Welcome to Class 4

Dear parent/Carers

Welcome back to the final half term of the school year. This is always a very busy time in the academic calendar with lots of learning and events taking place. Our year 6 children in particular will be doing a variety of activities to prepare them for their next big adventure; moving onto high school. This is also a chance for our year 5 children to get ready to take on the responsibility of being the oldest children in school. Keep an eye on the newsletters to keep up to date with all the events that are happening. 
 
In Topic – This half term we will be studying a history unit with the overarching substantive concept of migration. In order to put this into context we will be studying Irish history looking at the events that led to the migration of many Irish citizens. 
 
In Science  The children will consolidate and extend their knowledge of forces by naming individual forces (e.g. gravity, friction, up thrust). They will extend their knowledge of frictional forces (air resistance and
water resistance) and plan fair test investigations . They will learn how forces can be helpful and unhelpful in various scenarios and identify the forces involved in each scenario. They will learn what a mechanism is and how pulleys, levers and gears are used to allow a smaller force to have a greater effect.

Maths. The children will be continuing with our maths scheme looking at shape, position and direction, statistics  and converting units of measure.

In English:  We will begin out new unit based on ‘The Paperbag Prince’ by Colin Thompson with the aim of writing a persuasive leaflet to give information about waste management (selecting an appropriate audience). We will be focussing on a number of grammar features such as: modal verbs to indicate degrees of possibility, building cohesion within a paragraph, using brackets, dashes or commas to indicate parenthesis and enhance meaning through selecting appropriate vocabulary. 

In R.E: We will be exploring in more depth Pentecost then moving on to 

In ART/DT:  The children will learn how to Draw depth and emotion

In Music: The children will be exploring African music. 
 
In ICT:  Children will learn how to make quizzes and games. 

In PSHE:  The children will be completing the Bounce forward -Lancashire 6 week program
The project is based around the resilience framework which was developed by a working group called Boing Boing (Resilience Framework for Children and Young People - Boingboing). This was in response to the rise in popularity of the term 'resilience,' and their work explored the tangible ways in which we can increase our resilience. The Bounce Forward sessions are based around this framework.

Spanish:  The children will consolidate their previous knowledge of numbers and will learn to understand and read up to four-digit numbers. 
 
P.E will now be on THURSDAYS. This half term we are looking at the skills in kwik cricket and Athletics. 
 
Homework- The children will need to complete a weekly maths consolidation sheet. I will also be re-introducing weekly spellings to practise at home. We will be learning these in class but to give your child the best possibility to understand the spelling patterns and rules I will be sending home spellings on a Friday and will be (by request of the children) testing these on the following Friday. 

Reading- I am asking that reading be part of your child’s home learning as it is very important, it not only develops a love of reading but also develops imagination which is essential for story writing. Please wherever possible encourage your child to read at home and bring their reading and library books back into school when they are ready to change them.  We are wanting to inspire a love of reading if your child is not enjoying their school book and prefers to read a book of their own please just make a note in the reading book journal so that the children can be rewarded for reading for pleasure. Year 5 and 6 children should be reading at least three times a week for approximately 10 minutes. 
 
Personal Belongings
Please make sure that all belongings are clearly labelled with your child's full name as we are getting a number of items left daily that are unclaimed or are taken home by other children in error.  Many thanks for your help with this.
If you need any help or information please email parents@smrc.lancs.sch.uk or call school on 01254 812543
Thank you for your continued support,

Mrs Taylor and the Class 4 teaching team. 

The Class 4 Team
Mrs K Taylor– Class Teacher
Miss Thornber- HLTA

Miss Seed -HLTA

Miss Halstead - Class 1 teacher.

'Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart' - Colossians 3:23-24