Year 4 - Red Kite Class

Welcome to Red Kite Class

Class Teacher: Mr Cheatham

Teaching Assistant: Miss Potts and Miss Yates

Here you will find out about each of the term's learning enquiries, special dates for your diary, PE days and Forest School days.

Term 4

Reading

Our reading book this term is "When the Mountains Roared!" By Jess Butterworth. Ruby’s been uprooted from her home in Australia and moved to the mountains of India, where her dad’s got a new job managing a hotel. Australia was everything she knew and loved, and was full of memories of her mum, who died last year. Ruby misses Australia terribly, but in the remote Himalayas she finds herself surrounded by incredible wildlife and soon realises her new home is special too. Except something’s not quite right: her dad’s hiding things, the hotel owners are super shifty, and there are rumours the mountain is cursed. And when Ruby stumbles on a shocking secret, it’s up to her to try and save the animals now under threat: the mountain’s last leopards.

The children will continue to develop their inference skills throughout the term.  They will begin with simple inferences about the emotions of the characters, moving on to more complex inferences about the motives and goals of the characters.

Writing

We are going to be delving into the realm of traditional and fairy tales but with an Indian twist, through the story, “The Cloud Tea Monkeys” by Mal Peet. Here is what this story is all about: “Monkeys come to the rescue of a struggling family in this traditional tale from a Carnegie Medal winner. Tashi lives in a tiny village below the tea plantations where her mother earns a living. One day, her mother falls ill, and Tashi must pick tea to earn the money for a doctor. But she is too small to reach the tender shoots, and the cruel Overseer sends her away empty-handed. Tashi needs a miracle. Then, on the mountains high above the plantation where only monkeys live, something extraordinary happens that will change her life forever... Based on a centuries-old legend of tea-picking monkeys, Cloud Tea Monkeys is a richly told tale full of vivid characters: a heartless Overseer, an enigmatic Royal Tea-Taster and, in a faraway land, an Empress with a liking for tea.”

Using this text, we will be working on creating some written pieces to inform people about the events, including a non-chronological report and some instructional writing based on creating our own mystical teas for the Royal Tea-Taster to try.

Afterwards, we will be looking into our adventurous sides by studying the story of “Oliver and the Seawigs”. A tale about a world filled with exploration and adventure, where young Oliver finds himself embarking on the journey of a lifetime! Joined by an eccentric cast of companions – a cantankerous old albatross, a myopic mermaid, and the cheerful island known as Cliff – he sets out to find his missing parents. But their quest takes a perilous turn as they face the wicked Stacey de Lacey and her army of mischievous, slimy sea monkeys. Will Oliver and his friends overcome the odds and rescue his parents before it’s too late?

This story is going to help us to create some character profiles before considering the emotional side of a character through some diary entries. All of this will build up to us creating our own adventure story designed to entertain the audiences.

Maths

This term, Year 4 will be developing their understanding of decimals and fractions. 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 fractions but also multiplying fractions. 

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

History

This term, our history enquiry is: ‘How did the achievements of the ancient Maya impact their society and beyond?’.  Children will be exploring how the Ancient Maya settled into life within the rainforests, before exploring how important chocolate was through the exploration of historical artefacts. We will look into the religious beliefs of this ancient culture, which will lead us to compare how the Maya's beliefs impacted our modern life.

Science

Through our Science topic, we will be focusing on Sound and Vibration. Through our topic, we will be learning about how vibrations are made and the impact this has on the sounds we hear. We will then become more biological and look at how sound waves affect our hearing and how this can be impacted on, depending on pitch and distance from the source.

 

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 Football using the school MUGA and hopefully the school field. Please send the children in to school wearing their PE kits. Please ensure the PE kits are suitable for indoor PE.

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 4 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