Our Learning

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Topic:

 

Our topic this term is ‘Rainforest Rangers’ and the children will be finding out lots of interesting facts about Tropical Rainforests. These will include:

•  What defines a rainforest?

•  Where in the world they are and why they are there.

• The layers of a tropical rainforest, which plants grow there and who has a home there.

• The people of the rainforest.

• The rainforest under threat and what can be done to save it.

As always, the topic focus will provide varied writing opportunities, including: a balanced argument looking at the positive and negative points of deforestation and creating a fact file about endangered animals of the rainforest.

 

English:

 

Our initial focus is shape poems. We will begin by looking at a variety of calligrams using ‘Bembo’s Zoo’ as a starting point. We will then discuss a range of shape poems and the children will have the opportunity to produce their own shape poem based on a rainforest animal. We will be using rainforest stories ‘The Great Kapok Tree’ by Lynne Cherry and ‘The Shaman’s Apprentice’ also by Lynne Cherry to explore the issues confronting indigenous people and the environment and creating our own stories based upon similar events. Our non-fiction focus will include persuasive writing. The children will be thinking about cherishing the rainforest and persuading others to do so too. We will be using ‘Where the Forest Meets the Sea’ by Jeannie Baker to identify key aspects of a persuasive text. We will then look at ‘The Vanishing Rainforest’ by Richard Platt (written in 2003) and carry out some research to find out what has happened since and question whether things are getting better. The children will use this to inform their own piece of persuasive writing.

 

Maths:

 

All Year 4 children must take the National Multiplication Tables Check (MTC). This will take place in June. The purpose of the check is to determine whether your child can fluently recall their times tables up to 12.

In Maths, the children will continue to practise their individual times tables target each day to ensure they are secure in these. This is done in a variety of ways such as through whole class practise and using TT Rockstars.

We will begin the term with a focus on decimals; writing, comparing, ordering, and rounding decimals. We will then move our focus to money and the children will have the opportunity to develop their understanding of pounds and pence before being introduced to decimal notation for money. We will then move onto developing our understanding of telling the time, with particular focus on a.m. & p.m., 24 hour clock and analogue to digital. In shape, we will be looking at identifying, comparing, and ordering angles. Our shape work will continue to classify triangles using the names ‘isosceles’, ‘scalene’ and ‘equilateral’ triangles and naming quadrilaterals including a square, rectangle, rhombus, parallelogram, and trapezium, describing their properties and highlight the similarities and differences between different quadrilaterals. Our focus on statistics will feature how to use bar charts, pictograms, and tables to interpret and present discrete data and the children will be introduced to line graphs.

 

Science:

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n Science, the children will be focusing on ‘Animals Including Humans’ beginning by looking at the human digestive system and understanding the digestive system further as they consider what happens to their food, what the small intestine does and what we can learn from a poo! They will then look at understanding teeth and how and why they need looking after. They will also interpret food chains and discuss the impact of changes to a chain. We will then look at ‘Living Things and their Habitats’ in relation to the rainforest environment, their own environment, climate change, impact of change and how to help the habitats to create a positive impact.