!'  We will continue with our 'Brookhouse Dojo' rewards scheme to acknowledge positive attitudes and behaviours that are consistent with our values.  Homework will be collected in on a Wednesday to be marked and returned by Friday.  There will also be online tasks to complete on Purple Mash, SPAG.com, Reading Plus and Times Tables Rockstars. 

Our topic for this half term is 'The Great Plague'.

English

The first unit of this half term will be Fairy Tales. We will start by reading three different openings to the same fairy tale; involving children in identifying new words and phrases. We will clarify new words and phrases; clarify and discuss new vocabulary encountered to aid understanding of the text. Extend with use of dictionaries and thesauruses to improve our creative and figurative language. We will be able to identify a point and back up our thinking with evidence from a text. We will be able to infer character thoughts, feelings and speech. Finally we will write an innovated narrative. We will then focus on classic narrative poetry. We will listen to, read and discuss a classic narrative poem. We will then identify, discuss and collect effective words and phrases which capture the reader's interest and imagination. We will explain the meaning of key vocabulary within the context of the text. We will demonstrate active reading strategies e.g. generating questions, finding answers, constructing images. We will learn a poem by heart and rehearse for performance. 

Reading is a priority of ours at Brookhouse, therefore Whole Class Reading sessions take place everyday, where children are expected to read a range of texts and answer questions by summarising, retrieving, making inferences and explaining.  We also have a specific focus on vocabulary, which will be sent home to learn before the lesson.  In school, we will continue to use the online reading resource called 'Reading Plus' and encourage children to complete lessons at home.  It is imperative for you to support your child with reading; please use the question stems to ask your children questions to check for understanding.  Also, ensure your child is learning their spellings for ten minutes daily. 

Mathematics

In Maths, our aim is to improve Maths fluency, reasoning and problem solving.  We do this through concrete, pictorial and abstract models.  In Autumn 2, we will be focusing on how to multiply and divide by 6, 7, 9, 11 and 12. We will begin to understand mathematical vocabulary such as 'quotient' in relation to division. They will learn how to calculate multiplication equations using the multiplication facts that they know. We will start to understand the difference between sharing and grouping and will understand the commutative law in multiplication.  

Please encourage your child to practice their timetables through the year - up to 12x tables- as they are required to complete the official Multiplication Tables Check next year in the summer term.  During the Multiplication check, children will have 25 questions to answer with only 6 seconds per question.  In order to aid them with this, your child can use Times Tables Rockstars, UR Brainy MTC and the maths area on Purple Mash, all website links can be located on the Website Star. Please familiarise yourself with the multiplication tables, check parent guidance in the useful documents section above. 

Science

As part of our physics topics we will be learning about sound and audio. We will identify how sounds are made, associating some of them with something vibrating. We will recognise that vibrations from sounds travel through a medium to the ear. We will find patterns between the pitch of a sound and features of the object that produced it. We will explore patters between the volume of a sound and the strength of the vibrations that produced it. We will learn to recognise that sounds get fainter as the distance from the sound source increases. We will record the findings of investigations, using simple scientific language, including oral and written explanations, displays or presentations of our conclusions. We will be able to name metals that are conductors and materials that are insulators. They will use scientific evidence to answer questions or support their findings.  Please encourage your child to learn their knowledge organiser which will assist them with their weekly quizzes.

Art

In Art we will be learning about the artist Jean Basquait, when and where did he live, the artistic medium he favoured and what he liked to paint and draw. We will develop our skills in drawing recognisable facial features to scale and use at least 3 different media effectively to create different effects. We will create a printing tile and sue this to create a rotating print of different colours, we will then evaluate our own work and the work of others. 

History

In Autumn 2, we will be learning and discovering the impact of The Great Plague on London during 1666. We will discover where and why the disease travelled through Europe and arrived in London  We will discover what life was like in London during this time and discuss conditions which may have leant to the spread of the disease. We will explore the plague itself - symptoms and prevention. We will thing about the effect on peoples' lives during this period and what how The Great Plague was dealt with.  We will explore  the methods of historical enquiry, how evidence is used to make historical claims nd how evidence is sourced to make detailed observations. We will uses sources to start devising valid historical questions about change, cause and significance during The Great Plague on our world today. 

Physical Education

P.E sessions will take place on a Monday afternoon, our unit is Invasion games focusing on basketball. We will develop our dribbling skills and focus on throwing and catching a bounce pass. We will throw and catch a chest pass with accuracy. Use simple tactics with the ball e.g. a range of pass, feints, feints to disguise  the pass, dribbling with the ball to beat a defender. 

Please ensure your child comes into school wearing their full P.E kit.  The kit should include a yellow P.E top with the school's logo matched with black shorts, joggers or leggings and black pumps or trainers.  Over the top, children will wear their school jumper or cardigan.  All jewellery must be removed, please ensure earrings are taken out before the session or covered with plasters.

PSHE

The unit for Autumn 2 is 'Healthy Lifestyle'. We will be exploring what positively and negatively affects our physical, mental and emotional health. We will then learn how to make informed choices (including recognising that choices can have positive, neutral and negative consequences) and to begin to understand the concept of a 'balanced lifestyle'. We will recognise opportunities and develop the skills to make their own choices about food, understanding what might influence their choices and the benefits of eating a healthy diet. How we can recognise how images in the media - and online- do not always reflect reality and can affect how people feel about themselves. 

Throughout the unit we will continue to discuss different emotions and feelings. We will discuss how we can have many feelings at once and how this may effect us. Explain the benefits of sharing our feelings and support we can offer to others. 

Oracy - Voice 21

As a school we are developing our oracy, learning through talk and learning to talk.  In class, we have created discussion guidelines to aid meaningful discussions.  We encourage children to fully participate by taking on a range of roles and utilising sentence stems to articulate their ideas.  We will provide opportunities for discussion in all areas of the curriculum.

If you have any queries, do not hesitate to discuss these with us at the end of the school day or arrange an appointment through the school office.

Thank you for your support.

All the best from the Year 4 team!

Miss Woodhouse (Class Teacher)

Mrs Sheikh (Special Support Assistant)

Mrs Momoniat (Teacher Assistant) 

Mrs Patel (Higher Level Teaching Assistant)