WELCOME TO YEAR 4 INFORMATION EVENING!

1. WELCOME TO YEAR 4 INFORMATION EVENING! Wednesday 18th September 2013

2. YEAR 4 TEAM • Mrs Jo Rose • Ms Jules Brown • Mrs Jackie Millier • Mrs Michaela Porter • Miss Ania Obarska

3. OVERVIEW OF TOPICS • Term 1 and 2 The Terrible Tudors! • Term 3 and 4 The Ancient Egyptians! • Term 5 and 6 Africa!

4. WEEKLY TIMETABLE • PE Times – Indoor on Wednesday , outdoor on Friday. • Swimming will start in January. • Cooking sessions throughout the year will be on a Wednesday with Mrs Porter, a one off payment of £5 for ingredients has been requested. • Forest school will be on a Wednesday afternoon with Miss Obarska. • We have already started trumpet lessons every Monday! These last for 13 weeks.

5. YEAR 4 EXPECTATIONS We have high expectations of the children becoming independent learners who take ownership and responsibility for their learning; • I can choose the appropriate resources for the task. • I know how to present my work. • I know what to do when I am stuck or finished. • I know what I am expected to do. • I can use the time given to me effectively. • -Achievement folders.

6. MORNING ROUTINE • Classroom doors will be open from 8.45 for the children to come into class. This will ease congestion in the cloakrooms. • If you do need to speak to us about an issue please try to leave it until after school as first thing in the morning is very busy!

7. READING & SPELLING • Changing books – children will have the opportunity to change their reading books during the school day. We will encourage the children to be responsible for remembering to change their own book. • Reading everyday – in order for children to make their best progress across the curriculum in year 4 they will benefit from reading frequently at home. We encourage you to hear them as often as possible and write in their message book. We will hear every child read individually and in a group once a week. • Spellings – children will have weekly personalised spellings, linked to our support for spelling programme or key words as appropriate, to learn. As homework they will be asked to learn their spellings and write them into a sentence. They will also have spelling tasks to complete during school. We will formally test them each week.

8. LITERACY • Literacy – we will be looking at a range of genres during the year working with the children to improve sentence structure and independent writing. • The first week focussed on handwriting skills, presentation and punctuation. • Over the next few weeks we will focus on fiction – stories with an historical setting. • Handwriting –Nelson handwriting scheme which the children will have regular opportunities to practise and see modelled. By the end of Year 4 it is expected that all children will be writing in pen.

9. NUMERACY Numeracy – the year 4 curriculum has a big focus on mental maths skills and informal written methods. To support this we are continuing a whole school initiative to raise standards and confidence in mental maths skills. Your children will have a mental maths test every week on a Friday. Any reinforcement of these facts at home would be beneficial for your child. The first few weeks will focus on writing and ordering numbers, place value and mental strategies for adding and subtracting.

10. HOMEWORK Homework – your child will usually have 2 pieces of homework each week, Spellings and one other piece, which may be Numeracy or Literacy . Occasionally homework may be more topic based. It will be given out on a Friday to be returned the following Wednesday. We would like the children to complete their homework neatly and in pencil or black pen.

11. WOW EVENTS! • Tudor Banquet. • Tudor house and voyage on a replica Tudor ship. • Christmas. • A visit from Howard Carter! • Trip to the zoo. Plus others in the pipeline…..watch this space!

12. Any questions?? q