Here you can find information about what we are learning about and general information about your class.
PE Days
Our PE days are Tuesday and Thursday. Children are to come into school in appropriate PE kit (White T-shirt OR White Polo Shirt, Plain Blue Shorts, Trainers / Winter options: Long sleeved blue sweatshirt and blue jogging pants). It would be helpful if children’s uniform is clearly labelled with their name, to avoid any loss or mixing up of items.
Reading
Reading books can be changed once the children have completed their book. To develop fluency, it would be great if you could read with your children as often as you can, ideally 10 minutes every night. If you could sign your child’s reading record after each read and make sure they bring this and their reading book into school each day, we can then celebrate extra reading in class. We follow a book-band system, which is designed to ensure that children take home a book they can read with some level of ease, whilst also maintaining a level of challenge, in order to develop their decoding, prosody and comprehension skills. Therefore, you may find that your child can read their book quite easily, which is what we aim for. Children may also have the opportunity to take an additional book home to support ‘reading for pleasure’. These books may take longer than a week to read, but we ask that they are returned once they have been read, so that they can be changed.
Homework and spellings
Children in Year 4 will receive a piece of homework every Friday. This is usually based around topics we are covering within our Maths and English curriculum. We ask that homework is returned to school for the following Wednesday, to give us an opportunity to review and assess this before the next piece is given out.
Every Friday, children will receive a list of spellings to learn for the following Friday, when they will complete a short spelling test. The spellings given come either from the Year 3/4 statutory spelling list or are based around spelling ‘rules’, which will support them with their spelling, reading and writing more generally. Children can receive house points for achieving good scores in their weekly spelling test.
In Year 4 the children complete a formal multiplication test in the Summer. This will be done online and the children can use either an I -pad or chrome book to complete it. In order to prepare them for this, an extra TTRS practise would be extremely beneficial.
Each half term at St. Mary’s, children are set a creative homework challenge in which they have the opportunity to use their creativity to create something that represents their learning of a certain topic. The children also have the opportunity to view and share their projects with their classmates when they are displayed at the end of the half term. Information regarding when creative homework is due in will be sent to you directly each half term.
What are we learning about?