Welcome to Great Links Tor.
A warm welcome to all our Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 families.
In Great Links Tor, we aim to make our learning enjoyable, whilst providing the necessary challenge to ensure all children make excellent progress. We have high expectations for all children and provide them with the platform to become successful, lifelong learners through our learning dispositions.
Please ensure that you regularly check our class page on Class Dojo to see what learning is taking place.
English
This term, we are reading 'The Lost Thing' by Shaun Tan, which tells the humorous and poignant story about a boy who discovers a bizarre, lost creature while collecting bottle-tops at the beach.
We will be exploring writing through diary entries, formal letters, non-chronological reports, advertsand official paperwork before writing our own fantasy narratives as an independent piece of writing.
Guided Reading
This term, we are reading 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' by C.S. Lewis.
This is an amazing fantasy tale about four children who were evacuated to the country during the Blitz only to find themselves on a magical adventure as they discover a different world through the wardrobe.
During this unit, the children will be learning skills in retrieval, summarising as well as making predictions and inferences. The children will also focus on the meaning of words in context and consider the imact that the author's use of language has on the reader.
Maths
In Maths this half term, we will be deepening our understanding of Place Value and the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). We will be applying known facts, strategies and methods that we have previously learned as well as learning some new ones. We will then establish which methods are most efficient for the calculations we are carrying out.
As always, a good understanding and quick recall of all of the multiplication facts up to 12x12 is essential in enabling your child to focus on learning the skills involved with Maths at this level, so please can you encourage your child to regularly practise their times tables.
Year 4 Multiplications Tables Check
The multiplication tables check (MTC) is statutory for all year 4 students in England. It takes place annually in June, and helps to determine whether students can recall their times tables (up to 12x12) fluently. The National Curriculum outlines that children should know all of these times tables by the end of Year 4.
We will be spending some time in school learning the Year 4-specific times tables (6x, 7x, 9x, 11x and 12x) as well as revising the tables we learned in Year 3 (3x, 4x, and 8x) and those from Year 2 (2x, 5x and 10x).
On top of this, it will be essential for your child to continue practising these at home. As the multiplication check is a timed assessment, Times Table Rockstars is a great platform to practise for this.This can also be done using mini quizzes while eating breakfast or on the way to school (or even through the use of songs on YouTube).
Your children will need to be accessing TTRS each week as part of their home learning and research shows that they learn and retain these facts when they practise little and often - 10 minutes a day supports learning better that two 30-minute sessions per week.
Science
Our Science focus this half-term is Sound.
Religion and World Views
Our RW unit this half-term will be focusing on the religion of Christianity.
Within our studies, we will recap what the children have learned in previous year groups about this faith and then trying to answer the question:
‘What kind of king is Jesus?’
Within the unit we will be considering how we can make the world a better place. The children will think about what the world is like now and how it might compare to the Kingdom of Heaven.
We will explore some parables that Jesus shared with his followers and consider what they teach about God's Kingdom. The children will also investigate and discuss what the world is like today and suggest what Jesus would think about this, thinking about what Christians do to try to recreate Heaven on Earth.
Finally, the children will consider what we can do to make the world more like God's Kingdom before finally reconsidering the unit question and explaining what kind of king they think Jesus is.
Home Learning
Each week, your children are expected to access Times Table Rockstars for their home learning. This should be around ten minutes each day as learning is more successful when practising little and often rather than once or twice a week in larger time slots.
Your children also need to ensure that they are reading regularly at home. The children then need to complete quizzes in school based on the books that they have read.
End of Year Expectations
The files below state the end-of-year expectations for your children’s year group as stated in the National Curriculum. These are the targets that we will be working towards with your children in class throughout the year.
Please feel free to look at the expectations for each year group as these will show you what the children should have learned previously and what they will be working on as they continue their journey through school. Please note that if your child has any gaps in their learning from previous expectations, we will be working in school to support them in these areas.
Anything you can do at home to support them with these targets would be greatly appreciated. For example, it is essential that your children are able to quickly recall number bonds to 10, 20 and 100 as well as knowing all the complements to 100 (combinations of 2 numbers which add to make 100 e.g. 37 + 63, 55 + 45 etc). Support with times tables is also important. A quick recall of all of these facts will be essential to enable them to focus on learning different strategies and written methods in maths.
If you have any queries regarding the content of the booklets, or want support in knowing how best to help your child, please don’t hesitate to message via Class Dojo.