The class teachers are Mrs Evans and Mr Venn. The teaching assistants based in Sea-Lions Class are Miss Trego and Mr Fuller.
What happens when?
- We have PE on Tuesday and Friday.
- Spelling is tested regularly, with lessons throughout the week to learn the spelling rule for the week and to apply the rule, usually in the form of a dictation.
Homework
(1) Children need to read daily to themselves, an adult or younger/older family member. Your homework book contains a set of tasks linked to your reading.
(2) Learn the spelling rule for the week and practise using some of the example words given. We learn a set of rules each week for spelling, rather than a set list. The rules that we are learning this term are in the document attached, along with the example words.
(3) Practice your times tables. At least three times a week, use one of the website links here. In the Summer at the end of Year 4, children across the country will take a Multiplication Check assessment that is almost identical to the one in the link.
Like the rest of the school, we started Term 1 immersing ourselves in a two week project of creativity, involving art, poetry and letter writing focused around plastic pollution in the oceans. We investigated habitats and ecosystems and how plastic gets into these systems and the affect that it has on the animals that live there. We thought about our own part in this situation and as a result, we wrote to Mrs Pocock, asking the school to consider how it could reduce the use of single use plastics. We also used mixed media to create pictures and wrote poems to highlight the issues that animals face in their natural habitat.
For the remainder of this term one, our science will be focusing on light, which we will explore by creating lighting for a puppet theatre.
Through most of this year, R.E. will focus on Christianity, starting with this terms module: The Family of Jesus. This sets the scene and context of the country and the expectations at the time. This follows on from their study last year on of Abraham and the Judaic tradition and in contrast to their study of Hinduism, both of which were studies last year.
History this term, will focus on the Roman Republic, from the first Kings of Rome, through battle of Carthage and Hannibal’s attack on Rome, to the final establishment of the Republic. Geography will study rivers, by following the path of the Rhine from its source to the Mediterranean sea, seeing how it changes on its journey and how it affects and is affected by the landscape through which it travels.
We would strongly encourage children regularly read out load to an adult on a daily basis so that they actually vocalize the words that they are reading. This enables both the reader and the listener to hear what is being read and allows any mistakes or mispronunciations to be corrected as they go, something that isn’t possible if they ‘read in their heads’.
In addition to simply decoding and reading the words on the page, children also need to be able to understand what they have read and be able to pull information from what they have read. Can they quickly pull facts and information from the text? Can recognise how someone is felling when it’s not explicitly stated? Can they have an opinion and justify it, from what they have read? All of these skills are necessary for effective reading comprehension and they are something that we continually work on in school and are skills you can easily help develop from home, by simply asking questions
Below you will find two resources from VIPERS: a series of questions grouped under the 6 VIPERS headings, that you could ask your child during or after reading. In addition, you’ll find a handy VIPERS bookmark, that you could print off and keep in their book.
