Raiders and Traders
Welcome to a very exciting autumn term in year 4.
The teaching team is led by Mrs Bradbury-Smith, supported by the talented Miss Edwardson and Miss Huxley. Mrs Martin will be teaching RE and PHSE on a Monday afternoon. Having taught the class on several occasions during the last academic year, I am looking forward to my new role as Year 4 teacher. If you have any queries, please feel free to chat on the playground or contact the office for an appointment.
We may be staying in the same huge classroom, but there are many changes to inspire and stimulate our learning journey together, which I hope to share on the school’s new Facebook page.
This term’s topic is Raiders and Traders, in which we will be studying the invasions by the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. There are plenty of opportunities for creative learning and challenging curriculum links.
To support our topic, we will be basing our learning around the Ancient Poem/legend of Beowulf and the fantasy novel of ‘How to train a dragon.’ We will be also using videos to stimulate our learning. These resources will inspire us to write using many different genres, including stories, poems, newspaper reports, diaries and explanation texts.
In Maths we will be basing our lessons on number, including place value and the four rules – addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. We will ensure that the children are able to apply these skills, ensuring levels of mastery in maths. Please can I take this opportunity to remind parents the importance of practicing basic number skills and times tables for Rainbow Maths; as well as drawing children’s attention to clocks around the home to help them learn to tell the time.
This term’s science includes:
Sound – where pupils’ will understand how sound is made and travels as well as exploring patterns in pitch and the volume of sound
Animals, including humans – students will learn about digestion, the digestive system, teeth, animal diets and food chains.
Our topic learning will be stimulated by a trip to Tatton Park to re-enact Anglo-Saxon and Viking village life. This will help us to develop the children’s understanding of British History; the Anglo Saxon and Viking lifestyles and also understanding why they left their homeland and what influenced where they settled. We will be learning about Viking raids, long boats, trading, and their home lives and beliefs, whilst also comparing Anglo Saxon and Viking Britain to Modern Britain. In art we will be creating Anglo-Saxon brooches and runes, as well as Mythological creature made from clay and painted dragon eyes. In Design and Technology we will design and make Anglo-Saxons pouches using textiles and Viking houses using wood.
Our first topic is ensuring pupils’ have a strong understanding of e-safety and then we will explore Scratch to support our topic work. Some of our work will also be presented by using Microsoft Word, Publisher and PowerPoint.
PE lessons will be on a Monday and Tuesday and full kit is expected every week. We will be practising our athletic skills; dodgeball; dance and tag rugby. Mr Darby will be supporting our learning after halfterm.
Madame Leydon will continue to teach French on a Wednesday and will be focusing on the alphabet, body parts and animals,
RE and PHSE
In PHSE Mrs Martin will be exploring different types of relationships and methods to overcome barriers to learning. The areas studied in RE are the important life events in Judaism and the Christian belief of the Trinity.