Welcome back to you all, Maple Class. I do hope you have enjoyed the break from school as much as I have over the summer. I am looking forward to hearing all your stories about holidays, time with family and friends. If like me you have mostly enjoyed breaking away from routine, and living the slower pace of life, you may be happy to know that this week is all about getting to know each other, and how our class will run this year. We will discuss new routines for this term including the importance of reading every day. We will get to know the weekly timetable, where we need to be at what time, and what to bring to school each day. PE days will be Tuesday and Wednesday so remember to wear your kits on those days. 

Literacy: This week, we will begin by exploring our text for this term together. We will use the images from the text to inspire a piece of independent writing. We will be setting the expectations for handwriting and presentation with some children earning their pen license for joined handwriting. We will be sending home new reading books, reading diaries and new spelling books, so we will spend some time this week looking at these. 

Maths: We start the year with a unit on Place Value. This week is mostly representing numbers to 100 (y3) and to 1000 (y4) We will be using number lines, bead strings, deinnes and other equipment to master these skills and embed our knowledge. 

RE: Our unit for this term is all about Creation and the Fall. We will be using the first two images from the Big Frieze to explore God's creation and our impact on the world. This week, we are asking, 'What is so wonderful about our world?' Using images in our computing lessons, we will be exploring what we think is wonderful about our world. 

Computing: Our units this term are all based around publishing and editing images, and the impact of editing images. I would like the children to think about what images they see everyday online, on social media or on tv which may be edited. Why do we think this happens? Linking to the RE for this week, we will be selecting images which reminds us of God's wonderful world and creation. We will then use publishing software to edit the images and add text. 

Art: Drawing is our focus for Autumn term. Using our sketchbooks to make visual notes, we will be learning about two artists: Laura Carlin, she is an illustrator, and Shaun Tan, an Australian artist. We will learn about how these two artists work and use their sketchbooks when creating visual stories.