Spelling

READING It’s really important to encourage reading throughout the week. Ask your child to choose what they’d like to read. They’ll feel more interested in the story if they’ve chosen it themselves (and don’t worry if they keep returning to the same story!). If you don’t have access to books it could be recipes/ leaflets or stories online. Reading to your child is also really important. This is an opportunity for them to hear stories and language at a higher level than they can read alone. You can use the questions below to talk to your child about what you have been reading together. Was this a piece of fiction or non-fiction? How could you tell?

What are the main points in this paragraph? Can you summarise it for me in

your own words?

What did you think about…?

Pick a specific phrase and say - What an interesting use of words; why do

you think the author chose those?

Is there anything you want to ask that you’re not sure about?

Why is x (punctuation) used here? How does this help you to read the text?

Does it help to give the text greater meaning?

Can you find….? Show me where…. Which specific word/phrase tells you

that…?

Reading challenge Think of the last story that you read. Write true or false questions about the plot, characters, setting or the information you have learnt. Ask a friend or adult to answer them. How well will they do?

Write a letter to the author of your favourite book. Tell them what you thought about the book and why you enjoyed it. Remember to be specific about things you have read.

Online stories

If you have the internet, it can be fun to read stories online or to listen to authors reading stories. Click on the links below to access these:

Accelerated reader ebooks

Oxfordowl ebooks

Authors reading books

Different ways to practise spellings

Air Writing Chose 10 spellings from the Year 3/4 statutory spelling list and write these in the air with your finger. Ask someone to read your words as you write. You could ask someone to write in the air the letters you tell them – can they tell you what word you have just spelt out to them?

Choose some spellings you are finding tricky from the year 3 and 4 Statutory Spelling list and copy each word out carefully 3 times. Go over each vowel with a coloured pencil.

Remember vowels are:

a,e,i,o,u

LEARNING CHALLENGES | YEAR 3 & YEAR 4

Olympus Learning Challenges | Y3&Y4 Page | 1

WRITING Write a Book Review We are at the end of our class book and we are curious about what you have thought

of it.

Did you like the book? Which parts were your favourite and least favourite? Why? Who were your favourite characters and why? Would you recommend this book to a friend? Out of five stars, how would you rate it? Conversation/Dialogue When Ruby first arrived at the Big Top Mall, Stella spoke to Ruby to convince her to get out of the lorry but no one else could hear it. What was that conversation? Remember: new line = new speaker, inverted commas and a range of speech verbs e.g. replied, shouted, whispered Stella whispered, “Come out listen elephant.” “I’m scared,” cried Ruby.

MATHS & CRITICAL THINKING

Olympus Learning Challenges | Y3 & Y4 Page | 2

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new

Albert Einstein

Key things to practise at home for all children:

Revision of the four calculations: + - x ÷ (stand alone questions plus worded 2/3 step problems)

Tell your child a number. Can they write it in numerals and in words?

Give your child a number. Can they tell you what 10 more and 10 less is? What about 100 more or 100 less? Can they find 1000 more and 1000 less?

Year 3 = learn their x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x8 and x10

Year 4 = learn all their tables up to 12x12 Fractions Get your child some skittles, smarties or different coloured sweets. Empty them out onto a plate and write down what fraction are red, what fraction are yellow, etc. The denominator (bottom number) is the total number of sweets and the numerators (top number) are the different colours. E.g. if there are 22 sweets in total and 9 are red you would write 9/22. You could use coloured buttons, Lego, fruit etc 2D and 3D Shapes Ask your child to become a shape scavenger! How many examples of different 2D and 3D shapes can they find around the home/garden? Can they create a tally and sort the shapes they find based on their properties? e.g. number of edges, number of pairs of parallel lines, right angles, acute angles etc Place Value Write a selection of 3 or 4 digit numbers and split them into pile A and pile B. Get your child to select a number from each pile and compare them using the symbols < (less than), > (greater than) and = (equal to) and justify how they know. E.g. 3421 < 3451 because the hundreds and thousands are the same but 2 tens is smaller than 5 tens.

Trailer Storyboard/ Script The One and Only Ivan is being made into a film which will be released late this year or early next year. Can you create a storyboard to plan a trailer for the film? Is there any key dialogue that you want to add to a script? Watch the fan-made trailer for inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw6ixllL_V4

Olympus Learning Challenges | Y3 & Y4 Page | 3

CURIOUS CURRICULUM Geography and Topic

Natural Disasters Explanation

Some natural phenomenon are also natural disasters, such as volcanoes, tsunamis, floods and hurricanes.

This means they can happen naturally but as a result they can have negative effects on our planet and on living organisms (e.g. humans, animals and plants) for a long period of time.

People, even today, knowing this still live in areas that are at risk of natural disasters, for example Japan is at risk of earthquakes due to being on top of where tectonic plates meet and the country of Haiti is a risk

of hurricanes and flooding due to where it’s island is.

Even in the UK, we can experience natural disasters usually on a much smaller scale, such as the flooding we have experienced last year.

How do we prepare for natural disasters? Do you know? Are you prepared? What has lockdown taught us to help?

How to Guide: How to prepare for a natural disaster.

Make a Plan:

Shelter: Look at/draw a map of your local area,

what would make good shelters?

Choose one and put an X on your map.

Meet Up: Write the address of the meet up point

for all your family to get to. Explain why you

chose this location.

Help: Pick a person outside of the people you live

with e.g. Auntie, Uncle or Family friend who you

can call.

Also write the emergency service numbers you

will need e.g. 999.

Build a Kit (Checklists):

Food, Drink and Hygiene: Make a

checklist of food and drink that would

last a long time (non-perishables). Also,

what can you use to keep clean if you

don’t have ‘running’ water?

First Aid Kit: Make a checklist of what

could be in your first aid kit. e.g.

plasters and your own medicine

(inhalers).

Entertainment: Make a checklist of

games and activities could you take

with you. Can you think of any you have

that can run without mains electricity

or batteries?

Be Informed:

What technology could you bring with you to help you find out

the news and contact people?

Example

https://www.savethechildren.org/content/dam/usa/reports/emergency-prep/family-disaster-checklist.pdf

Science: Light

Make your own spectroscope

A spectroscope enables you to see the

spectrum of colours that make up light.

Click this link to open Mr Townley’s

how to document or find the post on

Class Dojo.

Transparent, Translucent and Opaque

Material Hunt: have a look at the

different objects around the house with

a torch.

How many transparent are there? What

are they made out of? Can you do this

with your translucent and opaque

objects?

Transparent

Translucent

Transparent

Opaque

Transparent

Reflection Walk Reflections are caused when light hits and object and ‘reflects’ or ‘bounces off’ at an angle. Some colours and materials reflect light

better than others.

On a sunny day take a walk and look at the colours of different cars and see which one shine the brightest in the sunlight and reflect

light best.

Do you think a white car or a black car reflect light best?

Rescued by Light

Watch https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/zyg

vr82

Think How many things can you think of that use light and reflection to

help keep us safe?

Design Design a new

warning safe sign that can be used at

home.

Circuits: Research

Why doesn’t a remote control work without two batteries? Why does a

toy work if one of the wires isn’t connected?

Find out more with the circuit videos and challenges:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zq99q6f

Page | 4 Olympus Learning Challenges | Y3 & Y4

Olympus Learning Challenges | Y3 & Y4 Page | 5

Play

Can you play your homemade instrument.

In dedication to our class book The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate which is about a

talented gorilla, we thought it would be fun to recreate a famous advertisement.

Can you play the opening of the famous Cadbury’s Gorilla Advert which plays In the Air

Tonight by Phil Collins?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La7B8mBnTXs

Sound Hide and Seek:

If you have an Echo, Alexa, mobile phone or anything that you can play a sound/music from,

why don’t you play hide and seek?

Person 1 covers their eye while Person 2 plays a sound/music or even just sings. Person 1 then

seeks Person 2 by the sound.

Research: PITCH Animals use sound to communicate but humans don’t

always hear this because we can only hear sounds within a certain pitch (frequency).

Find out how these two animals use sound to

communicate and at which pitch they communicate with.

Bats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laeE4icRYp4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp5jyZtoTIg

Elephants:

How was Stella able to talk to Ruby without Ivan hearing?

Music and Sound

Sound Defenders

The volume of some sounds can damage our ears and if we’re not careful we have even lose our

hearing. The volume of sounds are measured in Decibels

(dB).

Build some sound defenders (sound-blocking headphones) for the Top 10 Noisiest Jobs.

Olympus Learning Challenges | Y3 & Y4 Page | 6

Reading:

To watch a story read: Cbeebies Bedtime Stories or Storyline Online.

To listen to a story read: Audible.

Recommended book lists categorised by age range and topic, including fiction

and non-fiction. Family activities are included in the ‘Home Time’ :

Booktrust.org

e-book: www.oxfordowl.co.uk

Spelling and Grammar:

Games for KS2 spelling words Spell Zone

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/dailylessons

Maths:

Games to support practice of the 4 rules and fractions, decimals and %.:

Arcademic Skills Builders

Videos, tasks and quizzes: Corbett Maths

Video tutorials and activities: My Mini Maths

Free maths games and activities, including a version of the multiplication check: Mathsframe

Multiplication practise: https://play.ttrockstars.com/ttrs/dashboard

Free maths games: Top Marks

https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/

All subjects online learning:

PurpleMash https://www.purplemash.com/sch/charborough

https://www.thenational.academy/