Year 4 and Year 5 Curriculum

[Ahmawa]

I need to help my DS by following up what he learns at school with a little extra work at home across all of his subjects. He is just at the expected level at his last assessment but only just meeting that level. I bought some CGP and Bond books but they actually test the knowledge the child already has - what I am looking at is building up his knowledge and skills - doing additional work to what he learns at school rather than doing assessments and testing.

So I am looking for resources which set out a roadmap of what needs to be taught/learned and then provide the resources to do that teaching - like home schooling but more as a compliment to what he does at school.

The CGP boks will allow you to identify the gaps in his knowledge. So when you come to a question he can't do you could look up on bbc bitesize or wherever on how to answer the question- that way he is learning. Then you keep practicing similar questions to embed the knowledge/skill.

Our school advise that in that type of scenario you should get the books from the year below e.g. in Year 4, get Year 3 books. The Year 4 books would cover things not yet taught and the methods used are so different to what we did, it's another language.

Our school say it's 99% confidence so the books covering what they have already done are better. The challenge elements of those books will be equivalent to the following years subject matter

Everything builds year on year.

For extra work outside of that try NRich maths puzzles which are game type enrichment activities. University of Cambridge developed ones.

Edited to say, it's frowned upon by our school to do work developing beyond the usual curriculum as development will be a subsequent year. That applies even if your kid is exceeding. Just ask school what they would recommend.

I don't want to go past what they are teaching in school, I only want to solidify what is being taught and have an idea where the curriculum is heading via a roadmap.

Does your school publish curriculum plans on the website? Every school I've been at has. It's worth checking, as they might have a long term roadmap of what the children are learning.

Beyond that, the national curriculum is an easy read and will show you exactly what they're expected to learn in the year. (for some subjects over a group stage or couple of years).
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum
There are appendixes for spelling words for that year group - does your DC know the previous year groups spellings and spelling rules? Can they tell the time? Do they know their times tables back to front? Can they hold a conversation/have good manners? Those are all important things from a teacher's perspective.

Oak National Academy is excellent and free. Ask your child's teacher what maths scheme they're using. Many of them, such as White Rose, have free resources for parents.

That' great advice, I will spend a term going over year 3 as you are correct the stronger the foundation the easier it will become to build upon in the future.

Absolutely agree on going over last year. Not that SATs are the be-all-and-end-all, but 50% of year 6 SATs is actually from Y3-5 content. Everything is a spiral in teaching, especially in maths.

I used to tutor primary (after teaching for 20 years) and often found some pretty big gaps in knowledge and understanding. So I absolutely agree with going back a year to check for really good understanding. CGP+ website has some great resources and maps to follow - there is a small fee of £3 ish per month I think. For maths I'd actually go back to Y2 to check for counting - adding ten, confidence with teen numbers etc. You'd be surprised how many children can use column addition for 4 digit numbers successfully but are unable to add ten to a two digit number - really understanding numbers can be tricky for some.. Mental maths is worth spending time on.