The Year Four Team

Curriculum Overview

This Week in Surrey

Week beginning 12th January 2026 

Surrey have had a great start to the week!

We have been looking at writing a character description for the father within our termly text, 'How the stars came to be'. We identified what his character traits might be, especially when thinking about how he devotes his life to caring for his daughter. We then used this to support our learning on conjunctions, including both coordinating and subordinating conjunctions within our descriptive sentences. We are now moving on to planning and then writing our own narrative about what could happen to the father at sea. We have certainly had some imaginative ideas so far!

In Maths we have been looking at informal and formal methods for multiplication, please see the example below as just one of the methods. Alongside this under the Maths strategies section there are examples of methods for all four operations. Can you explain to your adults the method below?

In Science we have been learning about materials and the three states of matter. Not only have we discussed this and sorted materials, we looked at oobleck and how this non-Newtonian fluid acts differently to other fluids. We are looking forward to investigating this further next week. 

Miss Towler, Mr Nunn, Mrs Cheesman  

Class Timetable

This is an example timetable of what a typical week in Surrey will look like.

PE is on Tuesday and Wednesday this term.

Home Learning

Spellings will be set on a Wednesday and tested the following Tuesday each week.

Our next spelling test will be on the 20th January.

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:

Southborough's Spelling Strategies

Weekly investigative task

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.
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.

Please see investigative task and groups in attached document below. 

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. 

In preparation for the national multiplication check in June 2026, the children have begun to use the link below. 

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. 

https://play.ttrockstars.com/

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

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.

boomreader.co.uk/parents

Spelling

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: 

Music Knowledge Organiser