• English
• Maths help
• Homework

Welcome to the Summer Term– Year 4 – 2024

I hope you have all had a restful Easter break and enjoyed spending a little more time with family and friends. I can’t quite believe we’re in the final term already! As we venture into a hopefully warmer and sunnier term ahead, we are looking forwards to lots of exciting learning opportunities, including swimming and our new topics: ‘Crime and Punishment’ and ‘The Americas’. Before beginning our new History unit though, we will complete our learning based on the Ancient Egyptians, which will lead beautifully into our trip to Liverpool World Museum on Wednesday 1st May (details to follow.)

Religion

Following our reflection upon the events of Holy Week before Easter, we now begin our learning about the origins of the Catholic Church in our unit Early Christians. Within this unit, we will look at: the events which occurred after Jesus’s resurrection, his ascension to Heaven, Pentecost and the work of the Apostles. We will be concluding this unit with a reflection on how we can each be true followers of Jesus. Our final unit in Year 4 is The Church. Within this unit, we will be learning about how the Church is a family and the mission of the Church; the Sacraments, the Liturgical year, the Communion of Saints and finally we will be deepening our understanding of Mary, our Mother.

History and Geography

During the latter part of the term, our new History topic is Crime and Punishment. This is such an interesting topic that I’m sure the children are all really going to enjoy! In this unit, the children will explore how and why Crime and Punishment has changed over time. This will support them in developing an understanding of change and development over a long period of time. They will utilise a variety of sources of evidence to develop their knowledge and understanding of the different time periods. During the first half term, we will focus on our Geography unit, ‘The Americas’. In this unit the children, inspired by Johnny Cash singing ‘I’ve been everywhere’, travel the North and South American continents, and distinguish between the terms ‘continent’, ‘region’, ‘country’, ‘state’ and ‘city’ along the journey. Finding and using images and maps on the internet and in atlases, children will make notes on cities and record their countries and/or states. They will compare the built environments and settings of the cities and, through them, identify some key regions of the American continents. For the Big Finish, children use the song ‘Route 66’ as the stimulus for creating an illustrated, labelled and annotated map of the historic route.

English

We will be using a non-fiction book to inspire our learning this term, ‘The Story of Tutankhamun’ by Patricia Cleveland-Peck. Children will begin by exploring the history of Tutankhamun and writing reports about Ancient Egypt before going on to find out about Howard Carter and exploring the stories and legends about the curse of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The sequence of learning finishes with children writing a biography of Howard Carter.  This term whilst reading this book, we will be continuing our focus on the VIPERS areas of comprehension, developing vocabulary, inference, prediction, explaining, retrieval and summarising skills. We will delve into the book ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes, which I’m certain will be a hit!

Reading at home

To continue to support your child with their reading at home, please listen to them read aloud and ask questions which require a balance of the skills listed above. We cannot overstate the importance of reading frequently at home – the impact of reading permeates through the whole curriculum! Please see below for some recommended reads which relate to our Crime and Punishment topic this term:

• Street Child by Berlie Doherty
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Holes by Louis Sachar
• The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell
• Gangster School by Kate Wiseman
• Millions the not so great train robbery by Frank Cotrell Boyce
• The Secret Diary of Kitty Cask by Philip Ardagh
• The Adventures of Robin Hood by Marcia Williams

Maths

In maths, we will be improving our knowledge and skills across a range of areas including decimals, money, time and geometry. Following the Power Maths scheme, problem-solving and reasoning skills also underpin each unit. In June, children in Year 4 will be completing a mandatory times tables test. The expectation is for them to know all the times tables facts up to their 12x tables and to answer each question within a 6 second window. There will be 25 questions altogether and the test will be completed on a computer. TTRockstars is an excellent practise for this test as it gets children used to the format of questioning. If you would like any ideas for resources that provide extra times tables practise at home, please get in touch.

Science

In science, we will be beginning a new unit on Animals including humans where the children will be learning all about teeth, the digestive system (including a fun experiment involving a pair of tights!) and food chains. Our final science unit this year will be living things and habitats. Within this unit, we will be enjoying lots of time outside exploring our local habitats and the living things that can be found there.

Music

In music, we will spend the first half term working towards creating advertising jingles using the interrelated dimensions of music. Our last music unit of the year focusses on the creation of emotion raps which I’m certain will be a big hit with this current class! Some pupils will also take part in a weekly brass lessons led by our visiting music teacher Mr John Harrop.

PE

Children will continue their weekly PE lesson with John on a Tuesday and will also take part in a compulsory swimming lesson every Thursday. If any parents are available to help with our swimming lessons on a Thursday, please do get in touch 😊

Homework and spellings

Homework and spellings will continue to be set on a Tuesday. The Year 4 Home Learning page will keep you informed of the homework task for each week. We will continue to learn a maximum of 15 spellings each week, to be tested on a Monday. Some children will continue to learn a shorter list.

If you require any extra support with homework or guidance on additional ways to help your child at home, please do get in touch via email: skeating@stgabriels.cheshire.sch.uk