Year 4 - Kestrel Class

Welcome to Kestrel Class

Class Teacher: Mr Dickens

Teaching Assistant: Mrs Cooper and Miss Neilson

Term 5

Reading

In Song of the River, we learn that Cari's father is dead. Her mum has moved them to another place, a place that Cari never wanted to go, and all she has left to remind her of him is his warm red jumper and his camera. And now her mum's dreams of starting afresh have been ruined too.

When the river floods and ruins their new home, sweeping their car with it and destroying her mum's new business venture, things look like they could be well and truly over. But as the community support them through their troubles and Cari begins to learn about a local project to reintroduce the beaver, then a glimmer of hope begins to surface. If only Cari can convince the local farmers to support it, too, there may just be a way to stop the river from flooding, save her new home and her mum's dreams. But what can one child do against adults that don't see its value?

Gill Lewis weaves a tale rich in emotion and intricately focused on nature. Her ultimate message – that we can all make a difference – is strong, as is the need to look at what our environments need to recover and rejuvenate themselves.

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

"The Selfish Giant" is a story by Oscar Wilde about a giant who owns a beautiful garden. One day, he returns home to find children playing in his garden, but he selfishly builds a high wall to keep them out. As a result, the garden falls into eternal winter, with no spring or summer. Eventually, the giant realises his mistake and allows the children to play again. When he welcomes them back, the garden comes alive with flowers and sunshine. In the end, the giant becomes kind and loving, finding happiness through sharing his garden with the children. The story teaches the importance of kindness, sharing, and love. Using this text, we will be creating our own stories based on the lessons being learnt by the Giant himself. We will use our skills of subordinating clauses, expanded noun phrases, paragraphing and using dialogue to enhance our stories further. 

Isaac was playing at his favourite pool one day when it started raining. Emptying his own jar of water into the pool, he races the stream down the mountainside, then observes how the streams join the river past his home and into a waterfall. The river, still containing Isaac’s pot of water, flows through the countryside and the city and into the ocean, where a whale rises and blows a fountain of water into the night, which rains back onto the sea.

And, in a country far away, the mist that has evaporated from the sea turns into rain and provides water for a thirsty girl to drink.

Using this captivating text, we will be creating some of our own shape poems and biographical pages. We will draw on our knowledge learnt in Geography to create some informal and enticing pieces of writing. 

 

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 look into adding and subtracting decimals and amounts of money, but also multiplying decimals. 

We will use our knowledge of Place Value to help us identify the decimal places and begin to use this when dividing or multiplying. 

Geography

Our Geography topic is very closely linked to our Science topic. We will be learning about the water cycle and the role this plays in the forming of rivers. Our topic will delve deeper into the world of rivers and this will help us understand how they are formed but also how they are used, from the ancient world to the modern times. We will then be conducting our own research into the River Stour, our local river system. 

Science

Our Science topic is all about states of matter. We will be learning about what different states of matter are and how to identify and understand how these are constructed. We will be thinking about solids, liquids and gases. Using this new knowledge, we will be linking this to the water cycle, where we will be making connections between states of matter and how the water cycle is formed. This will build into understanding how climate change is affecting the water cycle. 

 

 

Forest School ​​ ​​

Our Forest School day is now Friday. This term the class will be split into two groups. The first group will go to Forest School for the first three weeks of term; the second group will go the next three weeks. Those children not attending forest school will be in class completing some targeted learning.

The groups will be notified during the first week of term.

On forest school days - Please send your child into school wearing their school uniform with a Forest School kit in a bag. Please ensure the Forest School clothes are appropriate for the weather that day.

Please send in wellies that can be kept in school to utilise the outdoor learning spaces every day, not just for Forest School.

PE

Our PE lessons will be on a Wednesday afternoons. This term, we will be learning Gymnastics using the school Sports Hall. Please send the children into school wearing their PE kits. Please ensure the PE kits are suitable for indoor PE. Be extra careful with jewellery for Gymnastics lessons - If possible, ear-rings 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 5 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