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 Follow us on Twitter! @WTPrimaryAcad