Ark Victoria Academy

Dear Year 4 parents/carers,
I am so excited to be Head of Year 4 this year. We have a wonderful and dedicated team of teachers who are committed to ensuring the academic and personal development of all the children we teach. We have been very encouraged with the way pupils have settled into year 4 and are showing our Ark values every day, being ambitious, resilient and kind.

We have been busy designing and planning enriching learning opportunities for all children. Reading continues to be a focus for us: increasing vocabulary, improving reading fluency and encouraging a love of reading for pleasure will, as always, be a priority for our students.  As such, we appreciate any support you can provide at home.   Listening to your child read aloud as often as possible and talking to them about what they’re reading will be of great benefit in ensuring we build a positive reading culture among our students. Please also ask your child for their bookmark, and tick or initial to show they have read at home.

In mathematics this year, we will be building on the children’s prior learning with extremely important units on, for example, place value, fractions and measure.  We will also have a big focus on multiplication and division, preparing for children to undertake the statutory Multiplication Tables Check (MTC). We would of course appreciate your support in helping your children with any home learning and practise. 

Along with our focus on literacy and numeracy, we will also be enjoying a rich and varied wider curriculum this year.   Science lessons are always a source of inspiration and wonder for our students and they will certainly be fascinated with this year’s topics such as, Teeth and Digestion, States of Matter and Electricity, where they will learn through theory, observation and investigation. In Humanities, we will be exploring people of the past, studying the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and the Tudors, and investigating trade links around the world.

Personal development is always a big focus for us as an academy. At Ark Victoria we want to help our pupils become curious citizens with a strong moral purpose. As well as embedded themes throughout our curriculum offer, children will study carefully sequenced lessons and have weekly assemblies to develop a diverse knowledge of moral, social, and cultural issues as well as how they can positively contribute to the wider community. We are especially looking forward to learning about character and virtues.
We also have a jam-packed year of enrichment activities planned to support students’ learning and provide them with days that they will never forget! Visits to Small Heath Library, the Blue-Orange Theatre, Lunt Roman Fort and Blakesly Hall, are amongst some of the exciting opportunities to look forward to. 

I speak on behalf of the Year 4 team in saying that we are all extremely excited for the journey we will take with our students this year.   We are privileged to be able to help them learn, grow and prosper together and we will be dedicated to ensuring they reach their potential both socially and academically.

Please use the following image to see our Year 4 Students and their work: