Stokenham Area Primary School

AutumnTerm 2024

Year 4 Curriculum Outline Letter

Dear Parents and Carers,

Firstly, I’d like to welcome you back to school. I hope that you have all enjoyed a wonderful summer and are ready to get back to learning. Please find below the curriculum outline for this Autumn.

English

We begin our English lessons this year by studying the book “50 fifty-word poems: A Passing On of Shells”. This collection of poems allows us to study poetic conventions like alliteration and personification, as well as contemplating different ways to lay out our work for effect. We will then cover two fiction stories “Paddington” and “Mimi and the Mountain Dragon”. We will explore creative ways to add noun phrases and build sentences using adverbial phrases throughout these units, as well as revising how to correctly punctuate speech within sentences. In the second half term, we will look at the explanation text ‘Until I met Dudley’. The children will learn how to use a range of sentence structures to write their own explanation pieces.

Reading

Our class novel for the first half term is The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis. We shall use this text each week to work on the comprehension skills of summarising and predicting. In addition, each week we will use an extract to learn how to retrieve, explain and infer information from a text. We plan to use a variety of texts from different areas of the curriculum as well as poetry and classics. Together, this ensures the children have a reading comprehension lesson each day. There will also be opportunities for children to pursue their enjoyment of reading independently. Please keep reading at home as much as you can!

Handwriting

The children practise handwriting each day. We have pen licences at the ready for children who join consistently with correct letter size and formation. This means that they will progress from writing in pencil to pen. 

Spelling

Monday to Thursday we practise spellings using a variety of techniques for a spelling test on Friday. We give out new spellings on Fridays which we will share with you on Google Classroom.

Maths

In maths this term we will begin by focusing on adding and subtracting three- and four-digit numbers, looking at exchanging and estimating.

We will then move on to place value and improving our understanding of numbers and what they are worth. We will be looking at 4-digit numbers, comparing, ordering and rounding as well as investigating negative numbers and roman numerals.

Towards the end of the term we will be looking at lengths, kilometres and perimeter.

Science

This term our two science topics will be electricity and states of matter.

We will identify common appliances that run on electricity, construct simple circuits and identify common conductors and insulators.

After half term we will start comparing and grouping materials together as solids, liquids or gases. We will be closely observing how some materials change state when they are heated or cooled and research the temperature at which this happens.

Geography

In our unit ‘The Americas’ the children, inspired by Johnny Cash singing ‘I’ve been everywhere’, travel the North and South American continents, and distinguish between the terms ‘continent’, ‘region’, ‘country’, ‘state’ and ‘city’ along the journey. Finding and using images and maps on the internet and in atlases, children will make notes on cities and record their countries and/or states. They will compare the built environments and settings of the cities and, through them, identify some key regions of the American continents.

History

This term our History topic is The Maya Civilisation. In this unit, the children will explore the world of the Maya and debate whether they should continue to be remembered today as a significant culture. The children will begin by learning about the lives of the Maya today, before focusing on ancient Mayan architectural achievements, their religion and surviving writings. They will also study the possible reasons why the Mayan city states declined after 900 AD.

Art, Craft and Design

We will be creating sequenced drawings, in the form of an accordion book, to share or tell a story. The children will learn that stories can be told through drawing and that text can be used to add meaning. The children will be experimenting with different drawing materials, such as soft B pencils, oil/chalk pastels, charcoal, graphite, ink and paints.

Design Technology

After half term, we will be learning about healthy and varied diets in our Food unit. The children will learn about the origins of pitta bread and will design, make and evaluate their own healthy vegetable-based snacks.

Computing

In our unit ‘Networks: the internet’ the children will develop an understanding of how information is shared between different networks through routers and switches. They will apply this understanding to investigate what the internet is made of and show how information can travel through it. They will go on to look at websites and begin to think about questions like ‘who owns the web?’

French

In our first unit ‘Je me présente’ the children will learn how to read, say and write numbers 11-20. They will learn how to say where they live, as well as being able to discuss their nationality. In our second unit ‘La famille’, the children will learn how to describe their family members, as well as being able to ask

P.E.

Our class will have a lesson every Thursday afternoon as well as enjoying a PE session with our Sports Specialists on Friday. Please could the children bring their PE kits into school so that they are ready for these sessions.

P.S.H.E.

We will be learning about friends and families for the first half of the term. We will be sharing strategies to build positive friendships, highlighting the importance of communication and seeking support for feelings of loneliness. We will move on to focus on safe relationships for the second section of the half term. We will be looking at recognising risks online and discussing when it is right to keep or break a secret, as well as thinking about how to report concerns and seek help.

R.E.

For the first half of term we will be looking at Christianity and the creation story, considering how this impact on Christians’ beliefs and their relationship with God.

After half term we will be looking at Judaism, particularly how festivals and family life show what matters to Jewish people. We will find out about Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and discover why the 10 commandments are important to Jewish people.

Music

In music we will be exploring a range of musical genres and thinking about how music brings people together. We will be learning three different songs over the next six weeks from the soundtrack of Mamma Mia!

Autumn’s curriculum is bursting with variety to enthuse the children and help them develop the range of knowledge and skills they need. We always encourage children to extend their learning beyond the classroom and we welcome them to share this in class, as this is always inspiring for everyone. 

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss your child or have any questions.

Kind regards,

Imogen Woollard

This Year’s Curriculum

Stokenham Area Primary School Curriculum Map

If you would like further information in relation to the curriculum please feel free to contact the school office.