Year 3/4

The Y3/4 Team this year are:

Mrs Capewell (Class Teacher - Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday)

Mrs Jamieson (Class Teacher - Thursday and Friday)

Mrs Gilby-Young (HLTA - PPA Cover)

Mrs Hartshorne (HLTA/TA - PPA Cover)

Mrs Preece (TA)

December Update

This half term in Year 3/4, the children have been working hard across the curriculum whilst also enjoying a wide range of exciting learning opportunities and extra-curricular activities. The lead up to Christmas has been an exciting one: taking part in a Christmas Experience hosted by King's Church, our whole-school pantomime visit to Cast in Doncaster, watching our fabulous KS1 children's nativity, alongside all of the other fabulous things we do in school to get us excited for Christmas!

In English, we began the term by writing our own losing tales, with a strong focus on using powerful description to bring our stories to life and using speech to develop our character's personalities. The children wrote some fabulous stories, using the writer's toolkit and model texts to inspire their own losing tales. Following on this, we have been exploring explanation texts through our model text, Santa’s Spectacular Letter Sorter, learning how to clearly explain how something works. We learned about what makes an effective explanation text and built our writer's toolkit based on these.

In Maths, pupils have been developing their rapid recall of times tables up to 12x12, an essential skill that supports many areas of mathematical learning and fluency application. Daily practise of times tables is crucial when learning to recall times tables quickly and confidently, so any additional support that you can provide your children with at home is greatly appreciated. The Year 4 children will sit their Multiplication Tables Check in June where they will be tested on their recall of facts up to 12x12. This is a statutory DfE assessment which is completed across the country:. More information can be found about this here: https://thirdspacelearning.com/blog/times-tables-test-parents-guide/

In Guided Reading, we have been read the classic novel The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. We have been practising our VIPERS (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summary) skills by answering questions based on book, helping to build our comprehension skills and a deeper understanding of the text. We encourage the children to read aloud, so we can hear their reading fluency and discuss and de-code any unfamiliar vocabulary they may come across.

Our creative learning has also been flourishing. In Art, the children designed and created their own Ancient Egyptian canopic jars using clay, carefully applying the key skills they had practised to produce impressive final pieces. In Geography, we have been learning all about where our food comes from, helping the children make important links to the wider world. In French, pupils have been learning the names of fruits and vegetables, while also practising dates and classroom commands.

It has been a fantastic half term of learning, and we are very proud of all the children’s hard work and enthusiasm.