February 2023 - Term 4

We hope you all enjoyed a wonderful half term break!

This term, each class is completing a local study. The children in Owls class have begun exploring their new topic: Blenheim Palace and are excited to experience it first-hand on their trip this term.

In our reading lessons this term, we are exploring the novel Varjak Paw by S F Said, which is all about the adventures of a Mesopotamian Blue kitten.

In our writing lessons, we will soon be creating an ‘escaping the monster’ tale, which aims to build suspense for our readers through a range of writing techniques. As well as this, we will also be creating a persuasive advert based on selling a tourist attraction such as Blenheim Palace. We are really looking forward to reading their finished pieces. 

In maths, we are coming to the end of our current unit on perimeter - the children have worked extremely hard and have shown a good understanding in this topic.  We will soon be moving onto exploring fractions and decimals.

Times tables:  before half term we concentrated on practising our 3, 4 and 8 times tables and this term we will be continuing with that and adding 6, 7 and 9 times tables.  This means children should be competent in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 by Easter!  We are moving at a rapid pace now in preparation for the multiplication check in June so it is vital that children practice these as much as possible.  Times tables Rockstars is an excellent resource for this.  Please talk to Mrs Cooper if you need support with this.

Here are our topics for other areas of the curriculum:

Science - Sound

RE - Sikhism

PSHE – Healthy Me

PE – Swimming/Basketball

Music – Haiku Music

Art – Blenheim Architecture/Portraits.  Artist Study Gaudi

Spanish – Goldilocks and the Three Bears Ricitos de Oro y los tres osos

Computing – Creating Media

Owls class have had a fantastic start to this half term and are working extremely hard each and every day. We are very proud of their efforts and are looking forward to this continuing through the term.

Mrs Cooper, Mr Pear and Mrs Jacobs

Happy new year to you all! We hope you've all had a restful and enjoyable festive period.

Our topic this term is ‘Extreme Weather’ which we have been experiencing first hand over the past month or so! We will be learning about hurricanes/tornadoes, flooding, heatwave/drought and other extreme weather conditions that cause havoc and harm to our environment. We will explore the long-term effects that weather has on communities, habitats and our earth. We will also explore how global warming and climate change has come about and what we can do to address it. 

In writing we will be focusing on Information Texts by writing reports about rivers.  Our model text is called ‘The Amazon River’ and gives lots of information about this amazing geographical feature.  Children will then draw upon their own knowledge of local rivers to write their own information text.  Links will be made to our topic through the impact of rivers that flood.  Later in term 3 our writing focus will be on describing settings and we will learn how to apply our knowledge of descriptive techniques to create an image for our reader through words.

Our whole class reading book this term is ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ by Michael Morpurgo.  Published in 1999 this is a desert island adventure telling the story of a boy who is washed up on an island having been separated from his parents.  Through the reading of this book the children will further develop their reading skills following our VIPERS (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summarise).

Maths learning this term will start with multiplication and division, followed by length and perimeter.  Additionally, we will learn arithmetic skills on a daily basis and continue to practice times tables regularly.  We encourage children to practice the times tables independently at home using Times Tables Rockstars – please do come and see us if your child needs a reminder of their log in details.

Maths: Multiplication and Division / Measurement: Length and Perimeter

Writing: Information Text / Setting Description

SPaG: Apostrophes / Speech / Formal vs Informal Language / Noun phrases / Generalisers / Suffixes

Whole Class Reading: Kensuke’s Kingdom, Michael Morpurgo

Science: States of Matter

PE: Swimming / Dance

Art: Artist focus: John Constable

Modern Foreign Languages (Spanish): The Family

Personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE): Setting goals

Music: Changes in pitch, tempo and dynamics

Computing: Investigating weather