Year 4 - Ash Class

In Year 4 the children will cover a wide range of interesting science, history and geography topics. Each topic will give the children a chance to embed and expand upon their learning throughout school so far.

As they work their way through Year 4, the children will take increasing ownership over their learning. Children will be given more opportunities to challenge themselves in a safe space and feel more comfortable asking increasingly complex questions about the world around them. 

Through an engaging and challenging curriculum, the children will explore a variety of topics. History focuses on the Anglo Saxons and the Mayans and how Britain changed through these periods.  Children will also travel back in time to discover how life has changed for children from the Tudor times and Victorian era, comparing and contrasting the work children did and their leisure activities.  We also look at how Lord Shaftesbury changed the lives of children.  Geography learning allows children to discover why rainforests are important to us, investigating the different layers of the rainforest and how communities live in and use the Amazon's resources.  In Spring, we will look at where our food comes from. In Summer, we discover how rivers are used.

Personal, Social and Health Education (Jigsaw) is also an important aspect of the Year 4 Curriculum. Through a variety of engaging texts, children learn about different types of relationships and the nature of the consequences of bullying and how to deal with it – online and offline. In Jigsaw sessions, children also identify a variety of emotions and strategies to help them self-regulate negative behaviours. 

English in Year 4 follows the Talk for Writing approach, writing different genres of fiction together with creating a piece of persuasive writing, a balanced argument and instructions for a purpose.  At the heart of all our English work is a strong foundation in reading and we expose the children to a wide variety of interesting texts, including fiction, such as Varjak Paw by S F Said. Focussing specifically on developing children’s ability to analyse writers’ choices, the children will focus on the purpose and language of a text, as well as continuing to develop reading skills – such as inferring, predicting and summarising. Children will use a range of other quality texts to use as models to scaffold their writing and create engaging, well-structured, pieces of work. Using tiered vocabulary will help the children develop a stronger awareness and understanding of vocabulary. Additionally, being given the chance to vocalise their ideas through drama and debate will aid them in developing good rhetoric to further support their writing. The key grammar covered in Year 4 will include punctuation for speech, fronted adverbials and embedded clauses.

In Maths, to support the school’s practice of interleaving, the children will be taught in shorter blocks spread throughout the year.  Using the White Rose curriculum and expanding on and deepening their learning from Year 3, children will learn the place value of four-digit numbers – this will give them a solid foundation to help them compare, order, estimate and round numbers. Further learning will include decimal and fraction equivalents, identify a range of angle types and order these by size, understand the differences between discrete and continuous data and develop their problem-solving skills by independently deciding which methods to use. Reasoning and problem-solving feature throughout every Maths unit and children are encouraged to articulate their approaches to problems so that they can explore a variety of methods. Linking to our work on Character Education and having a growth mindset, children will be encouraged to embrace challenges and feel safe to make, and learn from, their mistakes and misconceptions. 

In Science, children continue to develop their investigative skills through a range of topics such as electricity and circuits, digestion, states of matter, classification of living things and sound. Particularly focussing on developing the children’s independence in Science, so that they can confidently generate their own lines of enquiry, making decisions about what they will investigate, how they will carry out these investigations and how best to record and present their findings. This enables children to expand their knowledge through an enquiry-based approach which means they find out most of the answers for themselves. Children also develop skills such as how to create informed predictions, understanding comparative and fair tests, identifying patterns in results, drawing conclusions from investigations and posing further questions to explore.  

Key Questions to drive learning and progress

• Where does our food come from?

• Just how important are our beliefs?

• How have children's lives changed?

Exciting events in Year Four

• A two night residential to Dukes Barn in the Peak District

• Anglo Saxon workshop in school

• Visit to the Leicester Botanical Gardens

Class Novels include:

• Llama Out Loud - Annabelle Sami

• The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - Kate DiCamillo

• Varjak Paw - SF Said

• Paws - Kate Foster

• Ariki and the Islands of Wonder - Nicola Davies

• Rumaysa - Radiya Hafiza