Any questions please email Ms Luke on g.luke101@middlestonemoor.durham.sch.uk
Welcome to Year 3 / 4
Our class teacher is Ms. Luke and our teaching assistants who support us with our learning are Mrs Appleby and Mrs. Galone (apprentice).
We always start our day with a warm, welcoming greeting when we enter our classroom. We feel this is important to get our day off to a great start and so that we can check that we are feeling ok for the day ahead.
We have a morning starter activity to warm up our learning powers and get us ready for the day’s learning ahead.
Currently, we do not have assemblies in the hall but Miss Richardson delivers bubble assemblies and we sometimes have virtual assemblies in our classrooms. It’s all a bit different, but also quite exciting to try new ways of doing things!
Morning break is at 10.30am and lunchtime begins at 12.00pm. We spend half of our lunch break playing outside then we eat our lunch in our classroom. It’s nice to have lunch in our bubble, chat with our friends, eat our lunch and watch some fun things on our class Smartboard.
Although we cannot do energetic things in class right now, we are able to look after our health and wellbeing by taking part in some mindfulness exercises throughout the day.
At break, children can choose to join the fruit scheme (which gives them a piece of fruit each morning break for a small price) or they can bring their own fruit from home as we encourage healthy eating in our school.
After lunch we enjoy some relaxation and mindfulness activities to prepare us for our afternoon learning. This is when we enjoy our Science leaning or our foundation subject learning such as history, geography, French, computing, art and design, PSHCE and RE and PE.
Please check our newsletters for PE days. Currently for PE we DO NEED a pair of trainers to change into but we don’t need our full PE kit.
Spelling Investigation books continue to be sent home each Monday which contain a spelling pattern to practise through the week or a list of key words to learn at home and school. The idea is to investigate and collect as many words with this spelling pattern and on Friday there is a spelling quiz with random words containing the spelling pattern they have investigated. Or, when a list of key words has been given to learn there will be a spelling quiz based on those. Also there will be a different times table to practise each week. Please practice quick, random recall of times table facts, this will help greatly with the national times table test which the children may be given at the end of Year 4 to assess their times table knowledge and recall. There is also a section in the home learning book to practise handwriting joins to improve fluency. There will also be some maths or English homework set each week which will be given out each Friday and should be returned by Wednesday of the following week.
To improve our reading we enjoy whole class or guided reading sessions in class. . We love to share books in our class reading corner when our teacher reads to us or sometimes we share extracts from our favourite books that we have brought in from home. We share these in our “Books In The Spotlight” feature in our class book corner and we display our choices to encourage our friends to read them too. Everyone has a reading book and reading record which currently should be brought into school every Friday. Please make sure your child’s reading record is signed by an adult once, each day when they have read at home. This could be their class book, a magazine, newspaper, comic or a book of their own from home. When your child has read and had their record signed 70 times they will be able to choose a free book of their choosing from school.
In Year 4 we learn to play a musical instrument. Teachers from the Durham Music Service, Miss Leggitt and Miss Unwin, will be teaching the Year 4’s to play either baritone, clarinet or trumpet. They also teach fun songs and musical activities in their lessons each Thursday afternoon.
We continue to use “Times Tables Rockstars” online to encourage your child to practise times tables at home. Your child has been given a personal login and password to enable them to access this at home. If this becomes lost or forgotten, please don’t hesitate to ask and we can provide a new one.
Class Newsletters
To find out more about what we are doing please view or download our class newsletters.
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