In Year 4 this term, we are finding out ‘How the World Works.’  The central idea for our Unit of Inquiry is ‘Innovation can lead to technological advances.’  As part of our inquiry we will be trying to answer the following:

• How have technological advances helped people to improve their way of life globally?

 

• How can innovation be used to develop product design?

​We will be using water to help us with our inquiry and will investigate the different states of matter that water can take on and how it changes from one to another, commenting on the scientific processes involved and using the correct scientific vocabulary.  We will also find out about different innovations that have helped with the transportation of water and how technological advances and improvements in product design have helped with this.


We will also be finding out how the water cycle works, investigating the amount of rainfall that falls both here and in other parts of the world and creating our own inquiry to find out more.  We will be using spreadsheets on the computer to help plot our results and draw conclusions.  We will be learning to measure and cut accurately to create our own rain gauge to help with this inquiry.

​In English, we will be looking at writing to inform.  This will include creating a newspaper report and explanation text.  We will also be analysing the writing style and genre features of different texts designed to inform the reader.  We will be looking at the features of newspaper reports and explanation texts, commenting on the use of language and layout features and why these features have been used to convey the information. To support our own writing, we will highlight different grammatical and genre features, labelling and identifying them.  We will then emulate these in our writing style.  We will be using two core texts to inspire our writing - ‘KrindleKrax’ by Philip Ridley and ‘The Water Cycle’ by Theresa Greenaway.
Our maths focus this term continues to be addition and subtraction, before moving on to measurement and length working with numbers and measurements to work out the perimeter of different shapes. We will then be working with multiplication and division for the remaining weeks of term. We will continue to use objects to help visually represent the maths, as well as using formal written methods of calculation. Our  ‘Big Maths, Beat That’ challenge continues this term. 

This term our unit of inquiry is ‘learning requires resilience and a diverse approach.’  We will be following different lines of inquiry to help us discover:
 

• How we can all access learning?
• How I can be responsible for my own learning and personal success?

​We will be investigating the different ways people can learn and exploring the best techniques and strategies to support our own learning. In order to do this we will be looking at how we learnt skills in the past, for example, how to ride a bike, swimming, how to tie shoelaces and what resources we used to help us. We will be looking closely at ourselves and how we learn best and how this is similar or different to others.  As part of this, we will create an accurate self-portrait by developing and using skills including sketching, shading and different tones. 


In English, we will be looking at writing for entertainment.  Initally we will be focusing on describing characters in fiction and writing poems about ourselves.  We will be using thesauruses to help us choose exciting describing words.   By studying how different writing styles are used for different purposes and audiences, we will learn how to plan, edit, reflect and improve our own writing. The text we will be studying is “Leon and the Place Between” by Graham Baker-Smith and we will be looking at how the characters are developed by the author and replicating this style in our own writing.

​To further our inquiry, we will be testing our learning using scienctific methods.  The focus will be on observations of the natural world such as weather systems and local habitats. We will use skills such as observing, collecting, anaylsing and presenting data in differernt forms and drawing conclusions from this.  We will be sharing our findings with our peers in the form of group presentations.
Our maths focus this term is number and place value, with addition and subtraction.  We will be using our understanding of place value to round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000.  When learning about addition and subtraction, we will look at different methods including the column method and using number lines to help visualise the learning.  This supports our unit of inquiry as pupils will be able to identify the method that works best for them to solve different problems. 
Times tables form a key part of the Year 4 maths curriculum.  This term we will continue our ‘Big Maths, Beat That’ challenge which focuses on the 6, 7 and 9 times tables, as well as revision of the 3, 4 and 8 times tables from Year 3.