Year 4 Newsletter 2023

Writing

The books we will be reading to inspire our writing this half term are:

• The Iron Man and The Iron Woman by Ted Hughes

Character Description

Using Ted Hughes’ description of the Iron Man as our starting point, we will be discussing the techniques that authors use to bring a character to life with words. We will then be creating our own ‘giant’ and writing a character description.

Grammar and Punctuation features will include expanded noun phrases, similes and powerful verbs.

Instructions

We will be reading a wide range of instructional texts that we may come across in our lives and identifying the common language and structural features that they share. We will then be writing our own instructions of “How to build an Iron Woman model.”

Grammar and Punctuation features will include layout devices, imperative verbs, time connectives and useful adverbs.

Reading

In guided reading this half term, we will be reading a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. Some examples include “Roman Britain”, “Can I Build Another Me?” and “Russian Doll”.

The reading skills covered will be retrieval, word meaning, inference and summarising.

• Place Value – We will be recognising the place value of each digit in a 4-digit number and read roman numerals to 100. We will be ordering, comparing and rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000.

• Addition and subtraction – We will learn to add and subtract numbers with up to 4 digit numbers. We will use inverse operations to check answers and solve addition and subtraction two- step problems in contexts by deciding which operations and method needs to be used and explaining why.

• Time – We will be converting between analogue and digital time as well as learning how to read and convert the 24-hour clock.

Electricity – We will identify the main components of a simple series circuit, as well as constructing our own. We will be investigating what makes good electrical conductors and insulators. We will also learn about precautions for working safely with electricity.

• . What is the ‘Trinity’ and why is it important for

Christians? – We will be learning that Christians believe God is Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God in three parts or three in one.

• Healthy lifestyle – We will be looking at how sleep contributes towards a healthy lifestyle and what routines is needed to support a good quality sleep. Also, what a good healthy diet looks like and what risks can occur if we do not have a healthy lifestyle including obesity and tooth decay.

Painting and mixed media: Light and dark

Children will be developing skills in colour mixing, focussing on using tints and shades to create a 3D effect. Thy will also Experiment with composition and apply painting techniques to a personal still life piece.

• Connecting networks – We will explore how a network can share messages with another network to form the internet as well as identifying some of the network devices involved and how to keep in and out of a network in order to be safe.

We will be learning about how settlements near the River Nile developed into ancient civilisation that would last thousands of years. We will also be developing our skills as historians as we find out the answer to these enquiry questions:

• How do we know about the Ancient Egyptians?
• What are the Ancient Egyptians remembered for?
• Who ruled the Ancient Egyptians?
• Who did the Ancient Egyptians worship?

• Swimming – We will be attending swimming lessons at Manchester Aquatics Centre. The swimming teachers will teach the children water safety and aim to ensure that children can swim with confidence and proficiently over a distance of at a least 25 metres.
• Dance – We will be devising group compositions based around our Ancient Egypt topic