Year 3 & 4 Class information page 2024 - 2025

Mrs Hughes

Mr Fuller

Mrs Hooper

Mr Dixon

Welcome to Year 3 and 4

The teachers in Year 3 and 4 are: Mr Fuller, Mr Dixon, Mrs Hooper and Mrs Hughes.

Welcome to the Spring term, we are looking forward to a term of fun and learning (and hopefully some warmer weather)

Our topic for the Spring term is 'The Stone Age'

This is a history topic where we will learn about what life was like in the Stone Age.

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Here are some useful websites that you could use if you would like to find out more...

Prehistoric - KS2 History - BBC Bitesize

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The Stone Age | TheSchoolRun

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Stone Age - Kids | Britannica Kids | Homework Help

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Our Literacy lessons for this half term will be based on a book called 'Big Blue Whale' by Nicola Davies.

Blurb:

The blue whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived on Earth. Curious young minds will love reading this sensuous exploration of what a blue whale feels, sounds and smells like, and learning facts about a whale's size, life-span, diet, babies and more.

Throughout these lessons we will be learning how to:

- Use adverbs to express time, place and cause E.g. First the whale opens its vast mouth

- Use a range of sentence structures e.g. Whales are magnificent creatures! Do you know what whales eat?

- Use a wider variety of conjunctions to join clauses (when, before, after, while, so, because) e.g. A whale does not need teeth for biting because its food is so tiny!

- Use headings and sub- headings to aid presentation

- Choose nouns or pronouns appropriately for clarity and cohesion E.g. these huge sea creatures, these magnificent mammals.

- Indicate possession by using the possessive apostrophe with plural nouns e.g. The whales’ fin or the seals’ fish.

In Maths, we will be focusing on:

Year 3: Fractions and mass and capacity.

Year 4: Length and perimeter, fractions and decimals.

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'Once you learn to read, you will be forever free'

Reading is at the heart of the our curriculum, we want every child to discover the joy of reading for pleasure.

We expect every child to read at home at least 4 times per week, this does not have to be a school reading book it can be anything that your child enjoys reading.

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We also want to promote a love of reading by encouraging parents to read to their children. Cosy up and enjoy a book together!

Click here to see our book recommendations: Book recommendations in Mrs Hughes & Mrs Hooper's Class (padlet.com)

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In our class reading sessions, we will be focusing on our comprension skills by reading a variety of texts including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

During our reading lessons we will continue to develop our VIPERS skills. Remember that VIPERS stands for vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summarising.

In Science lessons, we will be learning about 'Plants- How do they grow?'

We will be:

Identifying and describing the functions of different parts of flowering plants: roots, stem/trunk, leaves and flowers.
Exploring the requirements of plants for life and growth (air, light, water, nutrients from soil, and room to grow) and how they vary from plant to plant.
Investigating the way in which water is transported within plants.
Exploring the part that flowers play in the life cycle of flowering plants, including pollination, seed formation and seed dispersal.

Homework will be given out on a Thursday and is expected to be handed in on the following Wednesday.

There will be a piece of maths homework and a spelling task.

There will also be learning log task based on our topic to complete every half term.

In addition to this, we expect children to complete tasks on Times table rockstars and also read at least 4x per week.

Spellings

Children are expected to be able to read and spell common exception words, there is a set for years 3&4. The list is attached at the bottom of this page.

Each week the children will have a spelling test, this will be on a Thursday morning. They will be tested on the spellings that are sent home.

In PE this half-term, we will be taking part in Fitness and circuits on a Tuesday and Diamond Cricket on a Wednesday.

The children should come to school at the beginning of the week with their PE kit in a small, drawstring bag, which is to be kept in school until Friday when we will send them home for washing. In Key Stage 2, it is an expectation that the children get themselves ready for PE.

Children will usually wear their white shorts and navy PE t-shirt for PE but, while the cooler weather is approaching, they can instead wear tracksuit bottoms or leggings with their PE t-shirt and school sweatshirt or cardigan if they wish to. It is a good idea to have both options in the PE bag - please make sure that you show your children the different items that are in there or even get them to pack it with you!

Please ensure all items are labelled with your child's name.

Coats/bags

Your child will need a coat in school at all times as we will be doing as much as we can outside.

No bags, apart from lunch bags, book bags and PE bags, are needed in school.

Please make sure that all items of clothing, including PE kits, shoes, and coats, have the children's names on the labels. The children may be able to identify their belongings at home, but it is surprising how difficult they find it when they haven't worn something for a while and it looks so similar to everyone else’s!