Year 4 – Elm Class

Inspiring Excellence. Empowering Every Child.

WELCOME TO YEAR 4

A warm welcome to Year 4. This page gives families a clear overview of the adults who support the class, our shared values, the daily timetable and the ambitious curriculum children will experience during 2026-2027.

We want every child to feel known, included and excited to learn, while developing the knowledge, fluency and independence needed for the next stage of education.

Our class team

Our values in action

Our values shape how we learn, work and treat one another every day:

• Excellence: trying our best and taking pride in improvement.
• Empathy: listening, understanding and showing care.
• Equality: ensuring everyone belongs and can participate.
• Creativity: thinking imaginatively and exploring possibilities.
• Integrity: being honest, responsible and fair.

Our daily timetable

What we learn in Year 4

The curriculum is broad, carefully sequenced and ambitious. Teachers activate prior knowledge, explain and model new learning, explicitly teach vocabulary, check understanding and provide deliberate practice so that pupils know more, remember more and apply their learning with increasing independence.

English: reading, writing and oracy

Writing focus: Cohesion, fronted adverbials and paragraph control. Across the year, pupils work towards controlled, sustained paragraphs. Talk Before You Write helps pupils think, talk, rehearse, improve, write and reflect before and during composition.

Core writing texts for 2026-2027:

• Gorilla
• Leon and the Place Between
• Escape from Pompeii
• Amazing Islands / Koji's Island
• Where the Forest Meets the Sea / Jungle Explorer
• Blue John

Reading is prioritised every day. In Key Stage 2, daily guided reading develops prediction, retrieval, vocabulary, inference, comprehension and independent application. Daily story time and rich classroom talk build vocabulary, knowledge and reading for pleasure.

Mathematics

In Year 4, pupils develop increasingly fluent arithmetic, secure conceptual understanding, reasoning and problem-solving across number, fractions, measure, geometry and statistics.

Teaching uses small steps, clear representations, precise vocabulary, guided practice, retrieval and same-day support so gaps are addressed quickly without lowering ambition.

Science

• Digestion and food
• Electricity and circuits
• States of matter
• Sound and vibrations
• Classification and changing habitats
• Flow of liquids enquiry

Pupils ask questions, observe, measure, classify, record, analyse and explain with increasing independence. Practical work always has a clear scientific purpose.

Geography

• Why are rainforests important to us?
• Where does our food come from?
• What are rivers and how are they used?

Pupils develop locational and place knowledge, mapping, fieldwork and geographical enquiry, with meaningful links to Longlands, Market Drayton and the wider world.

History

• How have children's lives changed?
• What changed after the Anglo-Saxon invasion?
• How did ancient Maya achievements impact society?

Pupils build chronology and use evidence to explore change, cause, consequence, similarity, difference and significance. Local history links make learning tangible.

Religious Education and Worldviews

• Hindu belief: Brahman and atman
• Christian Trinity
• Hindu living: dharma and puja
• Christian Salvation
• Festivals and lived worldviews
• Significant life events

Pupils make sense of beliefs, understand how beliefs influence people and make thoughtful connections between religious and non-religious worldviews.

Art and Design

• Tone, texture and proportion
• Light and dark
• Mega materials
• Fabric of nature

Children generate ideas, develop practical techniques, learn about artists and designers, and evaluate and refine their work.

Design and Technology

• Adapting a recipe
• Helmets
• Fastenings
• Mechanical cars
• Mindful moments timer
• Electrical products

Pupils research, design, make and evaluate purposeful products, drawing on structures, mechanisms, textiles, cooking and nutrition, electrical systems and digital design as appropriate.

PSHE and Health Education

Nutrition, resilience and wellbeing; trusting relationships and stereotypes; checking online information; money, road and water safety.

Speaking, listening and oracy

Pupils learn to explain precisely, compare interpretations, answer follow-up questions and refine complex sentences and paragraphs orally. Every child is expected to think, rehearse and contribute through routines such as Turn and Talk, Wait Time, Cold Call and choral response.

Working with families

• Read with your child regularly and talk about unfamiliar vocabulary.
• Ask your child to explain what they are learning and how it connects to earlier learning.
• Support regular attendance, punctuality and readiness to learn.
• Check school communications for current texts, visits, homework and class events.
• Speak with the class teacher if you would like to discuss learning, support or wellbeing.

Curriculum note: class learning may be adapted in response to assessment, while preserving the intended year-group ambition and statutory entitlement.