Preparation Guide – Year Four

We hope this page and the resources it links to will provide parents and teachers with some food for thought and some useful resources to use and focus on.

Children will have got used to the new rigours of the KS2 syllabus during year three and during year four schools tend to really push forwards.  Those have made a good start with their times tables, have been reading diligently and have made good progress with spelling and vocabulary development will be well on the way to success.  These aspects cannot be mastered overnight and they take a sustained effort pretty much all the way through KS2.

Our suggested preparation routes all emphasise the need to keep developing the basics as the key task.  Unfortunately it’s at this stage where all too often we have seen bright children with helpful parents go off the rails – pushing children ever further forwards at this stage is not helpful – much better to consolidate, give then solid foundations and allow them to advance with confidence.  If the basics are being thoroughly covered then more work is possible.

Our preparation guides are designed to work with our year four books page and if you want to think about getting any of the resources we suggest then follow the links through and it should take you through to that particular resource on Amazon (to retain our independence we sell nothing ourselves).

Year four Maths and English – ‘The Basics’ This resource shows you what to do , when to do it and what books if any you might use.  It focusses on times tables, reading and vocabulary development. Most parents do all or some of these activities.

Year four Maths and English – Enhanced Help This resource shows you what to do, when to do it and what resources to use if you want to offer your child more help than just The Basics.  The help we suggest you could give is split into three sections ranging from a little more help to working every day.

Year four Maths and English – Revision and end of year exam preparation This resource shows you how to help children prepare for their end of year exams and what resources to use.  Helping children give a good account of themselves in their end of year exams can give them lots of confidence and acts as a positive springboard into year five.

Summer holiday work at the end of year four This resource helps to give some structure to working during the summer holidays.  This period is when children can make good progress and is particularly useful for younger children.  Done properly (little and often) working over the summer can help children make a significant step forwards and enter year five with more confidence.