Welcome to Year 4

The Year 4 team are fifty seven fantastic children and Miss Hinton, Mrs Allmark,  Mrs Smith, Mrs Robinson, Mr Benney, Mr Lucas and Miss Andrews.

SOCIAL ACTION PROJECT #RSA4

Ten Year 4 have been chosen as project leaders and have attended three training workshops to develop their leadership skills. 

At The University of Worcester the children worked with WE.org to decide on an issue to focus on in their project. Our group chose homelessness and started to plan how to make a difference through collecting items. 

Back in school they met with Miss Hinton to organise their plans into an order. The first thing they decided to do was email RedditchNightStop and The Homeless Foundation to ask them if collecting tinned food, blankets, toys and games would be useful. 

They also met with Mr Mottet to agree on whether they could put up posters around school and where they might have a collection point for donations. 

Later that week, they shared their project ideas so far with the rest of Year 4. The year group began to find out more about homelessness. They read reports and watched CBBC videos on the effect of homelessness on young people. They began to realise that it is more than the rough sleepers we see on the streets of Redditch. 

This activity from the charity Shelter resulted in lots and lots of talk about the things we want in a home and how these may be different to the things we need. 

We we also received an email from Sharon at RedditchNightStop who offered to come in to school to talk to us. She gave us leaflets and balloons for our collection area. She also talked to us about what Nightstop do. 

We we watched a video called “Would you take in a stranger?”  which explained to us how people become hosts and let young people sleep in their spare bedroom for a night or few so that they do not have to sleep on the streets. 

Every day for 2 weeks people added to our collection and we took it in turns to put the goods away safely. 

The whole community was so kind - they donated so many things. 

THANK YOU! 

We made presentation boards on

*the issue and aim of our project

*our research and actions

*the impact on us, our school and our community

*the next steps 

Then we used these boards to help us present our project to the other schools also taking social action. 

We received certificates from the RSA. 

Maths Curriculum

In Key Stage 2 we use the White Rose Hub Maths plans. We follow a concrete, pictorial and abstract approach to learning in maths.

Children should practice Times Tables regularly at home. They can use their login in to access TT Rockstars at home as well as at school. This year we have also subscribed to Doodlemaths which the children can access at home. 

Reading Curriculum

In Key Stage 2 children read a whole class text and develop their reading skills by discussing the text and working on retrieval, inference, deduction, viewpoint, vocabulary and author choice challenges. This year we are starting with "The Enemy" a book about peace by Davide Cali. 

We read non fiction texts as part of our Mantle work [for instance this autumn term we are reading at WWI using the dkfindout website] and every week we take delivery of the First News newspaper. News stories from this publication with comprehension questions are sent home for homework. Children may also borrow books from our library - every Wednesday 3pm - 3.30pm. 

All KS2 children choose a book from our library which they read during reading time. Additionally, there are regular story times where the teacher reads to the children. 

Some children need extra 1:1 reading practice and do this as part of our Reading Champions programme with Mrs Coldwell and Mrs Robinson. 

Mrs Coldwell also works with groups of children on Reciprocal Reading where children improve their comprehension skills. 

Writing Curriculum

We follow the Year 4 curriculum to learn the technical aspects of writing. We  use starting points such as "Once Upon A Picture". We use DADWAVERS [see The Literacy Shed] and Alan Peat's sentence types to support our narrative writing. Our writing is often linked to the work we do in Mantle; we write to entertain, inform and persuade as described by Michael Tidd on his website. 

We are constantly developing our vocabulary and handwriting by using the Vocabulary Ninja's ideas,  

https://vocabularyninja.wordpress.com/    Word Aware and the No Nonsense Spelling programme. 

Children can practice spelling at home by using the free Spellingframe website. 

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