Welcome to the King-Smith class page!

Welcome to the King-Smith class page! We are a wonderful bunch of Year 4 children. Here you will find important information about our class.

Mr Flaherty is the class teacher. Mr Parsonage will take the children swimming each Wednesday and Mrs Elson will teach our class on Thursday afternoons. We are also very fortunate to have Mrs Maguire supporting us during the week.

Curriculum Overview – Summer Term

In English this half-term, our class texts will be "The Lost Happy Endings" by Carol Ann Duffy and  "Manfish" by Jennifer Berne . We will be starting these units in our first week back and we will use the characters and settings to inform our writing.

In Maths we will be continuing to work on the four operations in our fluency work as well as exploring fractions, shape and space and measure in our Maths lessons.

Our Science units are ‘Light, Reflection, Eye – Safety and Shadows' and ' Plants – Linking Structure to Function ' The children will be learning about how light travels and how shadows are formed as well as the key parts of plants and each role that these parts play in the life cycle of plants.

Our History enquiry this term is ‘How has transport changed over time?’ The children will be learning about how changes in transport altered life in the last 200 years.

Our Geography enquiry this term will be "What are rivers and how are they used?" In this inquiry, the children will be studying the land use in their local area as well as identifying different rivers and river uses. We will explore both local and national rivers to make comparisons between them.

We will also have a weekly French lesson where the children will be developing their vocabulary and develop their conversation skills.

As part of our Music curriculum, we will be having weekly Ukulele lessons on a Thursday afternoon. Children who have opted out of these sessions will follow the Charanga music scheme.

Reading

Listening to your child read aloud at home is really beneficial, so your support is greatly appreciated. Reading aloud on a regular basis supports both your child’s reading fluency and expression. We encourage children to read a range of genres, but also to read texts which they find interesting. Your child will also have the opportunity to bring Big Cat books home, which include both fiction and non-fiction, as well as poetry. Please record any reading your child does at home on the BoomReader app. When your child finishes their book, they will complete a quiz on it in school on Accelerated Reader. This will assess their understanding of the text. The children can also complete this quiz at home if preferred.

To further support your child's comprehension skills, please ask a range of questions. These can be found on your child’s bookmark. Bookmarks should be kept with your child’s reading books.

PE

PE sessions are currently Swimming in Year 4 and these will take place each Wednesday afternoon.  The children are to come in their PE kit. Please ensure that all PE kit is clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Long hair should be tied back for lessons. Jewellery should not be worn in school. This is especially important for PE.

Water bottles, snack and school bags

Children are permitted to bring water bottles into school.  Please ensure that bottles are taken home on a daily basis for washing and are clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Children are encouraged to bring a healthy snack in to eat during their morning break. As we have children with nut allergies in school, please ensure that snacks from home are nut free. 

Children need to bring in their black school bags, reading book and green diary each day. 

Homework

Homework this term will focus on the three core areas of: reading, times tables practice and spellings.

• Spellings: An overview of the spellings for the year will be sent home. Please practise these each week with your child. You may also wish to look ahead at future spellings to support them further. The spellings patterns follow those we are learning in school.
• Reading: Children are expected to read a minimum of five times at home. Please record these reads on Boomreader - thank you for your support with this.
• Times Tables: TT Rock Stars allows your child to test their times table ability against the clock in studio mode or practise following this week’s teacher set activity. The teacher set activity will set a different combination of times tables to focus on building your child's confidence and ability in time for the Times Tables test at the end of the year.  You can log in via https://ttrockstars.com/ or by downloading the app. Login details will be sent home, but please contact me if you need these again.

Should your child have any questions/queries regarding their homework tasks, please encourage them to ask a member of staff so that additional help and support can be given.

Contact

Please feel free to contact me via my school e-mail: tflaherty@tarvinprimary.school

Alternatively, you can contact me via the school office or at the end of the day (01829 740399).

Kind regards,

Mr Flaherty