Elder Class 

Welcome to Year 4!
Our Class Teacher is Miss Lovell and our Class Teaching Assistant is Mrs Rowland.
Madame Pickford teaches us French for an hour a week on Monday. Mr Hudson teaches us for one of our PE lessons each week.

You can contact Miss Lovell via Class Dojo.

In Elder Class, we love all things creative, working in teams, keeping active and working hard on our times table facts! We also often impress our teachers with our vocabulary choices and sharing good ideas! We are proud to be the oldest children along our corridor.

Class Routines:
On each of these days, your child will need to bring in these things listed below. We encourage the children to be responsible for their belongings and bringing in the correct things on the correct day. We appreciate your support with this.

2023-2024

READING

In Elder class, we teach reading daily, either as a whole class or sometimes in a group with Miss Lovell or Mrs Rowland. As in previous years, your child will bring home a Home-School Reading Diary each day to enable us to monitor their reading at home and to communicate with you alongside class Dojo. Please ensure that this is in school every day. Reading regularly is proven to help not only children’s reading ability, but also their vocabulary, writing and spelling. We strongly encourage your child to read to you or themselves at home every evening and talk about the books together, whenever possible. Ideally, they should read for 20-30 mins a day so that they can immerse themselves in the text. Obviously, if they want to read for longer, that is brilliant! It is important, that as well as being able to read the text, they show a good understanding of what has been read. Asking questions where they have to infer information from the text, is an area that will be developed in Year 4. When your child has read, either to you or to themselves, please make sure that you sign their Home-School Diary, so that we know they have read at home. The Big Cat reading books include a wide range of wonderful fiction and non-fiction books which are linked to the school curriculum. We also have a huge selection of books in the classroom and in the library for the children to borrow and read at home. Whenever possible, particularly if your child is a reluctant reader, it is good if you read to your child too; in this case, I suggest that you choose a book that is slightly trickier than their reading level, to broaden their vocabulary further.  

HANDWRITING

We have bought a new handwriting scheme to use this year to ensure consistency across the school. The children will have a weekly handwriting lesson and then daily handwriting practice. Letter formation and joins will be reinforced in all lessons and in any homework. Videos of letter formation and new joins will be shared on Class Dojo so please do look at these and encourage your children to for letters/joins correctly at home too.

SPELLING

As last year, a list of spellings for the week will be sent home in the children’s Home-School diaries on a Monday and activities will be done daily in class. At the end of the week, a dictation exercise is carried out to see how well the children are applying their learning. Please do look at the words with your child and talk about the phoneme of the week. They can then see if they can find words in their books that also have these phonemes.

HOMEWORK

The children will be set maths and handwriting/spelling homework each week. This will be sent home on a Wednesday and be due in the following Monday morning. More information will follow on this when it starts in week 3. In the meantime, obviously daily reading and times tables should ideally be part of your child’s daily routine.

PE

PE happens twice a week so your child needs to ensure they have the correct kit on Tuesdays and Wednesdays this half term. (However, it would be useful if your child’s full PE kit is in school every day, as sometimes we need to change days.). In cold weather, when we are outside, jogging bottoms/leggings and a jumper will be needed. This jumper needs to be separate from their normal school one. T-shirts should be white with a round neck (no buttons). See the website for the full PE uniform list. Please name all your child’s clothes. If your child has their ears pierced, please ensure that they are either able to take their earrings out themselves for PE, or bring in tape to cover them up; we do not have a supply of tape to do this with in school. Children with long hair must have it all tied back for PE as well.

WATER/SNACK

We would also like to remind you that every child should have a named bottle of water in school as well as their lunchtime drink. This will ensure that your child has access to water throughout the day. If you send in a snack for break time, please ensure that it is a healthy one. It is useful if the snack is put in a named bag/pot so that it can be put in a basket in the classroom first thing in the morning; this avoids congestion in the cloakroom at breaktime.

HOUSE BADGES

House assemblies are on a Wednesday morning and are a time to celebrate achievements, as well as developing a sense of community within each house. Please encourage your child to wear their house badges these days (and every other day if they would like) to show they are part of the ‘team’. House badges are counted on a Thursday and the number in each house goes towards house Dojo points at the end of the week. If you ever have any questions, concerns or perhaps some celebrations, then please do contact me via Class Dojo or write a note in your child’s Home-School Diary. If it is general information, the Home-School Diary or Class Dojo is best but if it is something that I need to know that day, it is best to pop in/ring or email the school office so that you can make sure that I get the message, as I won’t always be able to check my Dojo messages before school or during the school day.

SWIMMING

Swimming lessons will start Thursday 3rd October and will run every Thursday for 8 sessions until Thursday 28th November (Not 31st Oct as it is half term). We will need an extra adult to help take the children to swimming lessons so please contact Miss Lovell if you are able to do this.

Thank you for your support. Miss Lovell and Mrs Rowland

Helpful Resources

Click on the links in the table to open the help sheets/websites: