Southborough Church of England Primary School
Southborough Church of England Primary School
Devon
The Year 4 Team
Curriculum Overview
Online Advent Calendar
As Advent begins this Sunday with Advent Sunday celebrated in Churches, we would like to share this online Advent Calendar with you, produced by the Diocese of Guildford. It explores the Christmas story through Christian artwork, investigating a different artist and aspect of the story throughout the term time days of Advent. Please enjoy sharing this with your family as we prepare for Christmas in school and at home.
This week in Devon
Week beginning 24th November
In English, the children have finished writing their insect fact files and have included subheadings, an introduction and lots of information about various insects. They have worked hard to include a range of conjunctions to expand their sentences and many have thought about how to put a subordinate conjunction at the start of their sentence.
In Geography, we have been looking at how different places in the UK are connected. We spoke about the train network in the UK and its benefits. Devon did a fantastic job at answering questions based on a map of the trainlines and thought deeply about why some stations are located where they are.
In Reading, Devon have been making some great predictions about what might happen later in the book and have used evidence from the text to support these. We are beginning to learn more about Lucretia Cutter and the children have been thinking about the classic qualities most villains possess.
In maths, we are continuing with multiplication and the class have been finding links between the times tables. We have covered the 3, 6, 9 and 7 times tables so these would be great ones to test in the car or on the walk to school! Please do keep practising times tables at home using TTRS or even by sharing a bag of sweets!
Rehearsals for the Christmas performance are starting to ramp up! If your child has a speaking part, please take some time to practise their lines with them. Devon have been showing some great singing skills whilst we've been practising some of the songs and they already have some favourites that are being requested on repeat!
Class Timetable
This is an example timetable of what a typical week in Devon will look like.
PE is on Tuesday and Wednesday this term.
Home Learning
All of the children will have an investigative topic-linked learning task to complete, which is rotated over a three-week cycle. The children will focus on one of their three current foundation subjects each week.
To support this, the children are split into 3 groups, which you can see below.
This will be set on a Thursday and due by the following Tuesday.
In class on a Tuesday or Wednesday, the children will then share the outcomes of their research, and the knowledge they have retrieved, within their own group.
Times Tables Rockstars!
To keep practising the multiplication taught in class, and challenging yourself to keep the ones you already know fresh, don’t forget to log into your Times Tables Rockstars account.
Challenge yourself to beat your score and build your knowledge as you become a Rockstar!
Please ask your class teacher if you need replacement log in details.
Reading
Children should bring their Accelerated Reading Book to and from school each day. When they have finished reading, children are asked to complete a quiz before changing their book.
https://global-zone61.renaissance-go.com/welcomeportal/6704864
Parents please log your child's reading on the BOOM reader Parent Portal or by using the BOOM reader parent app on your tablet/mobile no more than once a week.
Below is a list of the 100 most common words that your child is expected to know how to spell by the end of Year 4 (please see attachment).
The spelling strategies document below shows what strategies are used in class, and can be used at home to aid learning new words:
Spelling
Spellings will be set on a Wednesday and tested the following Tuesday each week. Our next spelling test will be on the 25th November.
Put on website 26.11.25 Test 02.12.25 | |||
sage | olive | jade | emerald |
tremendous | tremendous | middle | why |
courageous | courageous | wobble | fly |
hideous | hideous | cuddle | cry |
serious | serious | able | shy |
obvious | obvious | information | try |
enormous | enormous | exploration | sky |
anxious | anxious | observation |
|
doesn't | doesn't | adoration |
|
which | which | know |
|
describe | describe | knew |
|
The link below will take you to the spelling scheme we are working from in school.
https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/english/primary-spelling/
This document contains spelling strategies that are used in class, and can be used at home to aid learning new words:
Times Tables Rock Stars
To keep practising the multiplication taught in class, and challenging yourself to keep the ones you already know fresh, don’t forget to log into your Times Tables Rockstars account.
Challenge yourself to beat your score and build your knowledge as you become a Rockstar!
Please ask your class teacher if you need replacement log in details.
This week we are focusing on the multiplication tables for x3, x6 and x9.
If you know them well, maybe challenge yourself with the corresponding division facts. For example:
6 x 7 = 42
42 ÷ 6 = 7
Maths strategies
Please see below attachments for examples from White Rose Maths including the four operations, (add, subtract, multiply, divide) and how we extend learning using reasoning style questions.