Our Lady of Grace Junior School

Love, Opportunity, Growth

Dear Parents & Carers,

Welcome to Year 4! The class teachers, Miss McCambridge and Miss Jones, encourage children to display a growth mindset when facing new challenges and to try their very best in all areas of school. Mrs Ashley and Mrs Lay will continue to assist in supporting the children in all areas of their learning while Mrs Kevane will teach French, Music and Computing. Year 4 is an exciting and challenging year and we are very enthusiastic about the term ahead. It may be useful to familiarise yourself with some information regarding routine, expectations and home learning.

Reading

Reading is a very important part of your child’s development and is a key indicator of success later in life. In Year 4 the expectations are very high and all children should be reading every day for at least 20 minutes at home. It is important that children develop their comprehension skills as well as their ability to decode words and read fluently. Therefore it is important to ask your child questions about their reading to confirm their understanding of a text. Your child should be completing detailed entries in their reading record nightly to reflect what they have read and understood that day.

Key Facts

It is very important that children develop a quick recall of their key mathematical facts in order to carry out a range of calculations quickly and accurately. All children in Year 4 should be able to fluently recall their multiplication facts (1-12) and the related division facts with speed. Please ensure these are practised regularly. This will help them prepare for the National Multiplication Tables Check in June 2024.

Homework

The children will be set homework three times a week and this is designed to support and develop their learning in school. It essential that all homework is completed to a high standard and is handed in on time.

Spellings homework: Spellings will now be uploaded onto Microsoft teams every Monday and will be due on Friday. There are tasks for children to work on to help them prepare for the weekly spellings test on Fridays.

Maths homework:  This is set on Monday and is due on Wednesday. Children will complete an online MyMaths activity based on the Maths topic. 

English homework: This is set on Wednesday and is due on Friday. This is to be completed on Microsoft Teams.  

Weekend homework: This is set on Friday and is due in on Monday. Weekend homework usually consists of a Religion activity or a research task related to the children's Topic, Science or wider learning.

PE

Please ensure your child wears their PE kit  in school every Monday and Friday including trainers.

After School Clubs

Monday - Choir

Tuesday - Drama

Wednesday - Computing 

Thursday - Arts and Crafts and Sports and Fitness - Please ensure children have a pair of trainers. 

We look forward to the year ahead,

Miss McCambridge and Miss Jones

Year 4 Computing

This term we are studying digital media.  We understand that media is used to communicate.  Posters, newspapers, videos, adverts all communicate a message to the reader.  We are using skills in cropping, zooming, rotating and colouring to edit photos for a purpose.  We intend to create photos to support our Geography learning.  While we have not visited America, our editing skills will enable us to use a photo for the purpose of pretending.  Additionally, we are learning a very important online safety message ie photos may not tell the correct story.  Today we used editing tools to remove the background of our own photos.  We replace the background with our chosen background.  Here are some results.  We've been everywhere!

Ici on Parle Français!

This Autumn we are determined to build on our excellent learning of year 3.  We have a very solid base of phonic and core language learning.  We are beginning to understand the skills a linguist uses to learn.  In fact, we are learning to learn a language by using listening, repetition, questions, answers and lots of language games.  This term we focus on using numbers in our learning.  We have made an excellent start.  On y va!