Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back! I hope you had a very enjoyable break. We are looking forward to seeing everyone and to embarking on our new project.

During this coming half term, our Year 3/4 project will be based on the how children’s lives have changed throughout history. We will find out about why children had to work in Tudor and Victorian times, and we will study what kind of jobs they did. We will also look at how reformers campaigned to improve children’s lives, and at what kind of games children used to play in the past.

Our focus in English will be on diary writing based on our class book Street Child. We will also use our historical research to write non-chronological reports. In maths we will be developing and consolidating formal methods for addition and subtraction as well as starting to look at fractions and shapes. Please see our project map for more detail about this term’s curriculum in Science and foundation subject areas.

Staffing: Mr Pengelly teaches Year 2, 3 and 4 for English and Maths every morning supported by Mrs Lovejoy. In the afternoons, children in Years 3 and 4 are taught alongside Years 5 and 6 by Mr Pengelly (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and our new teacher Mrs Edwards (Tuesday and Thursday). Mr Waters supports the class Monday to Thursday, and Mrs Eagles assists on Fridays. We are also very lucky this term that Mrs Lindsell, an experienced PE specialist, is going to teach the PE session on Wednesday afternoons.

Routines: PE lessons will be on Wednesdays and Fridays. Children’s PE kit should be kept in school at all times. We try to take our learning outdoors whenever possible so we also ask that children should keep outdoor shoes/wellies at school if possible.

Home Support

Reading

Please support your child with reading at home as much as possible. The benefits of reading and discussing what they have read are huge, and it is always wonderful to see the progress that children make, especially as they move onto longer and more complex books. When children have finished a book, they can take an Accelerated Reader quiz on it at school – this helps to check their understanding and keeps a record of what they have read. Most published books are on the AR system so if your child reads a book that is not from school, they are very welcome to take a quiz on that – all books that they read contribute to their half-termly target.

Times Tables

Having confident rapid recall of times tables is extremely useful in all areas of maths and is a very good thing to practise at home. Your child will be given a Login to Times Tables Rockstars – an online game that is very good for practising tables and for tracking progress. For those who are confident with multiplication facts, TTR can also be used to practise rapid recall of division facts. In addition, the free game Hit the Button is a very good way to practise individual tables and other key number

facts. As a general rule, children should try to target getting at least 15 correct in a minute to demonstrate that they know a times table well. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

Other Maths Games:

During our work on money we use Toy Shop Money Game to practice working out totals and change: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/money/toy-shop-money

During our work on time-telling we use: https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/116/telling-the-time

During our work on fractions we use: https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/build-a-fraction/latest/build-a-fraction_en.html

All of these games should be easily accessible and are an excellent way to practice knowledge and skills in maths.

Spelling

These are the statutory spellings for Years 3 and 4. Any help you can give your child with learning and retaining the spelling of these words will be very beneficial.

Children also learn spelling rules every week. There are some very good games online that are helpful in practising these rules and for helping children to practise words that are exceptions to these words.

Spelling games:

Spelling Frame has lots of free games and activities for practising the spelling rules that we learn at school: https://spellingframe.co.uk/

Spooky spellings is a fun way of practising Common Exception or “Tricky” words that might not be written phonetically. https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/spookySpellings/index.html

Topic:

I always love to see anything that your child enjoys doing at home that is related to our topic. This term this could include: pictures of children form Tudor or Victorian times, any further research about how children used to live, or your own version of a children’s game from the past. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Please do let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for all your support.

 

John Pengelly