Welcome to Year 4

Summer Term 2023

Areas of study for Year 4*

 

Literacy

This term, our English will share many cross-curricular links to our history and geography topic, Anglo Saxons.  We will begin by looking at myths and legends, focusing on the tale of Beowulf, one of the oldest known pieces of literature in the English language. The children will explore the rich vocabulary used in the text and use it as inspiration to write their own mythical stories of heroes and villains. The pupils will also learn about Kennings and how they were used in Old English poetry. They will have the opportunity to create their own poems using Kennings. We will then go on to explore newspapers. The children will have the chance to look at examples of different types of newspaper, analyse the features found in newspaper articles and discuss what makes a good headline. They will go on to create their own newspaper front page.  The children will also look at advertising and create a tourist information style leaflet following our Year 4 trip to Ufton Court.  We will finish the year by letting the children’s minds run free with some creative writing!

Numeracy

This term children will continue to develop their knowledge on decimals. They will compare and order decimals, then they will move on to rounding numbers with one decimal place to the nearest whole number. Children use decimal notation for money. Once children are confident with this, they will move on to convert between different units of money. Children use their knowledge of £1 = 100p to compare amounts. Children use a number line and a part-whole model to subtract to find change. They will then move onto  solving simple problems with money, involving all four operations. Children will learn to tell the time on a 24-hour digital clock then they will move on to converting between analogue and digital times using a 24-hour clock. When working with statistics, children will record and interpret information on bar charts and solve problems using information presented in bar charts, pictograms and tables to interpret and present discrete data. They will read and interpret line graphs in the context of time and begin to create their own graphs to represent continuous data. They will convert between different measures and solve word problems. During our work on position and direction, children will describe the properties of quadrilaterals then highlight the similarities and differences between them. Children will develop their understanding of coordinates by plotting given points on a 2-D grid and describe the movement of shapes and points on a coordinate grid. During this term the children will continue practising their times tables and related division facts, with a focus on the speed of their recall.

Reading

During our Guided Reading sessions this term, we will be studying a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts, including Anglo-Saxon Boy by Tony Bradman, You Wouldn’t Want to be an Anglo-Saxon Peasant by Jaqueline Morely and A Girl Called Justice by Elly Griffiths. Through our English lessons, the pupils will also experience a wide variety of other styles of text, such as newspapers, poetry and explanation texts. The pupils will also be receiving reading comprehensions as part of their English homework.
This term, to encourage the children to read for pleasure at home, we will be inviting pupils to bring in photos of themselves reading in unusual places. They will have the opportunity to share their photo with their class and it will then be displayed in their classroom. 

MFL

During the first half term, we will be looking at the vocabulary required to be able to order food and drinks from a French café.  Pupils will practise asking for the bill and using pleasantries such as ‘s’il vous plait’, ‘merci’, ‘bonjour’ and ‘au revoir’ (please, thank you, hello and goodbye).  They will have the opportunity to role play ordering in a café, both as the server and the customer.
In the second half term, the children will be learning about sports in French. They will look at the history of the Olympic Games and learn the French words for a variety of different Olympic sports and explore some French grammar with the use of the verb ‘faire’.  Through this unit, they will also recap core vocabulary such as colours and numbers. 

PSHE/RSHE

This term, children will begin by focusing on their Growth Mindset. We will link this to our Habits of Mind focus - ‘Taking Responsible Risks’. Children will then focus on physical health and mental wellbeing, where they will consider ways in which they can maintain a healthy, balanced lifestyle. They will also explore the benefits of trying new things and taking themselves out of their comfort zone. Later on in the year, the children will be learning about growing and changing as they get older.

RE

In this term during RE, the children will be focussing on the question of why religious leaders and sacred texts are important to followers. In order to answer this question, they will begin by exploring the traits of a good leader using examples of leaders from history. The children will then consider if they have any important or special books, reflecting on why these are important to them.  We will develop this further as they learn about how Holy books are used in different religions and why it is important to the members of that religion. Finally, the children will then research the religious leaders of Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. By the end of this term we would expect the children to be able to describe and explain some similarities and differences between these three religions and how they use their Holy books.

PE

In PE, we will be focussing on increasing our reaction speeds during the first half term.  To help develop this, the children will be working on a number of activities using balls of varying sizes.  Each week, the activities will get progressively more challenging as pupils’ skill levels increase.  They will also be investigating the difference to their performance when using their dominant versus their non-dominant hand.
After half term, we will turn our attention to practising for the events which will be part of the Sports Day proceedings.  Pupils will get the opportunity to re-familiarise themselves with equipment they will be using during the events and hone their running, jumping and throwing skills.

Geography

For geography this term, the children will be focussing their studies on Settlement.  This will be cross-curricular with history as they find out how the towns and cities of the UK first developed. Children will learn about the needs and requirements of the early settlers and how this influenced their choice of where to settle. They will look at place names around the UK to see how the Anglo-Saxons, Romans and Vikings all left their mark. Through use of digital and paper maps, children will investigate land use in different sized settlements and the ways in which settlements are linked together. At the end of the unit, children will draw together all their learning about settlements to design their own new settlement!

History

In history this term, we will be studying the Anglo-Saxon era. The children will investigate and evaluate reasons why the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. Then they will research how the Anglo-Saxons lived based on evidence from archaeological digs and how they have influenced the Britain we know today.  We will be focussing on the discovery of the famous Anglo-Saxon long boat found at Sutton Hoo. Finally, using what we have discovered from Sutton Hoo and Tutankhamun (from the previous term), we will ask the children to think about and decide whether archaeologists are right to disturb ancient burial places in their quest for information about the past.

Science

Our first topic this half term is ‘Sound’. The children will identify how sounds are made and begin to understand the way in which sound travels and understand that sounds get fainter as they move away from an object. They will measure the volume of sound in decibels. Children will investigate links between the pitch of a sound and the features of the object that produced it. 
During the second half to the term, our topic will be ‘Living Things and their Habitats’.  Children will learn about the seven life processes. They will explore and use classification keys to help group, identify and name a variety of living things in the local environment. Children will recognise that environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things.

Music

In the first half term, the children will be continuing to develop their knowledge of rhythm pulse and pitch. This unit will focus on finding these features in the song ‘Blackbird’ by the Beatles, as well as using these features in their singing skills.
In the second half term, they will revisit some of the songs that they have worked previously in Year 4 and in previous years. Children will go on to learn about some composers and listen to classical music. Finally, they will have a go at composing and performing a piece of music.

Computing

In the first half of this term, the children will be designing and creating their own computer game using Scratch software.  Before starting on the computers, they will investigate different styles of games and draw up a plan of what their game will look like, how the character will move and what the aim of the game will be. They will then go on to explore the capabilities of the Scratch software and use it to create their characters and backdrop.  Next, the pupils will use coding for complex movement and debug, edit and enhance the script for their game. Finally, they will evaluate the effectiveness of their game.
During the second half of the term, we will be focussing on computational thinking.  Computational thinking allows us to take a complex problem, understand what the problem is and develop possible solutions. We will be using our previous experience of using Scratch to detect and debug errors in code.

 
Art, Design & Technology

In the first half term, the children will learn about the artist Andy Warhol and carefully look at his style of work. They will explore the use of different contrasting colours, plan and create their own piece of work based on Andy Warhol’s work.  Finally, they will evaluate their work.
During the second part of the summer term children will design and make a toy that has a cam mechanism. They will begin by investigate toys with moving cam mechanisms and look at ways of strengthening structures in a moving toy. Then children will design a toy and follow their design to create a toy with a cam mechanism.  When they have finished, children will evaluate their final work, looking at what worked well and how they could improve it if they were to make it again.

*If you require additional information relating to our school curriculum, please ask at the school office or the class teacher.