Welcome to Curlews' Page

Welcome back Curlews! I hope that you have had a great Easter and are raring to go with the final term of this year.

Topic

We will start this half-term with a History based topic which looks at the development of Ivybridge, how it grew, the significant factors and what it has become today. As part of this topic, we will take a wonder down to the old Ivy Bridge to do some sketching and into Longtimber woods to have a look at the Paper Mill and the viaduct. As well as this, we have planned a day out of school where we will travel along the GWR to Saltash, walk over the Tamar Bridge and have a look in the Visitors centre on the other side. We may even meet a historical figure!!!

In the second half of the term, we will closely look at the history of the ancient Egyptian civilisation, how they grew and developed, what they were famous for and the discovery of King Tutankhamen. Again this topic will be enhanced by the meeting of a very famous person. Indeed, Mr Howard Carter will be joining us for the day to talk through his most remarkable discovery!!!

Reading is at the heart of everything that we do, and we hope to develop children's stamina, fluency and prosody for reading and encourage children to be able to read for longer periods of time. We would hope that children can read, without distractions, for at least 20 minutes by now. We will always be reading a book in the classroom and there will be ample opportunity for children to read independently. If you could make sure that children read out loud as often as possible and focus on their prosody (the stress and intonation when reading).

Maths

We will continue to use "White Rose" as our learning scheme and much of the resources for this can be found online if you want to follow what we are doing and support your child at home. I've added the yearly overview to the bottom of this page. There are daily videos on White Rose which are excellent to use if you want to make sure that your child is fully confident with the days content. Now that we are in the Autumn term we will be focussing on; place value, addition, subtraction and multiplication. There is a statutory Times Tables test in June, so please keep working on the speed and recall of the times tables facts. The expectation is that by the end of year 4, they should be confident and fluent. I can recommend; Hit the button or timestables.co.uk as a resource which are both excellent ways to help your child develop their fluency. 

The Curriculum

The rest of the curriculum at Stowford is a well crafted mix of: Science, Geography, History, Art, Music, MFL, RE, DT, Computing and PHSE. With all of our topics we try and make links and connections wherever possible. A class book is at the heart of the topic and we actively promote and encourage "joined up thinking", where ideas from one area of the curriculum can support and inspire other areas. 

We will continue to have Ms Kee for one of our PE sessions. These lessons will happen on a Thursday afternoon and the children will need to come to school in PE kits. Our other PE lesson will take the form of a swimming lesson which will happen on a Friday afternoon. This will be at the leisure centre in Ivybridge.

Wild Tribe will continue this year but instead of a weekly session, year 4 children will have a Wild Tribe day once every term. More details for this will be sent out nearer the time.

We encourage clear and open communication with parents regarding any aspect of the time that your child is with us. So if you do have any questions then please feel free to ask; however, we would prefer it if you spoke to us at the end of the day rather than the beginning and if you need a longer appointment then we will accommodate you when we can. Alternatively, you can contact us via Class Dojo messages.