Last week it was so lovely to get to know your children and establish some routines. The children have been brilliant at organising themselves and remembering their learning spaces. A gentle reminder that all children need a pencil case in school every day. This can live on their desk or in their trays, and I will send them home at the end of the half term to be replenished. 

PE days at Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Please remember to wear PE kits on these days. 

Year 4 parents: Please ask your child which classroom they are in for Literacy and for Maths, and refer to the relevant information below. 

Literacy in Maple Class: We have begun to look at our text, Journey, by Aaron Becker. We have considered how the illustrations give us a clue as to how the main character is feeling because they are so dark and colourless...apart from the red crayon on the floor! We soon discover this crayon draws a door to a magical world, much like in Narnia when the wardrobe door opens into Narnia! Our character finds herself in a forest, which we described using our senses. We identified the nouns, adjectives and verbs in our sentences using colourful semantics. This week, we are going to consider the next part of the story. Where will the little girl go next? How will she feel as she loves through this fantasy land? We will be using speech punctuation to demarcate sentences correctly as well as learning to spell regular and irregular verbs. 

Literacy in Ash Class:

We have begun to look at our text, Everest by Alexandra Stewart. We will be exploring any new technical vocabulary. We will be creating a word bank of adjectives and word choices that can engage the reader. Our final outcome will be writing a setting description.

Y3 Maths: This week, we will be partitioning numbers to 1,000 using different methods including flexible partitioning. We will be finding hundreds, tens and ones, one, ten or 100 more or less, and using number lines to 1,000. 

Y4 Maths: This week, we will be learning about numbers to 10,000. We will be finding 1, 10, 100 and 1000 more or less. We will use number lines to 10,000 as well as estimating numbers on a number line to 10,000. 

Year 3 History: We will be learning about the Stone Age. In our first lesson, we will be exploring what happened in the Stone Age. Using the timeline, we will look at when the Stone Age people lived, and the different time periods within the Stone Age. 

Year 4 History: We will be learning about the Ancient Greeks. Who were the Ancient Greeks? When did they live? And what are they famous for?

Year 5 History: We will be learning about the Stone Age through to the Iron Age (due to the re-structuring of the history curriculum last year, the Year 5s will be learning about the Stone Age through to the Iron Age this year, but in much greater depth than the Y3s, so that they do not miss out on this important period of history) This week, we will be looking closely at the Middle to late Stone Age period. 

Science

Yr 3 - Our Science unit is Animals including humans. To start with we will be naming and identifying the bones of the human body.

Yr 4 - Our Science unit for this term is Grouping and classifying things. The first lesson will be looking at grouping different animals.

Yr 5 - Our Science unit is Forces. To start with we will be learning about friction.

RE: We have been engaging with the concept of Creation this week. We thought about what we like to think about when we consider this wonderful world. This week, we will enquire into how humans are created, and what Christians believe. 

Art: We have been introduced to two artists, Laura Carlin and Shaun Tan. This week we will be using our sketch books to draw stories of our choice, inspired by our artists. 

Computing: We have been starting to think about photo editing and desktop publishing. We know how to crop and rotate an image. Linking to our RE learning, we will be creating booklets in Word, inserting images and editing them to show the Creation story.