Welcome to Year 4

Welcome back to school and welcome to Year 4!

We hope you have all had a good summer break and your children have enjoyed their first week in Year 4. We are looking forward to working in partnership with you over the coming year. This should be a very enjoyable and stimulating year as we have so many exciting learning experiences planned!

Staff

Willow Class
Teachers: Mrs D Rogers: Monday and Tuesday initially (phased return), Miss A Hamilton: Monday to Thursday
(until maternity leave) and Mr S Herrick: Friday.
Mrs P Ramaloo: 1:1 support
Mrs B Lacey (covering the class every Tuesday afternoon).

Oak Class
Teacher: Mr J Rushby: Monday to Friday.
Mrs A Baker (covering the class every Tuesday afternoon)

Communication

The children should now be used to walking around the outside of the building to the classroom from the gate
independently. Please ensure that they arrive at school promptly for the time the gate opens: 8:45. After
organising their belongings, the children enter the classroom and often begin the day by practising important
maths and literacy skills.

Home School communication books will be issued next week. As well as recording reading at home, please use
the book to communicate with us for any minor queries and to let us know of any changes to collection
arrangements (including play dates) or appointment times.

We can also be contacted via email:
joe.rushby@firslower.org 
deborah.rogers@firslower.org 
alanah.hamilton@firslower.org
sandra.herrick@firslower.org

If you wish to discuss anything with us, of course, at any point during the year, please don’t hesitate to get in
touch.

Reading Books

Reading Books
In Year 4, all the children are part of the Accelerated Reader Programme and can choose books matching their
correct ZPD directly from the shelves inside and outside the Year 4 classrooms. Their ZPD is calculated
according to their performance in the termly Star Tests. Whenever they complete a book, they will do a mini
quiz which tests their comprehension of that book.

Please hear your child read as often as you can (at least 3 times a week would be beneficial). Try to set aside
a few minutes most days; even if your child is a confident reader, they will still reap the benefits. (About 30
minutes a day is the recommendation in educational research). – we try to do 15 minutes at school and we
hope children can do 15 minutes at home.)

Reading aloud is a very different skill requiring the children to adopt a storyteller’s voice, and a lot can be gained from discussing events and characters, predicting what may happen, inferring information (reading between the lines), and discussing the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary and the effectiveness of exciting vocabulary. Please do not feel that you have to read a whole book in one sitting; little and often is usually best, with time to read the words and time to chat and comprehend what has been read.

The children will also be reading in school as part of their literacy lessons and during individual reading time, doing comprehension activities from extracts of books, and they will be heard individually once every half term by their class teacher to assess their progress. Please ensure that your child has his/her reading book and the new look reading log book in school every day. They should carry them in a small school bag, like The Firs rucksack to protect them from the elements; letters can also be carried in this way, but please do not put water bottles in the same space as they often leak.

In addition to this, all the children are able to choose a library book from school once a week which they
enjoy reading in their spare time; this book can be taken home but must be returned to the library on our
year group’s day.

Uniform and equipment

We would be grateful if you could ensure that all of your child’s uniform, coat, water bottle and school
equipment is named; this helps us to return lost property items back to their owners quickly. Please ensure
that children are dressed according to the school’s uniform policy and are ready to begin the day as smart
learners.

The children do not require their own pencil cases in school. The children do not need to bring any personal
items from home into school. Water bottles should be brought to school every day with fresh water inside.
Please also ensure that your child has a healthy snack for break time.

Phones and smart watches are not to be brought into school.

PE

• Willow Class will do PE on Tuesdays and Thursdays (We are remembering it like this: if it begins with a ‘T’
  we are doing PE!)
• Oak Class will do PE on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Your child should come to school in their green and black school PE kit on their PE days, still looking like a
smart learner for other lessons that day!

We are keen to encourage a positive attitude towards sports and exercise, so please ensure they are dressed appropriately for the weather with jumpers, fleeces and tracksuit bottoms (all green/black) as it grows colder, as we will be doing PE outside each week.

We prefer that children wear comfortable trainers. Please ensure that earrings are left at home and hair below shoulder length is tied up on those days. There may be external sports coaches coming in to teach the children at different times throughout the year.

Immediately after half term in the autumn, we will be going swimming at Flitwick Leisure Centre on Wednesday afternoons for 7 sessions (more details nearer the time).

Homework

We will be sending out learning logs next week for the children to use to record their homework. Tasks will be uploaded to Google Classroom soon, and spelling lists will also be found there once the children have been assessed. Completing homework is expected of the children and very important for the transition of the children to year 5, so thank you for your support with this.

Art/DT

During Art and DT sessions, the children will often engage in messy activities. Please ensure that your child has an old named art shirt that they can leave in school for these occasions. Please don’t buy anything - an old adult-sized shirt or t-shirt is ideal.

Spellings

We will be teaching the children spelling patterns and families as well as common exception words and then
providing different spellings for groups to practise, including overlearning spellings to help with long-term
memory and transfer into free writing. The children will have a spelling assessment this half term to establish
their confidence and accuracy. For now, please spend time practising common exception words from the
lists given at the end of year 3.

Each week use the Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check method to help the children to learn spellings; again, little
and often works best. Please also revisit those not mastered from previous weeks. Spelling tests will be
weekly and also termly to assess retention of spellings.

Maths

At the end of this year, the Year 4 children will be sitting a national online test assessing their ability to
recall their multiplication tables at speed (6 seconds per question including typing the answer!) Please
support your child to learn their tables by making regular use of Times Table Rockstars as well as any other
games, charts, quizzes, etc that will help at home.

At intervals, we will send home their ‘heat maps’ which show their progress. Each question is listed and coloured accordingly: the greener it is, the more confident they are with that answer; red questions are those to be practised most, grey means they haven’t met that question very often yet. Please use all aspects of the program - garage, studio, jammin’ and soundcheck.

In addition to this, please use everyday opportunities for practising maths eg. counting in many different
steps, using money, telling the time, looking at the properties of shapes, sharing into fractions, measuring
and reading charts and tables.

Practise number skills like 1, 10 and 100 more and less, doubling and halving, counting in tens starting from any number (eg. 73, 83, 93, 103, 113, 123) number bonds (eg. 4 + 6= 10, 12 + 8 = 20, 30 + 70 = 100, 42 + 58 = 100) and quick mental addition and subtraction.

End of Day Arrangements

During the course of this year, we will be writing to parents about allowing children to walk home without
an adult in the summer term (as this is a good preparation for middle school next September). However,
until that point, we still need collection arrangements to be the same as in previous years. If there are any
changes to this, including an older sibling taking on that responsibility, we would ask that you contact
the office, email us, or write in the reading record book as normal. Please ensure that any emails are
sent the day before, as we cannot guarantee that we will read an email in time during the busy school
day. Thank you.

Please ensure that you pick up your child from school, waiting outside at the correct door and adhere to
the one-way system to help everyone. Oak Class should be picked up from the hall door leading onto the
courtyard, and Willow Class should be picked up from the door leading onto the Year 4 corridor from
the courtyard.

The exit is then from the end of the Year 4 corridor onto the playground. Thank you for waiting outside
for your children and not coming into the corridor - this allows us to clearly see who is picking up and
keep all children safe. Thank you for not entering the Year 4 corridor from the exit door for the same
reason, even if picking up more than one child. We appreciate your help with this.

Parent Helpers

We welcome parent helpers to hear readers or support art and DT lessons. Please email the class teacher
if this is something you would be interested in doing. We will also be asking for helpers to accompany
children swimming and on trips later in the year.

Thank you in anticipation for your support
The Year 4 Team