Year 4 Curriculum and Day-to-Day Overview

In Year 4, our day starts with a calm, soft start, so children are ready to learn. They are able to come into school and participate in a calming activity such as reading, times tables practice or handwriting. This gives them an opportunity to settle into the school day and check in with the classroom team if they need support.

Our day officially starts at 9am with a Reading lesson. Across the week, we study our class book and use our VIPERS skills to analyse the text. On a Friday, the children have the opportunity to practise independently applying the skills learnt over the week to a new unseen text. 

At 9:45am we move on to Maths. We start each lesson with an independent 'flashback 4' activity, where the children have the opportunity to revisit some of their previous learning and get their brains warmed up for the lesson. At Waterside, we follow the Power Maths scheme, where the children have the opportunity to learn and practice new skills following a concrete, pictorial and abstract approach. 

After break, we complete our writing sessions. These sessions are focussed around a key text and a purpose for writing. Each lesson starts with a grammar warm up where the children learn and practice key grammar skills needed for writing. In the lessons, the children build up their understanding of spelling, punctuation, grammar, structure and purpose to support them in completing a piece of extended writing at the end of the unit. In addition to the writing lessons, we also complete one spelling shed lesson per week and handwriting practice in the afternoons. These skills are then further practised through homework tasks.

The afternoons look different each day as we teach a range of subjects such as Science, PE, RE, Art, Geography, Computing, PSHE, Music and French. PE is taught by specialist teachers from Premier Education. If children require further support in any subject, they may also attend short booster sessions with a class adult during our afternoon learning time.

In Year 4, we will have PE on a Monday and Tuesday afternoon, so children will need to be in PE kit on these days. We visit the school library on a Wednesday afternoon, so please ensure that children bring in their library book on this day, if they wish to change it. 

For more information on what we will be teaching each day this term, please see our class timetable below: