We hope that you had a lovely Easter break. Welcome to the summer term where we look forward to the continuing partnerships between home and school.
Attendance
As you may be aware, we closely monitor the attendance of pupils at our school as there is clear evidence which shows the correlation between attainment and attendance and pupil well-being.
We believe working with families is very important, therefore when a child’s attendance falls below 94% we intervene quickly to work with parents to identify any barriers to regular school attendance and identify how we can support further.
Reading
Our goal is to create confident, fluent, independent readers. We prioritise reading at Latchmere School and have very carefully chosen the texts your child will study this term. We focus on word reading to develop fluency and encourage the whole class to join in through strategies such as choral reading (the whole class read together) and echo reading (the teacher models the reading and the class echo back). We also have the Latchmere Reading skills. These are based on comprehension skills such as retrieval, inference, summarising, making links, prediction and vocabulary.
In Year 4, we will be studying Poems Aloud by Joseph Coehlo, The Firework Maker’s Daughter by Philip Pullman and The Pebble in my Pocket by Meredith Hooper.
Maths
Our curriculum is based on the White Rose Maths programme. This research-based initiative ensures that the skills and concepts children taught are fully embedded before moving on. The children are taught strategies such as bar modelling and have plenty of opportunities to use ‘manipulatives’ such as place value counters and dienes all the way through the school.
This term we will be focusing on measurement and geometry. Our topics will be: decimals, money, time, statistics, property of shape, position and direction.
Children should also use the TimesTables Rockstars program to increase their quick recall of multiplication and related division facts.
Multiplication Check
In early June, your children will be taking part in the statutory multiplication check. This to ensure your children can fluently, accurately and quickly recall their multiplication tables up to 12. We encourage children to practice for the multiplication check by using the soundcheck feature on Timestables Rockstars as frequently as possible. More information about the check will be shared with you closer to the time.Curriculum Highlights
This term, we will be learning about ‘The Tudors’ in history. We will be focusing on how The Tudor monarchs and how their dynasty affected Britain today. We will then move onto looking at ‘‘Volcanoes and Earthquakes’ in summer 2. In science, we are learning about ‘Teeth and the Digestive System’. We will be learning about the different names of the teeth and their roles and then how the digestive system works. In PE, children will be taking part in dance, cricket, rounders and athletics.
You can find out more information about the spring term learning by looking at the overviews and programmes of study on the website.
Thank you in advance for all of your support in the year ahead,
Kind regards,
The Year 4 Team
KIeran Maguire, Claire Grima, Daisy Cook and Jagoda Skawinska