‘Getting To Know Year 4’ Welcome to the Evening! Thank you! Please make sure you take a copy of the ‘supporting materials’ handbooks. Could we also ask you to tick your child’s name on the class list so we can send on copies to those who were unable to make the meeting tonight. Thank you! Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

Expectations and Daily Organisation Miss E Marriott and Miss K Corwood Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

The Year Ahead… Term 1 and 2 Trip to Buckland Abbey - £10. £5 for clarinet reeds. Term 3 and 4 Japanese day – no costume needed. Taiko drumming workshop – partly funded (£5). Term 5 and 6 Mountbatten Activity Days - £75. Residential Deposit and first instalment - £50 each. Egyptian Day – a costume will be needed!

Increased independence and responsibility It is important to arrive on time each day as the children have Quick Work activities. Mixed ability groupings for different subjects –these groupings are reviewed regularly, in order to ensure children are making progress and to enable them to work with different children. Children self select tasks, with support from the teacher, to ensure that they challenge themselves academically. Talking partners – changed every two weeks to ensure children experience a wide range of partners throughout the year. Personalised learning through target setting and marking, which they respond to regularly. Additional support for children – opportunities provided for children to work with TA’s, SENCO and the intervention team to ensure ALL children are making progress. Increased independence and responsibility - Personal organisation, books, bags, playground, homework, letters, behaviour (developing strategies to deal with different situations etc) and classroom roles and responsibilities. Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

Importance of water bottles (named and refilled regularly) Healthy snacks at break times (fruit or vegetables – NOT cereal bars etc…) PE Kits – should be in school everyday, with all items clearly named. Girls need to have their hair tied back. All children need to wear shorts for indoor sessions. In the summer, it is useful if swimming kits are in school everyday, just in case! Painting apron – to be kept in school for art activities. Handwriting – ‘pen licences’ will be awarded throughout the year to encourage children to present this work nearly and using joined writing. These can be take away if standards are not maintained. Special Marking Pens – fineliners are very useful for Big Marking and presenting work.

Homework Homework will be given out on a Friday – it will usually be stuck into the ‘Learning Journal’. ALL homework must be handed in on a Thursday. If homework isn’t completed children will be given time to complete the tasks at playtime on the Friday. Literacy homework – 40 minutes reading throughout the week, 20-30 minutes to complete the SPaG tasks or other activities. This may be replaced by other work. Maths homework should take between 20 and 30 minutes. Children would benefit from additional practice of their times tables.

E- Safety. This is an important issue for children and adults. These are some documents to support E- Safety. They will be available along with the power point of this evening on the school website in the Y4 Class section. Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

Assessment Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

Embedding the New Curriculum Over the past year there has been a big change in the way the government expect schools to develop children’s learning. There has now been a complete move away from the old levels. Since September 2015 all pupils in years 1 to 6 will be taught and assessed against Age Related Expectations. There is a shift towards developing the ability to reason and explain as well as learn and understand the content of a subject. All pupils in each year group will be expected to achieve the AREs in each subject. (SEND pupils may have specific learning programmes and expectations based on the AREs). Pupils will not be moved on to the next years’ programme of study but their learning will be extended and challenged by reasoning and deeper thinking tasks. These will support the development of deeper thinking skills and application of knowledge.

EXAMPLES OF DEEPER THINKING TASKS FOR YEAR 4 Maths: When investigating place value, the children may be asked to explore how many 3-digit numbers they can make with a set of given digits and be questioned about how they know they have found all the examples. This would be a far more beneficial task than simply being asked to name the 100s, 10s, and ones in a group of given numbers. Literacy: When writing, children may be asked to explain their choice of vocabulary within certain contexts and genres, leading to them gaining a better understanding of how vocabulary can be chosen to create a more specific effect on the reader. For example: Charlie paced awkwardly through the corridor. Charlie raced gleefully through the corridor. Reading: Reciprocal Reading: Children are exposed to a range of skills including prediction, summarising, questioning and clarification. Children’s understanding can be deepened by asking questions such as “Can you predict what may happen next in the story?” “If you were this character, what would you do and why?” “If you were to summarise that chapter as a news paper article, what would the headline be and why?” “Think about what you just read; what do you think the next line will be?”

Bar Model. One of the methods the children will be learning this year is the bar model. The bar model is designed to deepen their understanding of number, and mathematical concepts, through a visual structure.

Bar Model-addition and subtraction..

Bar Model-multiplication and division.

Deeping thinking and mastery in maths If the children have shown that they have a good level of understanding, they will be asked to deepen their thinking with questions such as: Sarah believes that 107 – 35 = 82. Why is she incorrect? Where did she go wrong? How could you help her understand where she made the mistake? We also put the learning into a context e.g. Finding change, time elapsed intervals to show where their knowledge can be applied.

Examples of Deeper Thinking English: Deeper Thinking: Have the following sentences, which use embedded clauses, been written correctly? Why? Mr Bradford, which is a head teacher at EPS, likes to go bird watching at the weekend. Elburton Primary School, who is an outstanding school, is very popular in Plymstock. The cottage which is cosy is in Devon. What changes do you need to make?

Assessment Assessment will take place during lessons and from marking books as before. This information will then be used to support children who do not know or understand something. It will help us to target that support where it is needed. What children achieve will be recorded. This will build up to an end of year teacher assessment based on whether children have achieved the Age Related Expectations or not. It will also take account of how well children are able to reason and explain – the deeper thinking we looked at earlier. This was recorded as a # number on your child’s report last year.

Assessment Assessment will take place during lessons and from marking books as before. This information will then be used to support children who do not know or understand something. It will help us to target that support where it is needed. What children achieve will be recorded. This will build up to an end of year teacher assessment based on whether children have achieved the Age Related Expectations or not. It will also take account of how well children are able to reason and explain – the deeper thinking we looked at earlier. National Tests Year 1 children will take the national phonics test. Year 2 pupils will sit tests for Reading, Grammar Spelling and Punctuation and Maths. These will give a scaled score where 100 represents achieving the ARE. This will inform the Teacher Assessments. Year 6 pupils will sit tests for Reading, Grammar Spelling and Punctuation and Maths. These will give a scaled score where 100 represents achieving the ARE. These will be reported to parents along side Teacher Assessments.

Our Assessment Procedures Teacher Assessment - Throughout the year ARE Writing Tracking and Targeting Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

Mathematics Miss K Corwood Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

Introduction Ability groups based on previous year’s ARE results The children will be working towards the year 4 objectives at a variety of levels. Homework – 30 minutes per week – activity sheet which is aimed at enabling the children to become independent. Alternating weeks BIG Maths beat that test or mental maths CD. Parental support at home – methods & strategies Most importantly – MATHS IS FUN! Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

We will also use it during ICT sessions. We have a termly ‘head to head’ competition as a year group – please encourage your child to take part. We will also use it during ICT sessions. It is extremely beneficial to the children and is FUN!!

www.mathletics.co.uk

Mathletics Tasks

Learn Its are facts that we want the children to learn. It provides an instructional message to the children that they need to Learn it!

Multiplication ‘Learn Its’ – by Year Group Foundation Counting in 10s, 5s, 2s Year 1 Year 2 X10, X5, X2 Year 3 X3, X4, X9 Year 4 X6, X7, X8 Year 5 and 6 ‘must hit’ all of them x 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 16 10 15 20 25 18 24 30 36 14 21 28 35 42 49 32 40 48 56 64 27 45 54 63 72 81 Foundation Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4

The importance of Times Tables At the beginning of the year the ‘Learn its’ and times tables will be taught through mental oral activities at the start of each lesson. In the new National Curriculum the children need to know their tables up to 12 x 12. Times tables activities will be sent home regularly.

The calculation policy In your pack, you have recieved a copy of the current calculation policy for your guidance when supporting with homework tasks. Please ensure that your children use the method taught in school to consolidate their learning.

NUMICON We have utilised a new system of mathematical learning in school this year. This system is known as Numicon. It has been used to support all children as it is very visual and supports learning in a kinesthatic way.

Literacy Miss Emma Marriott Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

Reading Home reading books – please record all books that the children have read in their ‘Reading Log’s’. Use reading books to clarify unknown words. Shared reading. Independent reading. Developing reading comprehension skills- skimming, scanning, inference and deduction. Guided Reading – Project X, reading comprehension and Reciprocal Reading Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

RECIPROCOL READING To improve reading comprehension using the four strategies of: predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarising. To scaffold the four strategies To help children to monitor their own reading comprehension. To develop a love of reading and culture of reading in the school.

Predicting...

QUESTIONING – what could this text be about?

CLARIFYING... What does the title mean? What is this book about? What word is most significant?

Developing a ‘Love of Reading’ through using eBooks...

Plymouth library service – OverDrive eBook scheme. http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/ebooks

Using books to promote ‘book talk’ and a ‘love of books’. Discussing pictures within stories and picture books to generate discussions about feelings, finding clues about the text and making predictions. Getting to the bottom of new words and phrases – do the children understand all the words in their book? Linking reading to real life situations to help children make links to their own lives. Use of kindles and the internet to find alternative stories and forms of books. Recommended reading list – wide variety of authors and genres. Sharing a good book – why do we like the book? Sharing sections of books together?

QUESTIONS AS TOOLS – This style of questioning will encourage deeper thinking. Did you think the ending was a good ending? If not, how would you have ended the story?

Writing Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world Handwriting – expectation that all writing is joined in Year 4. Sentence structure is developed throughout the year to include the use of simple, compound and complex sentences. We are focusing on simple sentences that make sense! The ‘Write’ Time and the importance of what was V – vocabulary C – connectives O – openers P – punctuation The Big Write has now been in practise throughout the school for a few years. Over the time, it has been invaluable to raising the Writing standards of each child and improving the content and quality of their writing. ‘We are now having much more focus on word classes (see handout) and teaching this as the ‘write’ time with emphasis on writing in all subjects. GHaSP expectations – teaching of basic skills. Children will be involved in both self and peer assessment to help the improve their writing and up-level work that they have produced. Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world

Types of sentences... Simple sentence e.g. The cat sat on the mat. Compound sentence e.g. The cat sat on the mat because it felt very tired. Complex sentence e.g. The cat, who was fat, sat on the mat. Although it was dangerous, the Anglo-Saxons still settled in Britain. Quickly, the car raced down the track. V-COP punctuation – could be used when reading.

Spelling and Grammar Bug

Handwriting – continuous cursive script

Letter-join

Spelling Children will be tested at the beginning of the Term and set accordingly to the phonic phase which best suits them. Differentiated Phonic and spelling work will be undertaken in class which is matched to the appropriate level. Children will be given spellings for the week on a Tuesday to learn. Good learning takes place when the children practise writing them in a sentence. In addition to their individualised spellings, the children will also be learning the Year 4 spelling list and words to learn will regularly be sent home. Please support your child to LEARN these and practise them at home.

Thank you for attending tonight; we hope it has been useful! If there are any general questions, please feel free to ask us after the session. However, if it relates specifically to your child, please feel free to organise a set time with your Class Teacher at another time. We look forward to seeing you at the forthcoming Parent’s Evenings throughout the year! Inspiring today’s children for tomorrow’s world