Year Four

4C Mr T Cunliffe – Teacher

Mrs Sandhu – Teaching Assistant

4BT Mrs Tighe – Teacher (Mon, Tues)

Mrs Buckley – Teacher (Wed, Thur, Fri)

Mrs Thackray – Teaching Assistant

Homework and Reading

Homework will be sent home every Friday. This could either be English or Maths based. Children will take home a reading book every week which they will choose themselves. All the books are colour banded and levelled or your child may be a free reader. Please take time to read with your child and fill out the jungle reading records. If you have any questions or would like support please feel free to come in and have a chat. So that we can organise the changing of books, could you please make sure book bags are in school every day.

Spellings

Children will be given new spellings on a Friday to be tested the following week. They will be given a look, cover, spell & check sheet to take home.

Autumn

We kick off Autumn term with the topic ‘Hot and Cold’! This brand new topic will open up the world to us as we explore the theme across all our subjects.

In geography we will compare and contrast a hot and cold country, focussing on the different physical features and lifestyles that people have developed to cope. Children will use atlases and ICT to research different biomes and they will explore life within the different lines of latitude and longitude.

In science we will explore different states of matter and the change from one state to another. This will involve a lot of ice and fire so they will need to prepare for some exciting experiments! In history we go back in time to Captain Scott’s adventures to the South Pole, finding the key moments and identifying what went so tragically wrong on the expedition. As you can imagine, we can’t wait to explore ‘hot and cold’ in art. There are so many different ideas and we will be printing and making our own writing charcoal to draw pictures with. It is going to be a fantastic term and we can’t wait for the children to come with their questions to lead our learning. Bring it on!

Spring

Our Spring topic is ‘The Romans.’ All our topic learning will be based around this theme. To kick things off we will be paying a visit to Leeds City Museum to take part in a workshop about the ‘Romanisation’ of Britain, we will look at ancient artefacts and find out about the Romans’ impact on our local area. In History children will find out about a day in the life of a Roman soldier and write diary entries from their point of view. In ICT they will research the most famous Roman; Julius Caesar and create a class biography about different aspects of his life. In Art we will explore mosaics and what they can tell us about the past and create our own in the style of the Romans to show what life is like in the 21^st century. As part of Design Technology we will be designing and making Roman catapults which will be linked to learning about weapons and defence. Children will consider what forces might be in action and how they can make their catapults fire the furthest.

Summer

In the summer term our focus will be the theme of ‘INVENTORS.’

In Art we will pay a visit to Salts Mill in Bradford to look at inventors through art. Children will

look at art of industrial revolution, artistic designs of new buildings, mills and steam trains. As well as this, children will create a sculpture out of old inventions, e.g. bits of cogs, bike bells. In DT the children will look at famous inventors linked to food – e.g. Earl of Sandwich/Founder of McDonalds.

They will be discussing how this has changed our society. To end the DT unit, children will visit the school kitchen – discussing what procedures they use to prepare and cook food safely.

History sees the children researching famous inventors eg Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Steve Jobs. They will learn what they invented and how. In Geography, year 4 will be using many skills to help them use atlases to locate certain places, use ordinance survey maps where some children will be able to create their own map symbols, focus on using clear, recognisable symbols and a limited colour palette. Finally, the compass points will be studied so children can follow and give directions.