September 2016
Year 4T
Dear Parents and Carers,
Welcome back to the new academic year! I hope your child is excited for the new adventure this year.
The areas of learning for Year 4 this term are:
Theme
History – Ancient Greece
Our first historical study will explore
the exciting world of Ancient Greece,
the birthplace of democracy!
We will be:

Examining how and why the Greek Empire spread

Exploring beliefs including Greek gods and their
associated myths and legends

Getting to grips with Ancient Greek daily life, including
social structure, slavery and women’s rights
We will develop skills such as:

Sequencing events chronologically on a timeline

Using sources to infer and deduce information

Considering how historians gather their evidence

Understanding key events from two differing points of
view
Geography – Mountains, Volcanoes and Earthquakes
Next half term we will focus on mountain
and volcano formation, investigating their
relationship with earthquakes. The children
will decide which mountain range and volcano
they would like to explore at the start of
the project.
R.E – Buddhism
We are learning all about Buddhism this
term, focusing on:

The story of Buddhism’s founder,
Siddhartha Gautama

Buddhists’ main beliefs including
the Four Noble Truths and the 8 Fold Path

Karma and meditation
Our RE teaching focuses on exploring a range of beliefs
from all over the world and does not encourage the
children to believe in a certain god or faith. We encourage
children to find similarities and points of contrast between
religions, providing space for reflection on their own
developing belief system, whatever that may be.
PSHE, Philosophy for Children and Time to Think (TTT)
In Personal, Social and Health Education
(PSHE) we will be exploring the concept of
the Growth Mindset and how to develop this
as a useful tool for tackling the challenges we
encounter in life.
Current issues affecting the children’s daily lives, such as
e-safety, self-esteem, friendships and family will continue
to be addressed on an on-going basis in Time to Think, and
Literacy
Our literacy work this half term is inspired by Roald Dahl’s
chilling classic, The Witches. Children will develop their text
interrogation skills by interacting with extracts from the
book, learning to ‘write as a reader.’ We will explore a range
of increasingly sophisticated punctuation and grammar
techniques by deploying these in their writing, and will
develop convincing characters and settings. We will engage
with the themes of the book through drama, art and
philosophy in our trademark child-led manner.
Numeracy
In an exciting start to our Numeracy work
this year, the children are given the task
of finding the perfect home for some topsecret celebrities who are moving to the
locality! They will need to use their new area and perimeter
skills wisely, and will use place value to work within a budget
to find and furnish the perfect property for this picky pair!
Finally, children will use the four operations of addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division to check that their
calculations are correct before presenting their results to
the famous couple.
Art – Pointillism
Local Altrincham artist, Michael Wylie is the inspiration for
our Pointillism project this half term. Michael’s modern
pieces use dots to form a motivational phrase, which fits in
well with our Growth Mindset focus in PSHE.
We will explore traditional pointillists such as Georges
Seurat and Paul Signac before looking at more contemporary
uses of pointillism techniques, from Roy Lichtenstein to our
focus artist, Michael Wylie. We will investigate a wealth of
ways of making dots and how by varying the density it can
look as though objects are 3D!
Science
Our Science topic is Sound! Miss
Mohamadi’s brother presents the
children with a challenge in our first
lesson: he needs them to sound-proof his shed so that it can
be used as a music studio!
Through a range of hands-on investigations, we will find out:

How sounds are made through vibrations

How vibrations travel through a medium to our ears
the children will develop a range of higher order thinking
skills in Philosophy for Children sessions in response to
topical stimuli.


Patterns between pitch and object
Patterns between volume and vibrations
If you have any concerns or would like to know more, please do not hesitate to speak with me.
With kind regards,
Mrs Robertson
Year 4 Class Teacher