Welcome to Hedgehog Class
Our Team
Miss Trafford is our Class Teacher and Mrs Toes is our Teaching Assistant. This year, Mrs Toes is on an exciting journey to becoming a teacher herself and is completing her Initial Teacher Training throughout the course of the year. This means that Mrs Toes will be working closely with Miss Trafford to plan, teach and assess.
English
Our English lessons for Autumn term will be based on a variety of books, including Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers, Journey Trilogy by Aaron Becker, Escape from Pompeii by Christina Balit and The Christmasauras by Tom Fletcher. We will be covering a range of genres including information texts, adventure stories and performance poetry. Through this, we will cover a number of the grammar objectives, such as punctuating speech correctly, using fronted adverbials and organising paragraphs.
Reading
We will take part in daily guided reading sessions, which will involve drawing inferences on characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions and justifying these inferences with evidence from the text, predicting what might happen next and discussing grammar choices. There will also be opportunities for the children to read across the curriculum and independently.
Reading is such an important skill; it really unlocks all areas of the curriculum. We would ask parents to hear their child read daily, 5-10 minutes a night is all that is needed. As well as supporting your child read words, it is also useful to ask questions and check your child’s understanding of the text. You will see a KS2 reading prompts sheet at the bottom of this page, which will support you in this.
Reading books will be changed every Monday and Wednesday.
Maths
During the Autumn term, we will be covering: Number and Place Value, Addition and Subtraction, Length and Perimeter and Multiplication and Division. We will also have daily fluency sessions, whereby we will practise our number bonds and facts and our times tables.
Please continue to support your children’s learning by regularly asking questions or allowing them to play TT Rock Stars to improve their instant recall of the multiplication and division facts of all times tables (up to 12 times tables).
Science
The first half of the Autumn term will see us focusing on States of Matter. We will be identifying what makes something a solid, liquid or gas, observe different materials changing state and link our knowledge to The Water Cycle. After October half term, our Science topic will be Electricity – we will identify common appliances that run on electricity, construct simple series electrical circuits and recognise some common conductors and insulators.
Humanities
Our Humanities focus for Autumn term is Geography and our topic is Mountains, Volcanoes and Earthquakes. We will find out what is under the surface of the Earth, explain how mountains and volcanoes are formed, understand why earthquakes happen and research The Ring of Fire.
RE
‘What kind of world did Jesus want?’ and ‘Does the Christmas narrative need Mary?’ are our key questions for RE this term. We will make clear links between what world he wanted while he was alive and how Christians are spreading his message. We will also identify symbols of Mary, infer Mary’s thoughts and feelings and discuss whether Mary was important in the Christmas Narrative.
PSHE (Healthy Minds)
Our focus for the Autumn Term is ‘Health and Wellbeing’. Within this, we will be focusing on physical and mental health, living a balanced lifestyle, understanding feelings and changes in life and being safe.
PE
We will have PE twice a week on Mondays and Wednesday. On Wednesdays, PE will be taught by Mr Merry.
Homework
Homework will be set on Google Classroom. It will be accessible from 3.15pm on Fridays and is expected to be handed in by the following Wednesday. Your child can upload evidence of their homework onto Google Classroom, or it can be recorded in their Learning Log.
Parent Partnership
We strongly believe in working closely with parents to ensure all children have a positive and successful experience in their education. We welcome any information you can share about your child and their individual learning experiences outside of school. This can be easily shared through the ClassDojo communication tool.
To keep you informed on specific activities in school, I will use ClassDojo to share news and photos of events. Every week I will post on our ClassDojo page information regarding what we have been doing in school. At the start of every half term, I will post the curriculum map showing what we will be doing across all subjects (however, this could be subject to change).
Supporting Your Child at Home
Our experience has shown us that the support children get from home has a positive impact on their learning. Below are some resources which you may find useful.
Below is a copy of the Year 3 and 4 common exception words. These words do not follow any rules and need to be learnt by heart.
Miss Trafford is our Class Teacher and Mrs Toes is our Teaching Assistant. This year, Mrs Toes is on an exciting journey to becoming a teacher herself and is completing her Initial Teacher Training throughout the course of the year. This means that Mrs Toes will be working closely with Miss Trafford to plan, teach and assess.
English
Our English lessons for Autumn term will be based on a variety of books, including Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers, Journey Trilogy by Aaron Becker, Escape from Pompeii by Christina Balit and The Christmasauras by Tom Fletcher. We will be covering a range of genres including information texts, adventure stories and performance poetry. Through this, we will cover a number of the grammar objectives, such as punctuating speech correctly, using fronted adverbials and organising paragraphs.
Reading
We will take part in daily guided reading sessions, which will involve drawing inferences on characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions and justifying these inferences with evidence from the text, predicting what might happen next and discussing grammar choices. There will also be opportunities for the children to read across the curriculum and independently.
Reading is such an important skill; it really unlocks all areas of the curriculum. We would ask parents to hear their child read daily, 5-10 minutes a night is all that is needed. As well as supporting your child read words, it is also useful to ask questions and check your child’s understanding of the text. You will see a KS2 reading prompts sheet at the bottom of this page, which will support you in this.
Reading books will be changed every Monday and Wednesday.
Maths
During the Autumn term, we will be covering: Number and Place Value, Addition and Subtraction, Length and Perimeter and Multiplication and Division. We will also have daily fluency sessions, whereby we will practise our number bonds and facts and our times tables.
Please continue to support your children’s learning by regularly asking questions or allowing them to play TT Rock Stars to improve their instant recall of the multiplication and division facts of all times tables (up to 12 times tables).
Science
The first half of the Autumn term will see us focusing on States of Matter. We will be identifying what makes something a solid, liquid or gas, observe different materials changing state and link our knowledge to The Water Cycle. After October half term, our Science topic will be Electricity – we will identify common appliances that run on electricity, construct simple series electrical circuits and recognise some common conductors and insulators.
Humanities
Our Humanities focus for Autumn term is Geography and our topic is Mountains, Volcanoes and Earthquakes. We will find out what is under the surface of the Earth, explain how mountains and volcanoes are formed, understand why earthquakes happen and research The Ring of Fire.
RE
‘What kind of world did Jesus want?’ and ‘Does the Christmas narrative need Mary?’ are our key questions for RE this term. We will make clear links between what world he wanted while he was alive and how Christians are spreading his message. We will also identify symbols of Mary, infer Mary’s thoughts and feelings and discuss whether Mary was important in the Christmas Narrative.
PSHE (Healthy Minds)
Our focus for the Autumn Term is ‘Health and Wellbeing’. Within this, we will be focusing on physical and mental health, living a balanced lifestyle, understanding feelings and changes in life and being safe.
PE
We will have PE twice a week on Mondays and Wednesday. On Wednesdays, PE will be taught by Mr Merry.
Homework
Homework will be set on Google Classroom. It will be accessible from 3.15pm on Fridays and is expected to be handed in by the following Wednesday. Your child can upload evidence of their homework onto Google Classroom, or it can be recorded in their Learning Log.
Parent Partnership
We strongly believe in working closely with parents to ensure all children have a positive and successful experience in their education. We welcome any information you can share about your child and their individual learning experiences outside of school. This can be easily shared through the ClassDojo communication tool.
To keep you informed on specific activities in school, I will use ClassDojo to share news and photos of events. Every week I will post on our ClassDojo page information regarding what we have been doing in school. At the start of every half term, I will post the curriculum map showing what we will be doing across all subjects (however, this could be subject to change).
Supporting Your Child at Home
Our experience has shown us that the support children get from home has a positive impact on their learning. Below are some resources which you may find useful.
Below is a copy of the Year 3 and 4 common exception words. These words do not follow any rules and need to be learnt by heart.
