Beech Class – Year 3/4
Welcome to Beech Class! We are Year 3 and 4 children.
Welcome back to Term 6 – our final term of this year!
Exciting things happening this term:
Further information about these events will be shared in the Newsletter and on Class Dojo.
- Sports Day (15/06/22)
- Sponsored Walk (21/06/22)
- Arts Week (the entire week of 27/06/22)
- KS2 Production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream (05/07/22)
- Art Show Afternoon – parents invited (11/07/22)
- Beech Class Assembly – parents invited (14/07/22)
- Beech Class Sleepover (tbc)
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Our learning this term…
We will begin this term by exploring the book The Whale by Vita Murrow in our Writing lessons. We will practise writing a mystery story by narrating the book which has no words itself. At the end of the topic we will write our own Mystery story. Throughout this unit we will learn about the different features of a mystery story including description, action and suspense. We will conclude the unit on The Whale by Vita Murrow by writing an advert based on part of the story.
In Maths we will start the term by learning about time. We will explore both analogue and digital clocks before moving on to solving reasoning questions based around telling the time and calculating durations. After this, we will learn how to measure both mass and capacity, before revising properties of shapes. We will end the term by looking at position and direction.
This term we will continue our Science topic of Animals including Humans, focusing on the digestive system and food chains. In Geography we will explore rivers and their features while revising what we know about the water cycle. We hope to visit our local stream/river and identify features such as meanders. In Music we will learn the songs for our production at the Egg Theatre and during our extra P.E. lessons we will learn to country dance!
Please note:
- PE lessons will be on Wednesdays. Please send your child to school wearing their PE kit.
- We will continue to ventilate our classrooms, so children may like to bring in additional school-appropriate layers.
- Please 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
Home Learning tasks will be set and stuck into Home Learning books on a Monday and the work and Home Learning book will be due back in school on Friday. 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.
- Revisiting and revising the spelling pattern(s) from the previous week (find the term’s spellings on the right hand side of this page. )
- Completing their weekly home learning task details of which can be found in their Home Learning Book.
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. We will listen to your child read individually or within a small group every week.
Spellings will be stuck into your child’s reading record on Mondays and our weekly Spelling test will happen every Friday morning. The test will sometimes take the form of a traditional spelling test, but could also be in the form of a dictation exercise. Where possible, this will be noted in your child’s reading record with either a comment or a stamp.
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 Teachers:
Miss Mills
Ms. Cornish – Mornings in Beech Leaves
Teaching Assistants
Mrs Lake, Mrs Hillier (Mon-Wed), Mrs Appleyard (Thur & Fri) and occasionally Mr Smalley.
If you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact Miss Mills or Ms. Cornish on Class Dojo.
This year we have read…
Mr Penguin and the Lost Treasure by Alex Smith
The Dragon in the Library by Louie Stowell
The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
The Unlikely Adventures of Mabel Jones by Will Mabbitt
The Unbelievable Biscuit Factory by James Harris
