Year 4

Meet your new teacher and teaching assistant(s) for September 2023

Welcome to Year 4 

St. James the Greater	St. Matthias
Teacher: Mrs Mellen Teaching Assistant: Miss Betts	Teacher: Mrs Stanczyk Teaching Assistant: Miss Joanna  Teaching Assistant: Mrs Ahmmad

Key Dates

Wednesday- Swimming lessons and PE day

• 13th September- Beginning of Year Mass @10.00am
• 19th September- Hook day children to dress up as Oliver Twist
• 28th Parents Reading workshop- 3:45pm 
• 29th Feast of St. Michael- Celebration and whole school Mass @10.00am
• 2nd October- Parents Consultation
• 6th October- Trip to Upnor Castle 
• 11th October- Harvest Mass whole school @10.00am
• 17th October- Trip to Historic Dockyard
• 18th October- Parents Maths workshop- 3:45pm
• 20th October- End of Term 

Learning Expectations:

P.E 

Our P.E day is Wednesday
All children will be expected to wear their PE kit to school on their PE days. They will keep this on all day, so they do not need to bring in their daily school uniform. All children must wear a white polo shirt (logo optional), burgundy shorts, plain black shorts, or burgundy/black tracksuit bottoms. In addition, the school jumper/ cardigan should be worn to school on these days.
 

Reading

It is expected that the children read every day for at least 20 minutes. Some days it would be nice for your child to read to you so that you can ask them questions about the book to test their understanding. It is also a nice time to spend together. Each child will be given a leveled book to bring home and once their book is finished they can bring it back to school to be changed after completing a quiz. Their level will be reviewed termly by the children taking a quiz based on key reading skills. 

Spelling

Your child will receive their spellings on a Monday. They will then have until Friday to practise these before their test. Please make sure that your child also understands the meaning of the words they are learning. If your child misspells a word from the spelling list in the Friday test, the way they wrote it will be written next to the spelling in their reading journal so that parents can see the error made and continue to work on this spelling at home.

Maths

In Year 4, we love to work on our Maths skills. At home, we ask children to practice their weekly times tables focus where each week on a Friday we will complete a small quiz against the clock. Their expected at the end of the year to know their times tables from 1 - 12. To support this we encourage children to work on practising times tables out of sequence to help build on their times tables knowledge. The children all have access to an interactive times tables programme called Times Tables Rock Stars (https://ttrockstars.com/)where the children can develop their avatars in a fun way with Maths.  

Parent videos

Please have a look at our help videos for parents which help show you how we teach reading and maths in Year 4. 

Jotter Learning Platform

At St Michael’s we subscribe to Jotter; the learning platform designed with primary schools in mind. Children are growing up in a fast-changing online world and we strive to ensure that they gain the essential skills both within and beyond school. Teachers will keep you up-to-date with your child’s learning. Your child will be able to download and upload work and complete tasks. There will be pages where much of what you see has been created by the children themselves. This is their chance to shine as they write content and collaborate on research.

Jotter gives children the opportunity to explore concepts such as wikis and blogs in a safe environment. We hope you enjoy using Jotter as much as we do. To log in please type in your child’s username and password. To obtain this information please speak to your class teacher.

Prayers

At St Michael's we say three prayers a day. This is so that we can keep our relationship with God close. 

Prayer and Liturgy 2023-2024 (Collective Worship)

Theme: Care for our Common Good     Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:7-8

Today, we shared and responded to the letter from Pope Francis 'Laudato Si-Care for our Common Home'. We reflected upon our community and wondered what we can do to support our neigbourhood. We created colourful posters to remind others how we should treat our planet. 

Theme: Miracles of Jesus     Scripture: Acts 3:16

This week in our Prayer Liturgy time, we reflected upon miracles of Jesus. We wondered if miracles still happen today and asked Jesus to help us to always have strong faith. 

Theme: Don't give up!     Scripture: Hebrews 12: 1-2

This week in our class Prayer and Liturgy time, we reflected upon perseverance. We discussed on how Jesus can guide us througout the new academic year as well as how we can show our reslience on a daily basis. 

We wrote a secret message to Jesus to let Him know that we are always ready to follow Him as His disciples.

Collective worship 2022-2023

Peter's Speech Acts 10: 34-47, Acts 11: 16-40
Why do you think God made us all different? Year 4 discussed this question in this week's Collective Worship lesson. They discussed how they all have different talents and skills to contribute to the class. They then worked as a class and in small teams to pass the hula hoop around without breaking the circle.

Corinthians 13: 1-13
What is love? Who you love? Why do we love? Love was the theme of this weeks Collective Worship in Year 4. They discussed, what love is, who they loved and why we love. They wrote beautiful prayers for their loved ones.

Acts 3: 1-15

Year 4 enjoyed role playing this scripture today after discussing who helped the man who couldn't walk. They discussed how we should always help those around us, especially those in need.

Adam and Eve- Gensis 3: 1-14
The first sin was committed by Adam and Eve. This week the children discussed when God created the world and the story of Adam and Eve. They discussed how the snake tempted them with the apple, and were able to relate this to their lives as we are in the time of Lent, where we may be tempted by those things we have given up. They created beautiful pieces of artwork to show the world, as God first created it.

Maundy Thursday- Matthew 26: 47-57

Today the children reflected on the events of Maundy Thursday. They discussed the betrayal of Jesus and how it would of have felt. Together as a class, they wrote an acrostic poem all about Maudy Thursday.

Fruits of the Spirit

Joy, Love, Peace, Goodness, Kindness, Self-control, Gentleness, Patience and Faithfullness- these are the Fruits of the Spirit that year 4 discussed this week. They discussed each fruit and how they can show this in their daily lives towards those around them.

Feeding of the 5000

This week the children looked at when Jesus fed the 5000. They discussed this miracle and thought about how they could help those less fortunate then them. They created a Newsround style report on the feeding and linked to the world around them.

Lent

The children in year 4 considered what Lent means to them. 

They discussed why Lent is such an important time in the Church calander and explored what we might do during this time. The children talked about the 3 main aspects of Lent and created their own promises for our promise tree.

Forgiveness
What does it mean to forgive? Year 4 thought about this question during Collective Worship this week. They discussed what it means to forgive and to be forgiven. Prayer leaders reminded the children about the parable: The Lost Son, and they discussed how the father was able to forgive his son. In groups, they made posters as a reminder to always be open to forgiveness.

Jesus Light of The World
Year 4 reflected on Jesus being the light of their lives, as they prepare for Candlemas on 2nd February. They read John 8:12 and discussed who Jesus is to them. They made beautiful candles to represent Jesus being the light in their life.

St Matthias Class Assembly

 St Matthis loved sharing their learning with the rest of KS2 and their parents. They put on quite the performance and included all sorts of learning including: Martine Luther King Day, Chinese New Year and lots of learning about sound and the ear. 

They sang a lovely song about high hopes celebrating the New Year and the Jesus and God are there to support us throughout this next year.

Peace Week

In year 4 this week we have been looking at the theme of peace. We thought about how the Holy Spirit represents peace and role played the Pentecost thinking about the true meaning behind it and how it helped there to be peace in the world.

Being Grateful

In collective worship year four have been telling Jigsaw Jez all that we are grateful for. We did this while exploring the Epiphany and looking at the scripture John 3:16. We explored how Jesus was a present to us from God and how we should be grateful for Him and show our thanks. 

Celebrating Christmas

In the true meanng of Christmas we have been exploring Christmas Carols. We created boards ready to be displayed in Church for Christmas. We looked at 'It was on a Starry Night' and 'Away in a Manger' in particular when designing and creating our boards. 

Trust in God

Today we explored how important it is to have trust in God. We looked at all of the significatnt people we have been learning about in R.E to help us understanding what having trust in God brings to us. 

We reflected also on how we can show this trust and came to the conclusion that we must follow God. We discussed how if we have trust in God then He will trust in us and will forgive us our sins. We reflected on how being truly sorry means that we will try not to make the same mistakes again. 

Advent

This week we have been celebrating the beginning of advent. We went to mass where we learnt all about the true meaning of Christmas and what advent is. We reflected on what we are expecting at Christmas and sang some lovely hymns to prepare our hearts for the coming of our Lord the Saviour.

When we got back to class we created advent wreaths to help us with the countdown to Christmas. 

Our community

This week we have been celebrating Inter-Faith and Anti-bullying week. For our collective worship we brought the two aspects together and thought about our community. We reflected on the good which Acorn House does and used this to help us reflect on how we can build a good community. We also thought about  the different communities we belong to. 

We finished of by singing the hymn 'Make me a Chanel of your Peace' as we thought about how all communities need peace.

Remembrance day

This week we have been remembering those who have died for us in the wars, past and present. We discussed how they sacrificed their lives so that we could have a better life. We also discussed the animal that lost their lives in battle. We created a class wreath with red and purple poppies to represent the people and animals lost. 

We also reflected on how the scripture Mathew 5:9 links to this. 
                                       

All Saint's and All Soul's day

In collective worship we have been reflecting on the meaning of two very important days. All Saint's day and All Soul's day reflecting on how we remember those we have lost. The class said prayers for those they would like to remember, making some lovely prayer intentions. 

St James the Greater Assembly

St James the Greater loved jumping back and forth through time to show KS2 and their parents all about their learning from this term. They explored the Romans and French as well as explorign the thought that Jesus is always with us and we should not be afraid. 

Sharing is Caring 

Today we explored the thought of sharing in class. We looked at the story of the rich man who did not share from the gospel Luke 12 :16-21.

After this we discussed ways that the rich man could have behaved differently by showing kindness and caring through sharing. We discussed planting seeds to share with others both physically and metaphorically. 

To send the message forward some of us created role plays showing how the man could have behaved differently while others created pictures of what we can share. 

Thanksgiving

We thought about all that we have to thankful for in our lives. We read Luke 17: 11-19 to help us understand how Jesus always helps us. 

We reflected on what we are thankful for and created a tree of thanks. 

We look at the Gospel from Sunday's mass Luke 17:12-19 where Jesus cured 10 lepers and one was given salvation because he gave thanks. 

Compassion

We looked at the scripture James 2:14-17 to further understand what it means to be compassionate and how we can show it. We drew on the time of Harvest Festival to explore how we show compassion to others, not just those that we know and how it is important to act compassionately not just speak compassionately. We linked compassion to other stories such as Feeding the 5000, Curing the Blind Man and The Grave of Lazarus.

St Michael's Day

Today was St Michael's day. We discussed who St Michael was and why he is particularly important to us. We thought about what a patron saint is and went to mass where we learnt that we all had our own guardian angel looking out for us and protecting us from the moment we are born. We looked at how St Michael also does this for us and took part in hymns -  particularly enjoying singing our own special St Michael's day hymn. We looked at his victory in battle over Satan in the book of Revelation (Revelation 12:7-9).

 Flourishing together

We looked at following the successes of the Lionesses this summer and discussed how we can flourish as a class to help each other succeed. We explored Psalm 92:13 and the children considered how to take its message forwards in their lives to help them flourish further. 

Remembering the Queen

Today we thought about the news we heard about Queen Elizabeth II's death and reflected upon what she meant to us. We discussed the upset that her death has caused but chose to highlight also the wonders behind it. We celebrated her life thinking about all the important work she did and what she meant to us and celebrated the fact that she will finally be reunited with her husband and all the other loved ones she has lost in the past. 

We prayed for her and her family and listened to a poem also. 

Building Our community 

This week in year 4 we looked at building our community back up after the summer holidays. We discussed what it means to be a part of a community and some of the communities we belong to. We though about how important it is to be part of the community of God's family in particular and explored the scripture Matthew 7:24-27 talking about how it helps us to understand how to be a part of God's community. 

We then brought our learning forward by creating posters to show the message of the gospel and how we can follow it out and finish with the song The Wise Man Built his House upon the Rocks. 

Collective Worship 2021 - 2022

St Matthias - Class Assembly 

St Matthias presented a lovely class assembly to their parents/carers and peers in KS2. 

The theme of our class assembly was promises. We used our class novel 'The Promise' to understand the importance of keeping the promises we make. We linked our learning to Harvest and thought about promises we can keep during Harvest Time thanking God for the crops he has given to us. 

St James the Greater -  Class assembly

St James the Great had the pleasure in delivering our class assembly. Our assembly was based on a theme of growth, nature and support. We look at plants in our school and grew our own giving thanks to God for the nature He has provided us with. We sang together and looked at how we can support each other in our lives. We absolutely loved sharing all our learning and thoughts with our parents and carers.

Collective Worship 

The Feast of St Paul and St Peter

This week in year 4 we celebrated St Peter and St Paul on their special feast day. We looked at their stories and how they became followers of Jesus. We explored how St Paul converted from Saul to St Paul. We looked at the messages the two saints shared and to be more like them we sent letter's to Mrs Stanczyk ready to share the word of the Lord far and wide. 

 John The Baptist

After our mass celebrating the feast day of John the Baptist the class decided they would like to reflect more upon him. We discussed our mass in detail, thinking about what we know and what we found out. We looked at his qualities and what made him such an important person too. We decided to spread the word through roleplay and posters all about John the Baptist.

Other Faiths Week

Year four really enjoyed learning about all the other faiths. We learnt about the importance of religion to each one of us and how the re-ocurring message throughout religion is peace. We reflected on what this might mean to us and how we see it through art work. Finally, in order to spread peace forward in our worlds we planted some lovely plants as a message of hope. 

Month of Mary

Year 4 have been reflecting on the month of May being the month of Mary. We explore how important Mary is and thought of some prayer intentions. We also said the Hail Mary, created a class rosary and drew pictures of Mary. We enjoyed reflecting on scripture and signing hymns about Mary too.  

Generosity

This week we looked at the theme of generosity and what it means to be generous. We looked at how we can be generous in our lives and explore some famous people who also show generosity, coming to the conclusion that it does not just mean given physical items or money but also time and patience and that anyone can be generous. 

Corinthians 9:6-8

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

We explore this scripture, discussing what it means to us and the metaphor within it and finally created a class prayer to spread the word. 

Holy Week and Easter

In collective worship this week we reflected on Holy Week and Easter looking at the event which led up to Easter and what happened on Good Friday. We listened to and reflected on Mark 16:1-8 thinking about what this event means in our lives and the hopes which Jesus' resurrection gives us. We responded by creating out own hopes for our world. 

Fairness

This week we reflected on what we heard in assembly about fairness. We learnt that not everything in life always seems fair and looked at how we could be more fair towards others. We took part in class discussions and did some role play of various scenarios. 

 Compassion

This week we reflected on the need for compassion in our lives. We thanked God for everything He has done for us and reflected on how we can be more compassionate. We dedicated our prayers to those is need and thought of ways in which we can help others. 

Lenten Promises

This week in collective worship the class decided that they would like to create their own Lenten promises as the time of Lent has well and truly started. We discussed the meaning and importance of Lent and why we make these promises. We reflected on the scripture Matthew 4:1-11 and reflected on how Jesus' temptation can link to our lives. In order to go Forth a spread the new we sang 'Make Me a Channel of Your Peace' and created our very own Lenten promises. 

Beginning of Lent

Today we explore what special day it was, what we do on this day and why. We looked at how Shrove Tuesday was the opportunity that we get to cleanse our lives -  by eating all the fatty foods- ready to go into the period of Lent marked by Ash Wednesday.

We discussed the meaning of Lent and what it leads to, thinking always about the sacrifices that Jesus made for us at this special time and we talked about how we can make sacrifices to show our thanks and praise to the Lord.  

Love thy Neighbour

This week we looked at the theme of thy neighbour with a focus on the story of David and Goliath. We focused on the atrocities of what is happening between Russia and the Ukraine with and extra focus on prayer for those in need. We discussed the need for love for everyone and came together as a class to create a world display.

Jesus is the Bread of Life.

This week we looked at John 6:35 "Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." and reflected on what this meant. We understood that Christians look to Jesus as being the Bread of Life because he satisfies our needs not just temporarily but for eternity. We discuss how Jesus feeds us in many ways and thought about example from the Bible when this happens. 

Jesus is the Water of life.

This week we looked at how Jesus is the water of life and what this means. We discussed how we need water to live and to survive. We also talked about how Jesus does not literally mean he is water but that it is the message of the Holy Spirit being given to us by Him. We explored how we look to Jesus to live our lives and how He supports us through this. 

We then created some art work to represent water and wrote a reflected prayer to go with it. 

Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. 

We looked at how Jesus is always the same and reflected on what this means. He will always love us, care for us and forgive. We explore why this is important to us as Catholics and how it makes us feel. 

We then created a class song all about this message. 

You are unchanging
 God the father oh oh oh 
God the Son and Holy spirit. 
Oh you never change, 
You never change at all.

Jesus is the light of the world, 
He loves all the boys and girls. 
The mums and the dads and grandpas too. 
Today, tomorrow and forever.

You are unchanging
you love the whole world.
And you are always forgiving our sins, 
forgive our sins always

Everlasting forever, 
never stop forgiving 
the unchanging merciful God 
Forever and ever ohh.

The Epiphany

This week we have been celebrating the epiphany. We looked at what happened during this time and why the Three Kings came to visit Jesus. We also spoke about the gifts they brought with them and what they represented. 

We role played the main events of the epiphany and sang We Three Kings, reflecting on the story of Jesus' life told through the song. 

We all need trust in God

We spoke aout how God will always forgive us and love us. We read Psalm 51 1-2 and Psalm 51 7-10 . 

We reflected on the different ways that God can help us, both seen and unseen and crwate our onw posters on how we can follow God. 

Advent promises

This week in collective worship we created our own Advent promises. 

We thought about what we can be doing throughout Advent to prepare for the coming of our Lord and Saviour. We talked about the story of the Nativity and all that was done to prepare for Jesus then. 

We took part in a lot of reflection and created a class prayer: 

Dear God, 

Thank you for giving us Jesus as our Saviour especially at this time of year.

Please help us to show kindness to everyone nd keep our Advent promises all day. 

Amen. 

Trust in God

This week we looked at trusted in God and how it can help us in our lives. We also reflected upon Mary and Joseph's trust in God and thought about how they knew to trust in Him. We reflected on the Gospel  reading Matthew 1:20-21 and thought about the event which Mary and Joseph would have looked towards to help them make their decision to have faith. We roleplayed Mary and Joseph looking back on events with Zecheria and Jonah.

Anti-bullying week

This week was anti-bullying week and we all celebrated it throughout the school. We wore odd sock on Monday and did various activities throughout the week involving kind words. 

In collective worship, we explore the scripture 'Saul tries to kill David' Samuel 19:1-10. We discussed how Johnathon showed himself to be a good friend and what qualities and virtues he showed. 

During our reflection, we considered how we could be good friends like Johnathon and made friendship bracelets for each to show our loyalty and faith in our friends. 

Remembrance day

The week we have been celebrating Remembrance day by reflecting on those who died for us during the war. 

We explored the scripture from Matthew 5:9 ‘At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them’ and discussed what it meant to us. Reflecting on how the soldiers sacrificed their lives for us as Jesus once did. 

Diwali

This week we also explored Diwali. We understood that it is the festival of light and we discussed the religion that it is celebrated in. We looked at some dancing and created some lanterns, candles and firework pictures.

All Saint's Day 

This week we have been celebrating all Saint's Day. 

We looked at the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) and discussed what they meant and how we can use them in our daily lives. 

We also created stained glass windows of our class saints. 

This term we will be focusing on knowing God who helps us to be wise.
We will be exploring our school's vision and it's associated values that will help us to grow and flourish together.