Class 3 (Years 3 & 4) at Spofforth

The teacher for Class 3 is Mrs Ward.

A welcome message from your teacher

To follow

Preparing for September

To follow

 

Further Foundations for the School Year 2020-2021

Safe, happy, ready to learn.

 

Any time you can spend with your child helping them to feel safe and happy about returning to school will help them be ready to learn. In addition, any time you can spend on any of the activities suggested to help them prepare for academic learning ahead of September will be of value. Thank you for your support.

Children sometimes feel a bit nervous about moving up to a new school year. It is possible this will be more likely if they’ve been away from school since the end of March.

Here are some tips to help your child think positively about the changes ahead:

• Highlight and remind your child about the things that make school great.
• Arrange some (socially-distanced) play dates over the holiday to strengthen existing friendships. Remind your child that moving to a different class is an opportunity to make some new friends as well.
• If your child feels they struggled with learning this year, talk about what they found difficult but also remind them about all the areas where they did well. Praise and positive thinking will build their self-esteem.
• Get organised early! Talk about any changes to the daily routine, ensure you have all the right uniform and, if your child takes a packed lunch, plan some tasty additions.
• If your child is worried they’ll fall behind in class or won’t be able to manage all the homework, talk through the changes they should expect and how you could approach them. Make sure your child knows there will still be time to relax after school and keep up with out-of-school hobbies.
• If your child doesn’t think they are going to like their new teacher, try to find out why. It might be that they’ve seen the teacher telling someone off, or have heard stories from other children. Talk about the fact that the school has agreed rules and teachers have their own expectations, but always be positive about the teacher in front of your child.
• As well as preparing your child emotionally, you can boost confidence in their academic ability by giving them a head-start on the coming year’s learning. This is especially important if you or your child feel that their learning might have been impacted by the long period outside the classroom.

 

Transition Booklet

Click on this link to access further ideas and suggestions in our Follifoot & Spofforth Transition Booklet.docx

 

Ready to Learn Every Day

 

The poster below has more top tips on helping your child to make the most of every day of school learning.

Click here to access the Ready To Learn Leaflet

 

Year 3 Ready – Some More Ideas

Pre-Y3 literacy focus: Understand how different texts are organised

Using text formats which are used by adults (instructions, newspapers) can be a really big motivator as it’s something fun, thought-provoking and ultimately grown-up!

Do try this at home:

Look together at a selection of articles from magazines. Have them think of a subject they are knowledgeable about (football or dance, for example). Get them to write a newsy article around this topic. Encourage them to use a headline, sub-headings and to double proof-read once they’ve completed it – this is going in a magazine after all!

Foxed by technology? If you’re one of the growing number of adults who gets their offspring to program the DVR / change the settings on an app, ask your child to write you step-by-step instructions.

Pre-Y3 maths focus: Recall all number facts for numbers 0-20

Your child will have been covering number facts (doubles, number bonds, etc.) since Year 1, but as it’s so important they revisit them again in Year 3 to consolidate their learning.

Do try this at home:

Give them a timed quiz of 20 number fact questions – how long does it take them to answer them all? By the end of Year 3 they should ‘just know’ the answers rather than having to stop and work them out.

Then let them write a similar quiz for you. They’ll find it highly amusing if you purposefully get some wrong and they have to correct you!

Starting Year 3 means entering a new Key Stage and your child will have to master lots of new learning.

In Year 3 maths your child will start adding and subtracting with three-digit numbers, using column addition and subtraction. They will learn their 3, 4 and 8 times tables. This will then help them in moving onto multiplying a two-digit number by a one-digit number.

Your child will learn how to find fractions of quantities and also about equivalent fractions. They will learn about perimeter and also how to tell the time on a 12-hour and 24-hour clock. They will start to learn about right angles plus horizontal, vertical, perpendicular and parallel lines. They will need to interpret and present data using bar charts, pictograms and tables.

Your child will be increasing their familiarity with a wide range of genres of writing in Year 3 English. They will be preparing poems and play scripts to read aloud and perform. They will be thinking about inference and making predictions about what is going to happen in a story.

This year they will need to build on their handwriting work, becoming more confident with joining letters. They will be thinking carefully about the setting, characters and plot in their stories and how to structure a text, remembering to use plenty of good description. They will need to use conjunctions such as when, before, after, while, so and because. This year, they will start to use speech marks when writing dialogue.

 

Year 4 Ready – Some More Ideas

Pre-Y4 literacy focus: Collect interesting adverbs

In order for children to improve the quality of their writing they need to think critically about words they use and what ones are more interesting to readers. Learning more unusual adverbs can improve their story writing immensely.

Do try this at home:

Write a sentence with no adverbs, have them improve it by adding some in.

Collect adverbs onto a list from the book they’re currently reading – they might find it interesting to classify them.

Pre-Y4 maths focus: Converting between units of time

In Year 4 children learn about the 12-hour and 24-hour clock and also how to convert between hours/minutes and minutes/seconds.

Do try this at home:

Every now and again, ask them to look at an analogue clock and tell you what the time is. Can they give you this time as a 24-hour clock time?

Give them some ‘real-life’ problems: explain that you need to start cooking dinner in 144 minutes. Can they tell you what this is in hours and minutes? Allow them to do some working on a piece of paper if they need to.

In Year 4 maths your child will be learning to add and subtract numbers with up to four digits using column addition and subtraction. They will continue to learn their times tables, so that by the end of the year they are confident in all of them up to the 12 times table. This will then help them in moving onto multiplying three-digit numbers by a one-digit number.

Your child will solve problems involving fractions and be introduced to decimals. They will need to find the perimeter and area of shapes, convert between units of measurement and convert between the 12-hour and 24-hour clock. They will do further work on angles and co-ordinates. They will also need to interpret and present data in bar charts and line graphs.

The Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check (MTC)

Children moving up to Year 4 this September in English maintained schools, special schools and academies (including free schools) will also have to sit the Multiplication Tables Check.

Under the current National Curriculum, primary-school children are supposed to know all their times tables up to 12×12 by the end of Year 4.

Children will be tested using an on-screen check (on a computer or a tablet), where they will have to answer multiplication questions against the clock.

The test will last no longer than 5 minutes and is similar to other tests already used by primary schools. Their answers will be marked instantly.

Children will have 6 seconds to answer each question in a series of 25. Each question will be worth one mark and be presented to the child in this format:

5 x 6 = ____

Questions will be selected from the 121 number facts that make up the multiplication tables from 2 to 12, with a particular focus on the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 times tables as they are considered to be the most challenging.

The six-second time limit per question has been decided on by the DfE because it should allow children enough time to demonstrate their recall of times tables without giving them the time to work out the answers to each question.

There will be no “pass mark” (expected standard threshold) and no child will “fail” the test.

The DfE says the purpose of the check is to help teachers identify which children are falling behind and target areas where they’re not being given a chance to succeed.

In Year 4 English your child will be increasing their familiarity with a wide range of genres of writing. They will be preparing poems and play scripts to read aloud and perform. They will be thinking about inference and making predictions about what is going to happen in a story.

When it comes to writing, they should become much more confident this year with joining their handwriting and keeping it as neat and legible as possible. They will be thinking carefully about the setting, characters and plot in their stories and how to structure a text, including use of paragraphs. They will be using apostrophes to mark plural possession. They should also become more confident in including dialogue in their stories, including the correct use of speech marks.

 

We have teamed up with the SchoolRun.com to help provide families with useful resources to support learning at home.