Year 4 - Kestrel Class

Welcome to Kestrel Class

Class Teacher: Mr Dickens

Teaching Assistant: Miss Potts and Miss Neilson

Term 6

Reading

 

In a nutshell, The Last Bear is about what it says in the title – but so much more as well. We begin the story with April, a young girl who lives with her grieving scientist father and who has a special gift, inherited from her deceased mother, of communicating with animals. She is an outsider in the human world and sometimes is painfully aware of how different she is to others, particularly the girls in her school. So when her father is offered the opportunity to spend six months on Bear Island, a remote outcrop of land in the Arctic, she is excited by the prospect of the adventures and fun they could both have there.

However, once installed in the meteorologist’s house, April’s father closets himself away with the logbooks and science and April is left alone. She wanders the island alone and discovers a sad-looking, starving and solitary polar bear, stranded away from his home, with plastic knotted around his paw. Gradually, she gains the polar bear’s trust with peanut butter, oat biscuits and kindness, and the two become the best of friends. They explore the highest peaks and lowest points of the island together and Bear teaches April how to really listen to her surroundings. However, in the back of her mind is the knowledge that she will have to leave the island in September, and what will happen to her beloved Bear when he has no one there to care for him?

Within this text, we will be practising our retrieval skills and working further on our inference skills, finding the clues within the text to help us detect hidden facts.

Writing

Our first text is called, 'Arthur and the Golden Rope.' Arthur, a small boy fascinated by the magical tales of the town's wise woman, is out exploring one day when he's startled by a terrible howl. Too late, he watches as a huge wolf, Fenrir, puts out the village's great fire, meaning that the village faces being frozen solid in a week – unless a Viking god relights the fire.

Arthur decides to make the journey to the great hall and help Thor catch the wicked Fenrir. There, he is set the almost impossible task of sourcing magical elements to make a Golden Rope. In an exciting battle, it seems as if all is lost, until Arthur proves that even a small boy can be the most unlikely of heroes.

This story is written in the format of a Graphic Novel. With this in mind, we will be designing and creating our own graphic novels about myths that we create. 

Sticking with the mythical creatures, our second written text will be 'The Mermaid of Zennor'. 

According to Cornish legend, many years ago, a mysterious and beautiful woman began attending services at St. Senara's Church in Zennor. She had an enchanting voice and a hypnotising presence, and while the villagers were intrigued by her, no one knew who she was or where she came from. Despite her frequent visits, she never seemed to age.

One of the villagers, a young man named Mathew Trewhella, was particularly drawn to her. Mathew was known for his own beautiful singing voice, and the two were often seen together. Eventually, the woman invited Mathew to come with her to her home, and he accepted. The two were never seen again in the village.

Years later, sailors off the coast of Zennor claimed to see a mermaid with a long, golden tail sitting on a rock, singing a haunting melody. She called out to the sailors, warning them to steer clear of her underwater home, where she lived with Mathew Trewhella.

The villagers realised that the mysterious woman who had attended church was, in fact, a mermaid. To this day, the story is a significant part of Cornish folklore, and St. Senara's Church in Zennor still has a carving on one of its pews depicting a mermaid, said to be inspired by this very legend.

Our main aim for this topic is to create our own legend narrative. We will focus on using subordinate clauses and expanded noun phrases to add further detail. 

Maths

This term, Year 4 will be developing their understanding of decimals, money and time. We will be combining our knowledge of multiplication and division with these new topics to help us make more connections between the Maths we have learnt. We will be converting analogue into digital and then into 24-hour times. 

We will also be diving into the world of statistics. We will become data analysts and ask questions about data. We will collect our own qualitative data and answer some analysing questions based on what we gather. 

History

We are going to be answering the question: "How hard was it to invade and settle in Britain?" Throughout this topic, we will be studying the lives of the Anglo-Saxons and the Scots. We will learn about the Romans abandoning Britain, and the reasons behind this decision, but also learn about the subsequent invasions of Angles, Saxons and Jutes from across the North Sea. We will look at how this helped further shape Britain today and understand how this impacted upon Canterbury itself.

 Forest School ​​ ​​

Kestrel class does not have Forest School this half-term.  

PE

Our PE lessons will be on a Wednesday afternoons. This term, we will be learning cricket skills using the school field. Please send the children into school wearing their PE kits. Please ensure the PE kits are suitable for outdoor PE. Be extra careful with jewellery for PE lessons - If possible, earrings should be removed before the children come to school. 

Teachers can be contacted via Class Dojo if you have any questions or queries regarding home learning. 

Home Learning and Reading

All children have got access to their TTRockstars accounts. We have Twinkl Learner, which children can access in school and at home. This is full of learning games, challenges and opportunities for them to practice their weekly spellings and timetables.

Please support us and make sure they are accessing this at home to support their learning. If you are unsure of any logins or access to the Twinkl account, please let me know and I will be happy to help.

 

The Term 6 vocabulary sheets below will help you to know more about what your child will be learning this term. 

Please click here to access extra phonics, reading and spelling resources.

Please click here to access links to other useful home learning resources published online.

If you are unsure of any log-in details, please contact the teacher through Class Dojo or email office@pilgrims-way.kent.sch.uk