Year Four Class Page
Teacher: Mr Barnes
Teaching Assistants: Mrs Gerbrands
PPA Teacher: Mrs Liber (Tuesday afternoon)
Welcome to Year Four
Mr Barnes teaches Year 4. He has worked at the Rosary School for 2 years and is extremely passionate about teaching and inspiring his pupils.
Our School Day
To find out details of how the Y4 pupils spend their time, please take a look at the timeline of our school day. Important times to note are arrival time (8.40am) and registration (8.50am). It is important the children are at school and settled in time for the day to begin.
Curriculum Support
The English national curriculum means children in different schools (at primary and secondary level) study the same subjects to similar standards - it's split into key stages with tests. If you would like to know more about each individual subject please visit our Curriculum Page. Each term our class topic will link in to the curriculum in a way that brings the subjects to life for the children.
Autumn Term Topic
Our Autumn topic is called 'Rapid Rivers.' The children will be exploring the key question 'What are rivers and how are they used?' We will Identify water stores and processes in the water cycle and begin to describe the three courses of a river. By the end of the unit children should be able to to make suggestions on how a river environment could be improved.
PE
Our PE day is on Thursday. The children will need to wear the Rosary PE kit to school on this day. We also take part in 'Fitness Fridays' with the rest of the school so the children will also need to wear PE kit every Friday. Please click here to find out PE kit requirements.
Forest School
We are very lucky to be able to offer regular Forest School sessions to all our classes at the Rosary School. Our grounds are perfect to help the children connect and engage with the outdoors, and learn through active and exciting tasks and challenges such as den building, making a fire or tools, and identifying insects and birds. Y4 Forest School sessions are every three weeks on a Friday morning. Children will need to wear Forest School kit to school on these days, details of which can be found along with the session timetable, as links from the Forest School page.
Reading & Book Change
The children are encouraged to read the books they choose at school regularly. We now have completely new reading books which is very exciting! Please read with them at least 4 times a week and record your comments in their yellow reading record. When they are familiar with the book they should change it for a new one. Our book change days are Monday and Thursday. The children will also participate in whole class guided reading taking place 3x a week. Our library day is Thursday, when the children can choose any book to take home and enjoy. They will be able to change these weekly.
English & SPaG
This term the children will be focusing on the book The Mermaid of Zennor by Charles Causley in which children begin by exploring the story and language of the book before making predictions and creating some letters to characters in the story. They then go on to create guides to Zennor, retelling the story from the mermaid’s perspective and finishing by creating their own merfolk characters to include in a legend-style story that could be set in Cornwall or elsewhere.
Below you will find the optional SPAG mats your children can do to help with developing their spelling, punctuation and grammar skills.
Read, Write Inc. Spelling lessons will carry on Monday mornings and Rainbow Spellings will be tested every Friday (apart from forest school mornings when the test will be done on the Thursday). Please find below the spellings for this half term.
Rainbow & Read Write Inc Spellings
Our Rainbow Spellings in each year group focus on 'tricky words' that are commonly misspelled or do not follow regular rules. These words are re-visited two years in a row and are tested regularly. In Y4 we continue to practise Read Write Inc Spellings which focus on the rules of spelling.
Maths
This term the children will be focusing on place value specifically representing numbers up to 4 digits. Please see our maths overview below for more information.
Rainbow Maths
There is a National Curriculum requirement for children to know their times tables up to 12 x12 by the end of Year 4, at which point they take an online test. To support this objective, children from Y2 onwards take part in regular Rainbow Maths tests. Each new academic year they start on 'Red' and work their way up through Orange, Yellow and so on. The document below shows what is required for each colour.
The Multiplication Tables Check will be administered in the three-week period starting June 2024.
Our Class Saint
Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu , honoured in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. Mother Teresa said she received her "inspiration" to carry out what she described as the work of God, devoting herself to helping people who lived in the slums of Kolkata. On 17 August 1948, she stepped out for the first time in her white and blue sari, for which she is now so well known. Her charitable efforts have been widely celebrated and recognised all over the planet. Mother Teresa has won a string of awards for her charity work - the most notable being the Nobel Peace Prize which she was given in 1979. Mother Teresa died on 5 September 1997 at the age of 87, and was given a state funeral in India. She is remembered as an incredibly selfless person who wanted to help those less fortunate than herself. In 2016 Pope Francis recognised her as a saint. Mother Teresa had a huge heart for the poor and the ill. She had a beautiful mind and heart and many touching quotes are attributed to her including some of these wonderful sentences below:
"If you want to change the world, go home and love your family."
"Do not wait for leaders. Do it alone... person to person."
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."
Additional Curriculum Resources
For further resources to support your child across all subjects, please visit our Curriculum page which features links to many useful sites.