Welcome to the King-Smith class page!

Welcome to the King-Smith class page! We are a wonderful bunch of Year 4 children. Here you will find important information about our class.

Mr Flaherty is the class teacher. Mr Ford will teach our class on Tuesday Afternoon for PE and Mrs Elson will teach our class on Thursday afternoons. We are also very fortunate to have Mrs Maguire supporting us during the week.

Curriculum Overview – Autumn Term

In English this half-term, our class text will be ‘Fox' by Margaret Wild. We will be starting this unit in our first week and we will use the characters and settings to inform our writing.

In Maths we will be developing our understanding of Place Value and applying our knowledge to a range of problems. We will also be continuing to develop our addition and subtraction skills using four digit numbers.

Our Science unit is ‘Animals including Humans - Nutrition, Skeletons and Muscles ' The children will be learning about how nutrition affects the human body and what choices we can make to stay healthy.

Our History topic this term  is ‘Changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age’ The children will be learning about how life changed for people in Britain between these periods and also make links to our locality and the rich history of the Sandstone Ridge.

Our Geography topic this term will be "Who lives in Antarctica?" In this inquiry, the children will be studying the geographic features of Antarctica as well as learning more about the people and cultures that have called the Antarctic home.

We will also have a weekly French lesson where the children will be developing their vocabulary and develop their conversation skills.

As part of our Music curriculum, we will be having weekly Ukulele lessons on a Thursday afternoon. Ukuleles will be provided by school and further information will be sent out to parents in the coming weeks. 

Reading

Listening to your child read aloud at home is really beneficial, so your support is greatly appreciated. Reading aloud on a regular basis supports both your child’s reading fluency and expression. We encourage children to read a range of genres, but also to read texts which they find interesting. Your child will also have the opportunity to bring Big Cat books home, which include both fiction and non-fiction, as well as poetry. Please record any reading your child does at home on the BoomReader app. When your child finishes their book, they will complete a quiz on it in school on Accelerated Reader. This will assess their understanding of the text.

To further support your child's comprehension skills, please ask a range of questions. These can be found on your child’s bookmark. Bookmarks should be kept with your child’s reading books.

PE

PE is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.  The children are to come in their PE kit. Please ensure that all PE kit is clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Long hair should be tied back for lessons. Jewellery should not be worn in school. This is especially important for PE.

Water bottles, snack and school bags

Children are permitted to bring water bottles into school.  Please ensure that bottles are taken home on a daily basis for washing and are clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Children are encouraged to bring a healthy snack in to eat during their morning break. As we have children with nut allergies in school, please ensure that snacks from home are nut free. 

Children need to bring in their black school bags, reading book and green diary each day. 

Homework

Homework this term will focus on the three core areas of: reading, times tables practice and spellings.

• Spellings: An overview of the spellings for the year will be sent home. Please practise these each week with your child. You may also wish to look ahead at future spellings to support them further. The spellings patterns follow those we are learning in school.
• Reading: Children are expected to read a minimum of five times at home. Please record these reads on Boomreader - thank you for your support with this.
• Times Tables: TT Rock Stars allows your child to test their times table ability against the clock in studio mode or practise following this week’s teacher set activity. The teacher set activity will set a different combination of times tables to focus on building your child's confidence and ability in time for the Times Tables test at the end of the year.  You can log in via https://ttrockstars.com/ or by downloading the app. Login details will be sent home, but please contact me if you need these again.

Should your child have any questions/queries regarding their homework tasks, please encourage them to ask a member of staff so that additional help and support can be given.

Contact

Please feel free to contact me via my school e-mail: tflaherty@tarvinprimary.school

Alternatively, you can contact me via the school office or at the end of the day (01829 740399).

Kind regards,

Mr Flaherty