Year 4

Summer 1

Thematic Planning - Summer 1

Spring 2 Review

Design Technology

We created our own Viking Long ships that had a lever. When we pulled the lever, it made the flags move. To make the boat we had to use cardboard, split pins, scissors and crayons.

Viking Day

This half term we had a Viking day! We shared our facts about Vikings and made Viking bread that had no yeast. We created Viking longhouses, a Thor’s hammer necklace and a brooch.

How to Train your Dragon

We loved reading How to Train your Dragon and wrote a persuasive letter to Mrs Carter to get a school dragon. Mrs Carter even replied and told us we need to think about a different school pet.

We were also lucky enough to make our own dragons and helped decorate our dragon door for World Book day.

Spring 2

Thematic Planning - Spring 2

Spring 1 Review

English 

We loved reading our book called ‘Journey’ by Aaron Becker because it taught us many interesting things about adventures and journeys. Our favourite part was when we wrote our own adventure story based on the book that we studied. Before writing the story, we looked for good vocabulary, learned about fronted adverbials and expanded noun phrases.

Outdoor Learning 

This half term we were intrepid explorers! We went to Low Wood and we worked as a team to build dens which kept us warm and safe from the wind and rain. We also created our own toys by whittling wood and designing wood toppers. It was fantastic to explore the forest, observe the nature and its creatures.

It was the best day of this half term!

Science: Electricity - Building an electrical circuit 

Science this half term was extremely exciting and fun!
Did you know that the tip of the pencil is a conductor for electricity?
We found out this by creating a simple electrical circuit and connecting the tip of the pencil to the circuit using crocodile clips. We built our own switches which we attached to the circuit to turn on and off the light bulbs.

Autumn 1

This half term in English we will write a narrative story based on the picture book called Journey by Aaron Becker. Children will have to use direct speech, expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials. In the second part of the half term, we will write a diary entry from the perspective of the main character from the book Paradise Sands. We will continue to develop our grammar and vocabulary skills across half term.

As mathematicians, we will be focusing on multiplication and division. We will continue to develop our fluency and knowledge about multiplication and division facts up to 12. We will learn to recognise and use factor pairs, multiply two-digit numbers by one-digit number and solve word problems involving the four operations.

This half term in geography, we will be looking at the countries that make up the European Union. We will learn the difference between the British Isles and Great Britain and we will locate some of the main islands that surround the United Kingdom.

Our unit this term in Science is electricity. We will identify common appliances that run on electricity and construct a simple series electrical circuit. We will identify and name the basic parts from an electrical circuit. We will learn to recognise some common conductors and insulators and associate metals with being good conductors.

Year 4 Thematic Planning

Autumn 2 Review

As mathematicians, we focused on addition and subtraction. We used our addition and subtraction knowledge to add and subtract using four-digit numbers and exchanging. After that, we estimated and used inverse operation to check answers in a calculation. During this time, we applied our knowledge to a range of worded problems, reasoning questions and nonroutine questions. 

In English, we focused on Street Child by Berlie Doherty. It followed a boy named Jim Jarvis, who ends up in a workhouse. We wrote and performed our own playscripts inspired by the narrative. We continued to develop, our use of pronouns and to consistently write in the same tense. For our big write, we wrote letters to welcome new students to our school. We wrote about what we love about our school and what we think new people will enjoy.

As scientists, we learnt about sound. We identified how sounds are made and associating some of them with something vibrating. In addition to this, we found patterns between the pitch and volume of a sound and features of the object that produced it. Along with this, we recognised that sounds get fainter as the distance from the sound source increases.

As artists, we used mixed media. We found out about David Hockney and looked at his style of pop art. After that, we will be created our own art inspired by David Hockney. We used the I-pads to create landscapes of our local area and created portraits of important people in school. 

As historians, the children learnt all about Saltaire and Sir Titus Salt. They researched and found out about a local village Saltaire. We found out about life for the rich and the poor in Victorian times and how Sir Titus Salt changed the outlook of the poor. We explored local historical artefacts and placed them in chronological order.