Academic Year 2024 - 2025
Welcome to Fox Tor.
A warm welcome to all our new Year 3 Fox Tor families and welcome back to the Year 4 families.
In Fox Tor, we aim to make our learning enjoyable, whilst providing the necessary challenge to ensure all children make excellent progress. We have high expectations for all children and provide them with the platform to become successful, lifelong learners through our learning dispositions.
If you need to speak to me with regards to your child's learning, please contact me via Class Dojo or contact the office to arrange a time after school. I am not able to check Dojo messages during teaching time, so will not always respond straight away.
Please ensure that you regularly
check our class page on Class Dojo to see what learning is taking place.
Please see below for details of what we are learning this year.
Fox Tor Learning Map.
The following is the learning map for this year. As we are a mixed-aged class, we run a two-year rolling program. This year, we are on Year B.
Spellings
As well as our daily Read Write Inc. Spelling scheme, where the children will learn the necessary spelling rules to support them in their independent writing, we are also thinking about the statutory spellings for Years 3 and 4. The children need to be able to spell all of these words independently within their writing by the end of Year 4.
In addition to this, the Year 3 children will be revising their spelling of the Key Stage 1 statutory spelling words, which they should be spelling independently in their writing.
Can you please support your children with their spellings at home by encouraging them to practise their spellings using Spelling Shed and by quizzing them regularly.
Thank you.
English
Our English lessons are based on a wide range of high quality and significant children's literature chosen to engage, challenge and support children to be critical readers and confident and informed writers. All National Curriculum requirements of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, literary language and composition are embedded leading towards a variety of purposeful and exciting shorter, longer and extended writing outcomes where the audience and purpose is clear.
Our first text this half-term is 'Tadpole's Promise' by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross. During this unit, the children will engage with different genres of writing including explanations,speech and dialogue and setting description. For their final independent write, the children will be planning and writing their own narrative based on the story as well as creating thier own explanation texts..
Guided Reading
Our first text for Guided Reading this term will be 'The Lost Spells' by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris.
During these sessions, children will continue to develop their fluency in reading. They will also be using a range of reading skills to enable them to fully engage with the text. These will include making predictions, retrieving information, making inferences and identifying how the meaning of the text has been enhanced through the author's use of language.
Maths
We have adopted a mastery approach in our Maths learning. This approach allows the children the opportunity to master different methods, which they apply to their reasoning and problem solving activities, as well as across the curriculum. The children use concrete resources to aid their learning, before moving on to pictorial and abstract methods.
Our first unit in maths this half-term is Number: Place Value.
During this unit, the children be thinking about numbers to 1,000 (Y3) and 10,000 (Y4). They will be learning to represent these numbers using different apparatus (such as Base 10 and place value counters), partition these numbers in a variety of ways (e.g. 589 = 500 + 80 + 9) and locate these numbers on number lines. They will approach this in small steps, with each building on the previous to help develop their confidence and understanding of using these numbers.
Following this, the children will use their understanding of place value to support them with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing (the four operations). The children will learn effecient mental strategies, the use of concrete apparatus to support them as well as more formal written methods for column addition, subtraction and multiplication and the busstop method of short division. Year 3 children will be adding and subtracting 2- and 3-digit numbers while the Year 4s will be adding and subtracting 3- and 4-digit numbers. They will also be multiplying 2- and 3- digit numbers by a 1-digit number.
It will be essential for your child to have a good understanding of the multiplication and division facts for their set times tables (as mentioned in the Times Table section) in order to be able to successfully engage with this learning.
During their learning about Place Value, the children have been thinking about numberlines. They have had to think about their start and end numbers, work out the difference between them and then divide that number by the number of intervals on the number line to work out what they are counting up in steps of. They then used post-it notes to plot their numbers.
Year 3 have been focusing on number lines to 1,000, while the Year 4 children have been thinking about number lines to 10,000.
Times Tables
Times tables are an essential aspect of maths and a quick recall of the tables is vital for much of the maths that your children will encounter as they continue on their school journey. All children are expected to be fluent in the recall of the multiplication and division facts for all of the times tables (up to 12x) by the end of Year 4. This is really important as they will need them to support them with the maths that they encounter in upper Key Stage 2.
In Year 3, the children build on their knowledge of the 2s 5s and 10 times table multiplication facts by learning all of the facts for the 3s, 4s and 8 times tables. They will need to be fluent in their recall of the multiplication and division facts for these tables as this will be essential for thier learning in maths this year.
Year 4 children will be revising their knowledge of the times tables they learned in Years 2 and 3 (2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 8s and 10s) as well as learning the multiplication and division facts for the remaining tables up to 12 x 12.
We will be practising our times tables each week in school using Times Table Rockstars and other resources to make this learning fun and engaging. As well as this, it is important that you encourage your children to engage with Rockstars at home on a regular basis.
Please see the below poster for a full list of all of the times tables.
Science
In their Science lessons this term, Fox Tor will be learning about 'Our Amazing Bodies'. They will be investigating the skeletal and muscular system and finding out why we need them and what would happen if we didn't have skeletons or muscles. They will learn about the different food groups, what each one does for our bodies and will consider how to eat a healthy, balanced diet and explore why this is important as they continue to grow.
Once we have studied the importance of the food we eat, we will explore the teeth and their role as well as diving into the digestive system to find out what happens to the food we eat once we have finished eating it.
To demonstrate what they had learned in th eprevious session about the bones in the human body, the children were given post-it notes with the names of different bones on. Year 3 were given the simple names (e.g. skull, finger bones etc, while Year 4 were given the more technical names for the bones such as clavicle, patella etc).
They then needed to place the post-it note on the body of our fabulous volanteer in the place where that bone could be found under the skin.
Theme Learning: Geography
During the first half-term, Fox Tor will be studying Geography for their Theme Learning. Our first Geography unit of the year asks:
'Why are jungles so wet and deserts so dry?'
In order to answer this question, the children will explore the different weather patterns and climate across the globe. They will compare temperatures in the UK at different times of the year and compare this with other regions of the world. The children will then look at the conditions in jungles and deserts, investigate why they are like this based on their geographical positioning and consider the impact of these conditions on the animals and plant life that are found in these areas.
Theme Learning: History
IN the second half of the term, Fox Tor will be studying HIstory in their Theme Learning sessions and asking 'What is the secret of the standing stones?'
During this unit, the children will be investigating life in Britain during the Bronze Age.
The children will be using flow diagrams to describe the process of smelting bronze. They will also be investigating a range of Bronze Age artefacts and explaining what these tell us about the way that people in Britain lived at the time. The children will also look at Bronze Age burials and explore the purpose for a range of Bronze Age monuments, suggesting reasons for their designs and layouts, before exploring the stone monuments in places such as Merrivale.
Art
This term in Art, the children will be exploring the use of charcoal as a medium. In this unit, the children discover how to make drawings that capture a sense of drama or performance using charcoal.
They will look at artwork created by a range of artists including Laura McKendry and Edgar Degas, which they will use as discussion points and as inspiration fo rtheir own pieces of artwork.
Religious Education
This term in R.E., the children will be focusing on Christianity. During the first half of the term, the children will be looking at the creation story as told in the Book of Genesis. They will place the concepts of God and Creation on a timeline of the Bible's 'Big Story' and make clear links between Genesis Chapter 1 and what Christians believe about God and Creation.
To demonstrate their understanding of the text, the children will then describe what Christians do because they believe that God is the Creator. They will then ask questions and suggest answers about what might be important in the creation storyfor Christians living today as well as for people who are not Christian.
In the second half of the term, the children will be asking what it is like for people to follow God. They will be making links between the story of Noah and the idea of covenant. They will make simple links between promises in the story of Noah and the promises that Christians make at a wedding ceremony before making links between the story of Noah and how we live in school and the wider world.
Physical Education
Our P.E. days this half-term are Tuesdays and Thursdays.
On Tuesdays, the children will be attending swimming sessions at Mount Kelly. They will need to ensure that they have their swimming costumes and towels with them each week.
On Thursdays, we will be learning the different skills involved in football. This will include dribbling and controlling the ball, passing, intercepting and shooting. We will then put our skills to practise with a few matches and, hopefully, a mini tournament.
I would like to be able to use the field as much as possible for these sessions. If your child has football boots, can your child bring them in for these sessions. If not, can they please bring a separate pair of trainers in a carrier for use during these sessions. They will likely get muddy!
Home Learning
As with last year, your children will receive a Home Learning Grid at the start of each half term. This grid will contain home learning activities for them to complete over the half term. These tasks will relate to different aspects of their curriculum.
As well as their grids, the children also need to engage with Times Table Rock Stars and Spelling Shed every week. In order to have the most impact, it is recommended that the children engage little and often with these activities, so we ask that the children play Rockstarts and Spelling Shed a minimum of three tiimes a week for around 10 minutes each time. Can you please ensure that your children are using Time Table Rock Stars as opposed to Numbots (both accessed on the same site) as they now need to be practising their times tables to support their learning). You will find your child's login details for Rockstars and Spelling Shed inside the front cover of their Home Learning books. If you encounter any issues with accessing these sites, please let me know as soon as possible so that I can rectify any problems.
It is also important that your children read regularly at home, ideally to a grown up or older sibling where possible. This enables them to develop their flueny and provides them with support when they get stuck and someone to discuss their books with. Questioning your childre following a reading session is great as you can ask questions regarding prediction (What do you think will happen next? Why?), inference (How is the character feeling? What clues are there to suggest that?) and basic retreival questions (What colour was...? How many...?)
Academic Year 2023 - 2024
Welcome to your new class, fabulous foxes!
A warm welcome to all our Fox Tor families. I am looking forward to this year and a return to teaching Year 3 and 4!
In Fox Tor, we aim to make our learning enjoyable, whilst providing the necessary challenge to ensure all children make excellent progress. We have high expectations for all children and provide them with the platform to become successful, lifelong learners through our learning dispositions.
If you need to speak to me with regards to your child's learning, please contact me via Class Dojo or contact the office to arrange a time after school. I am not able to check Dojo messages during teaching time, so will not always respond straight away.
Please ensure that you regularly
check our class page to see what learning is taking place.
Please see below for details of what we are learning this year.
2023 - 2024 Learning Map
The following Learning Map outlines our learning in Fox Tor this year:
English
Our English lessons are based on a wide range of high quality and significant children's literature chosen to engage, challenge and support children to be critical readers and confident and informed writers. All National Curriculum requirements of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, literary language and composition are embedded leading towards a variety of purposeful and exciting shorter, longer and extended writing outcomes where the audience and purpose is clear.
Our first text this half-term is 'The BFG' by Roald Dahl. During this unit, the children will engage with different genres of writing including diary entries, character descriptions and letters. For their final independent write, the children will be planning and writing their own fantasy adventure.
We will also be using sections of the story within our Guided Reading sessions.
The children used place value grids and counters to represent a range of 3- and 4-digit numbers.
English
Our current focus for English is Escape from Pompeii, with the final objective being to write a newspaper report.
So far, the children have used their prior knowledge to infer some historical items. We will be identifying the specific features and layout of newspaper report and how these impact the reader, whilst also looking at the disaster that occurred which links to our current Theme learning.
Guided reading
Our guided reading focuses around the inference map shown below. Throughout the year, we will use a wide range of texts and genres. This will allow the children to gain a deeper understanding of the different styles of text and identify similarities and differences.
Maths
We have adopted a mastery approach in our Maths learning. This approach allows the children the opportunity to master different methods, which they apply to their reasoning and problem solving activities, as well as across the curriculum. The children use concrete resources to aid their learning, before moving on to pictorial and abstract methods.
Our current area of learning in Maths is Fractions.
It is vital that all children have a secure knowledge of their times tables to aid their learning across other areas of the curriculum.
Physical Education
Our scheduled PE days are Thursday and Friday. It's essential that your child comes to school in their PE kits on these days. Our current focuses for PE are Swimming and Athletics. This will develop our learning of skills to succeed in a range of games, physical activity and sports.
We are extremely lucky to have the opportunities to attend a variety of clubs throughout the week.
Theme learning
Geography/History
In Oke Tor, we take real pride in our History and Geography Theme Learning.
Our current theme is Geography based and is all about Earthquakes - our big question is 'Why do some earthquakes cause more damage than others?'
We will be become geographers and analyse a range of resources to answer our question.
Science
We are getting our scientific heads on every week through our current theme of 'Electricity' and Explorify sessions. The children will have the opportunities to develop their understanding through hands-on investigations and creating circuits.
Please find all of our knowledge organisers and word mats below.
Knowledge Organisers
Home Learning
As well as learning in school, it is essential that children also participate in home learning too. The expectation is that all children read regularly by themselves and with an adult. The focus is on both decoding words and comprehension.
Children are also expected to access Times Table Rockstars and Spelling Shed, with specific tasks set by the class teacher. This should be a minimum of five games on Spelling Shed and 10 games on TTRS, with three games being on the Studio platform. We are currently embedding our KIRFs (Key Instant Recall Facts) home learning. This is best practised little and often to support them with learning and remembering more. Please find this half term's knowledge organisers and KIRFs below.
Maths
We have adopted a mastery approach in our Maths learning. This approach allows the children the opportunity to master different methods, which they apply to their reasoning and problem solving activities, as well as across the curriculum. The children use concrete resources to aid their learning, before moving on to pictorial and abstract methods.
Our first unit in maths this half-term is Number: Place Value.
During this unit, the children be thinking about numbers to 1,000 (Y3) and 10,000 (Y4). They will be learning to represent these numbers using different apparatus (such as Base 10 and place value counters), partition these numbers in a variety of ways (e.g. 589 = 500 + 80 + 9) and locate these numbers on number lines. They will approach this in small steps, with each building on the previous to help develop their confidence and understanding of using these numbers.