Year 4 Term 3 newsletter

Welcome to Term 3! It was lovely to see you at the end of our Roman day for the museum exhibit and hope that you have had a relaxing Christmas break.

Topic

This term we will begin our Chocolate topic, with the aim to produce some chocolate products to sell next term! We will be investigating what people like about chocolate as well as researching packaging, advertising, recipes and more. We will create prototypes and eventually create a unique recipe for chocolate, yum! If you have any expertise in this area, we would love to have you in to do a talk with the children!

Spanish cultural day

We will be having our annual Spanish cultural day again soon, on Friday 17th January, where each class will learn about a different Spanish speaking country. Year 4 will be finding out about Argentina. We will be learning about how Spanish came to be spoken in those countries as well as finding out all about their culture. With sensitivity to the current Latino movement and thoughts of cultural appropriation in mind, this year we will not be asking the children to dress up.  We aim to ensure we are not reinforcing stereotyping, and will explore this in an age-appropriate way. We would love to hear from any of you who have links with any Spanish speaking countries, you are welcome to speak to the children or even just to send in a story or photos!  

PE

This term both Cypress and Acacia will continue to have PE on Tuesday afternoons with Mr O, our Sports Coach. Please can you ensure your child brings in an outdoor PE kit for these sessions, including sensible footwear and that these items are clearly named.

How you can help at home: Reading, Spellings and Times tables are a priority

• Reading Logs

There continues to be an expectation that your child is reading daily, both independently and reading out loud. Comprehension style questions for you to ask alongside their reading are available on the school website. As well as their level books, children are able to access the school library where they have a selection of chapter books to choose from. Reading journals are still ongoing, with an aim to encourage reading and reading of a range of different genres. We are still in desperate need of parent volunteers to hear children read! If you have availability, we would really appreciate it.

• Home learning/Spellings- both available on the school website.

Home learning is given out on a Thursday, expected back on the following Tuesday. Spelling challenges will be given weekly, and these spellings will be sent home so your child can practise.

• Times tables

Weekly times tables challenges will be given a priority over the next few months and we would be grateful if you could continue to test your child on them regularly. Their personal times tables target will be sent home weekly or fortnightly. By the end of year 4, children are expected to have learnt all of their tables (10x, 2x, 5x, 3x, 4x, 8x, 6x, 7x, 9x, 11x and 12x).

If you would like to meet with us for an informal chat, we are available most days after school. Please leave a message at the school office so we can arrange a good time to meet. Please feel free to leave any morning messages with a member of staff who is out in the playground, who will be happy to pass them on to the relevant teachers. Alternatively, you can leave a message in the school office. If there are any changes to home time arrangements, then please let us know earlier in the day. Thank you for your cooperation.

Kind Regards,

The Year 4 team

For further details of our current curriculum focus, visit the Curriculum section of our website

Take a look at the pictures below to see what we've been doing in class recently.