Beech Class – Year 3/4
Welcome to Beech Class! We are Year 3 and 4 children.
Welcome to Beech Class!
Curriculum Long Term Plan – Beech 2023-2024
Our learning in Term 2…
We have a Geography focus this half term and we will be learning about The UK. We will recap our learning on the different countries and capital cities of the UK and define the UK, Great Britain and the British Isles. We will focus on the physical geography of the UK, learning about the mountains, rivers and coastline and thinking about what physical features
In Science we are learning about electricity. We will learn what a simple series circuit is and identify different components that can be added to this. We will construct simple series circuits for ourselves, trying different components, such as bulbs, buzzers and switches. We will draw the circuit as a pictorial representation, not necessarily using conventional circuit symbols at this stage.
This term we will focus on DT, rather than Art, and we are learning how to sew to help us to create Christmas stockings! We will learn how to sew felt together for both functional aspects and visual appeal such as adding decoration.
Our RE big question is ‘What do Christians believe about incarnation?’ In Music lessons we will be learning about Country music and use the glockenspiels to create music varying in pitch and tempo. In Computing we will start our coding unit using code.org. Our PSHE theme is ‘Celebrating Differences’ which links to whole school events such as Anti-Bullying week. In French lessons we will learn the days of the week and the months of the year. In PE lessons with Premier we will play and learn the rules of invasion games and with Mrs Mansfield we will do teamwork games and then begin swimming on Tuesday 5th December.
- PE lessons will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Please send your child to school wearing their PE kit.
- Children need to have in school every day a spare pair of shoes or wellies for our Adventure Play and Paddock area.
- It is important that children always have a coat in school as we will be outside as much as possible in all weathers.
In our writing lessons the children will be reading The Iron Man. We will build on our vocabulary skills and use our thesaurus skills to help us use powerful adjectives to create expanded noun phrases and short descriptions using features such as similes and questions. We will also write a recount of our trip to Wells Cathedral and write Christmas-themed instructions!
In Maths we are continuing to embed our addition and subtraction skills before moving onto multiplication and division. The children will be using the column method for addition, subtraction and multiplication and using their times table knowledge and grouping and sharing to support their understanding of division. Year 3 will focus on using their 2, 4 and 8 times tables and Year 4 will also use their 3, 6, 9 skills plus 7, 11 and 12 times tables.
- PE lessons will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Please send your child to school wearing their PE kit.
- Children need to have in school every day a spare pair of shoes or wellies for our Adventure Play and Paddock area.
- It is important that children always have a coat in school as we will be outside as much as possible in all weathers.
Weekly Home Learning Tasks
Your child’s reading record and scheme reading book needs to come into school every day.
Please ensure your child is:
- Reading every day and note this in their reading record
- Completing at least 10 minutes of times table practise every day (for updated details see below) – children will be asked to complete other Maths activities for homework when their times table recall is both fluent and accurate.
Reading, Spellings and Times tables
Your child will have two reading books that they use at school. One will be a levelled scheme reading book that will go home and be brought into school every day. The other will be a book that they keep at school to read for pleasure. Your child will be assessed on their book level by the class teacher and teaching assistants at regular intervals throughout the term.
Spellings lists will be shared on this page (on the right hand side) at beginning of the term. We no longer complete Spelling tests on a Friday, instead we complete ongoing assessments. Sometimes this will take the form of a traditional spelling test, but this could also be in the form of a dictation exercise. These assessments can happen on any day, they are low stakes and often informal in nature. They will be based on previously learned spelling patterns and rules from that term, that year or even an earlier year group.
Times table practise will be checked and monitored every week. Children will be tested on their times tables alongside their Maths lessons so will not have a regularly scheduled times table test. We have moved away from using the Maths Club tests and we are encouraging children to use Times Table Rockstars for their daily practise – specifically the Garage and Gig modes. Within these modes the game assesses your child’s speed, accuracy and fluency, and adjusts their difficulty level accordingly. If a child has 100% accuracy but takes too long to answer the questions, they will not progress. Both elements are important when learning times tables. We are currently setting up the times tables section of Doodle Maths and this will also be available for children to use to practise their times tables. We highly recommend that children practise their times tables using an online resource several times a week, this is because at the end of Year 4 children have to complete a statutory times table test using a Chromebook at school. The test gives the children 6 seconds to read, answer and type their response to a times table question before moving on to the next question.
Login information for any online resources has been stuck into the inside cover of your child’s reading record.
Class Teacher:
Mrs Mansfield
Teaching Assistants:
Mrs Lake
If you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Mansfield on Class Dojo.
Last year (2022-2023) we read…
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