Welcome to Year 4!
My name is Mrs Kenyon and I am the class teacher for Year 4. I will be a familiar face to most of you having worked at Longtown Primary School for four years. I am also the subject leader for Science and Modern Languages at school. Before moving to Cumbria, I lived and worked in Blackburn with Darwen in a diverse primary school with pupils from many different countries. In my spare time, I love exploring the beautiful Lake District with my family, reading and travelling, especially to my favourite country, Spain!
Autumn Term
We have a busy and fun-packed term ahead filled with lots of exciting learning. To begin the year we will be reading the story “The Proudest Blue” and learning about the experiences of a range of children from other cultures as they start their new school year.
Our first topic will be the Egyptians where we will become archaeologists, looking for clues about the past using primary evidence, learning about the process of mummification (by mummifying fruit and fish), finding out about the course of the River Nile and the settlements along its banks and even creating our own Egyptian death masks. In our Science work, we will be learning about the balance of Nature and the impact of humans on our environment linking this to our learning about Egypt. Through our English work, we will write our own fairy tales set in Ancient Egypt after reading the traditional tale Egyptian Cinderella and write non-chronological reports to help us create a class information book about the Ancient Egyptians. In Maths across the term, we will be securing our knowledge of place value, learning number facts and practising times tables ready for our test in summer term.
We will also be taking a journey deep into the Amazon Rainforest, following in the footsteps of Elizabethan explorer, Sir Walter Raleigh, learning about the rainforest canopy and the species that live in this exciting (and threatened) environment. We will become persuasive writers in English by creating posters to share information about the dangers of deforestation and learning to perform poems.
Spring Term
In English, we are learning about the famous Anglo-Saxon warrior Beowulf who slayed a mythical beast called Grendel who terrorised Castle Heorot in Denmark. We will identify the features of a legend story, practise the skills we need to write our own such as direct speech, expanded noun phrases and powerful vocabulary before writing our own legend story . In the second half of the term, we will learn about Instruction writing and Limerick poetry taking inspiration from our topic of the Anglo-Saxons.
In Maths, we are learning written methods to multiply and divide increasingly large numbers applying this knowledge to real life problems to help with our understanding. As the term progresses, we will be learning how to find the area of regular and compound shapes before beginning our work on fractions.
In our topic learning we will be learning about the Anglo-Saxons and Scots, finding out how they are connected to Cumbria and the legacy they have left behind.
In Science, we are learning about Eating and Digestion, in particular the components of the digestive system and how our body needs this system to remain healthy.
Dates for the Diary
PE Days- Monday with Mrs Beaumont and Thursday with Mrs Rayson.
Please keep looking at our Class Dojo page for details of visitors, trips and activities as the term progresses.
How to help your child at home
This year we are continuing to read for pleasure via our class readers and our home readers. Please encourage your child to read for 10 minutes each evening at home and have their diary signed. Although you may not need to help your child to read the text, it is still important to sit with them while reading and discuss what they have read.
This year, all Year 4 children nationally will sit the online times tables check; more details about the content and format of the test will be released shortly. All children have access to Times Tables Rockstars at home and in school and should be accessing this as often as possible through the week.
Your child also has access to Spelling Shed, an online resource that we use in school to support the teaching of spelling. Encourage your child to access the website to practise their spelling and earn points to (hopefully) become the class spelling champion!