Year 4 2024 - 2025

Hello and a warm welcome to Year 4!

Welcome to Year 4. The teacher in Year 4 is Miss Connolly and our TA is the wonderful Miss Nestor. In Year 4 we love to learn, are very enthusiastic and enjoy celebrating all of our achievements and success (both inside and outside of school!). 

Routines of the day

The children in Year 4 come into school each day between 8.45 and 8.55 and complete Arithmetic during this time to develop their mathematical fluency and understanding of concepts. On a Monday, Wednesday and a Friday, we then go to assembly. On a Tuesday and a Thursday, we complete a longer, taught Arithmetic lesson before our daily Maths lesson.

Playtime is at 10.20 - 10.35. Children can bring a healthy snack to eat or toast can be paid for half termly on Parent Pay. The children can also have milk if they wish which is payable through Cool Milk. The children have access to water throughout the day. We have cups in our classroom for them to fill up or they can bring in their own water bottles from home which they can have on their desks. Please make sure that water bottles contain water and not juice.

The end of our school day is at 3.25pm where children will be brought out onto the playground to meet parents/families who are collecting them. If they are attending FUNDA or an after school club, they will go to where the club is being held. 

Bags for school should be a school book bag and NOT rucksacks please as these are a health and safety hazard in our cloakrooms.

Please make sure that your child is weather ready every day and brings a coat as we all know that the weather in Britannia can vary from one day to the next! We do try to get the children outside as much as possible at breaktimes and lunchtimes. If it is cold, please send hats, scarves, gloves etc too.

Curriculum - Spring 2

For more information on what we will be learning about in Year 4 in Spring 2, please see our newsletter on this page under 'files to download'. 

PE

PE this half term returns back to our original days of Tuesday and Thursday. In the rare event that PE is cancelled or moved to another day, I will send a message and email via School Spider so please make sure that you have access to the app and have notifications switched on.

PE kit is a Britannia green top or plain white t shirt, joggers, leggings or shorts (grey/black/school green) and trainers. Please make sure that your child only wears trainers on PE days. 

Music

Year 4 are thoroughly enjoying their keyboard lessons! Their keyboard performance will be on the afternoon of Thursday the 3rd April. 

Homework

Homework will be given on a Friday and due in the following Friday. I will send a message every week with information about this. Homework will usually be a consolidation Maths or SPAG/Reading task. Year 4 also need to be practising their times tables daily, little and often for around 10 minutes, as well as reading regularly too. As discussed in my Year 4 welcome meeting, I will send spellings home for the children to be practising, particularly the homophones (see list below) that we will be practising, however, these will not be tested as we will be continuously revisiting and practising them in class. We will be recapping the /ee/ and /g/ sounds from last half term before moving onto looking at the /ai/ sound.

Spring Term

/ai/ coded /a_e/

separate, hake, blaze, whale, trade, stale, frame, mane, plate, bake, chase, accommodate, appreciate, communicate, exaggerate, persuade

/ai/ coded /a/ 

favourite, famous, occasion, strange, potatoes, acorn, alien, danger, angel, fatal, basic, able, volcano, ancient, explanation, pronunciation

/ai/ coded /ai/

snail, claim, strain, paid, aim, faint, faithful, brain, painful, sustain, fingernail, gain, available

/ai/ coded /ay/

play, delay, play, tray, day, clay, pray

/ai/ coded /ey/

grey, survey

/ai/ coded /eigh/

weight, eight, eighth, freight, sleigh, neighbour

/ai/ coded /ei/

vein, veil, feign, reign, reindeer, beige

Homophones:

sale/sail

pane/pain

mane/main

male/mail

stake/steak

grate/great

Autumn Term Recap

/ee/ coded /ea/

breath, breathe, meat, peace, steam, dream, please, deal

/ee/ coded /ee/

meet, bleed, heel, steel, teeth, queen, cheese

/ee/ coded /ie/

believe, piece, chief, thief, belief, relief, niece

/ee/ coded /ei/

receive, deceive, ceiling, perceive, protein, receipt

/ee/ coded /e/

recent, secret, equal, become, relax, region

/ee/ coded /e_e/

extreme, complete, these, scene, theme, delete, Chinese

Homophones that we will be practising are as follows:
meet/meat
week/weak
steel/steal
been/bean
piece/peace

We have also been looking at the difference between breathe and breath. 

/g/ coded /g/

glove, magazine, gain, greedy, magnitude, regard, forgot, organise, target, gross, ground, category, recognise, group

/g/ coded /gu/

guilty, guitar, guise, guess, guarantee, guillotine, guide, guard

/g/ coded /gue/

tongue, league, plague, rogue, fatigue, colleague, pishogue, synagogue, catalogue

/g/ coded /gh/

ghastly, ghoul, ghost, gherkin, ghetto

Homophones

groan/grown

Contact

If you need to contact me, my email address is [email protected]. Please be mindful that it may take between 5-7 working days to get a response. I am also usually on the playground after school. Our classroom is part of the KS2 yard so you can also knock on the window if you need me in a morning! If it is urgent, you can also contact the office who will let me know. 

Useful Websites

Times Tables Rockstars https://ttrockstars.com/

Other Maths games - times tables, doubling/halving etc https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables

Useful Information

Please find a copy of our Autumn/Spring newsletters and our Y4 welcome meeting parent presentation in files to download (below).