Year 4 - Curriculum Newsletter

Helping your child at
home
Important information
Learning logs
PE
Learning Log activities are linked to our current
topics to ensure that children are continuing
their learning at home. It is important that they
are completed and brought in every Wednesday
to ensure that children can participate in our
weekly learning log gallery.
Our PE days are:
Blogging
We will continue to use our Blogging Website
which gives children the opportunity to write
about their learning to a world-wide audience.
Please visit the site and encourage members of
your family across the world to log on and see
what we have been learning.
www.westthorntonblogs.net
Edmodo
We will continue to use Edmodo as a managed
learning platform enabling the children to continue their learning at home. The children can participate in learning conversations with their peers
within a safe environment and respond to each
other.
We also use it as a tool to share upcoming
learning, in particular new methods that we will
be teaching in maths.
If your child is having any problems accessing
this, please let us know.
W E S T T H O R N TO N
P R I M A RY AC A D E M Y
Curriculum Newsletter
Spring Term
Monday and Tuesday
Just to remind you that it is very important that
children have the correct PE kit in school, consisting of a white t shirt, black or navy shorts and
plimsols or trainers. While it is colder, the children are allowed to bring in navy or black jogging bottoms and a navy or black jumper to
wear outside.
Reading
It is important that the children are reading at
home daily. This will help them to develop their
understanding and comprehension of a range of
texts. Please encourage your children to respond
to what they have read in their reading record.
These should be brought every Friday.
Year 4 Team
Year group leader/Class 4.1 Teacher
Mrs Woon
Class 4.2 Teacher
Miss Cooksey and Miss Silver
Class 4.3 Teacher
Miss Brownbridge
Support staff
Miss Heathcote
Mrs Fonseca
Mr Kenning
Year 4
Rosecourt Road
Croydon
CR0 3BS
Phone:
0208 684 3497
E-mail:
[email protected]
Website:
www.westthorntonacademy.org.uk
Dates for your diary
Spring Term
Happy New Year and welcome back to a new
term in year 4. We would like to thank you for all
of your support last term. Our soup sale was a
great success; the children collaborated to write a
letter to the homeless charity ‘Crisis’, which we
sent together with the money we raised.
Hopefully your children have told you all about
their learning experiences so far in year 4. We will
be holding an open day this term for parents to
come and see the Year 4 learning studio in action.
You will also have the opportunity to hear more
about the reasons behind our new approach to
teaching and learning. Invites will be sent out
shortly and we hope to see many of you there.
Our first topic will last the first half term and is
called ‘Is it important to be Green?’. This topic is
underpinned by the story ‘Running Wild’ by Michael Morpurgo.
During this topic we will look at he importance of
caring for our environment, both locally and globally. We will begin by learning about the rainforests and the functions that they serve. We will
research about the various animals that live in the
rainforest and consider how they are adapted to
live in their environment. A key focus will be
about how animals adapt to their environment
and this will be brought to ‘life’ with our trip to
London Zoo.
One of the elements of this topic will be to think
about the ways in which we look after the world
we live in. Children will think about the effects of
deforestation and pollution on our planet and
think about what they can do as citizens to help.
The children will continue to work on independent
tasks by responding to thought provoking questions
and presenting their learning to their peers. Children will also continue to work in focus groups with
a teacher where they will learn new skills or work
on developing existing skills.
After half term our topic will be ‘Is there a carnival
going on in our pond?’ The children will be able to
explore the wildlife that lives in a pond. They will
be learning about food chains and food webs and
life cycles of the creatures that live in and around
the pond.
Parents Evening
Thursday 26th March 2015
HALF TERM HOLIDAY
Monday 16th Feb – Friday 20th Feb 2015
School Opens
Monday 23rd February
Trip to London Zoo
A key focus for this topic will be music and children
will have the opportunity to experiment with tuned
and un-tuned percussion. They will learn about
rhythm, pitch and dynamics as they compose their
own musical score to represent the sounds of a
pond.
The main focus areas for maths this term will be
decimals, fractions, shape, coordinates and translation and data handling. Numeracy will run alongside all of our topics giving children the opportunities to apply their knowledge through focus based
tasks and investigations.
As usual if you have any questions or
problems please do not hesitate to contact us.
Thursday 15th January 2015
INSET Staff Training Day
Friday 13th February 2015
School CLOSED for children
End of term
Friday 27th March 2015
www.westthorntonacademy.org.uk
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