Happy New Year and welcome back to another jampacked term!

Firstly, Mrs Elliston, Mrs Bond and I, would like to thank you all for the generous Christmas gifts we received at the end of last term. I hope you have had a restful and festive Christmas break and are looking forward to a busy spring term. Below is an outline of what we will be covering this term.

English:

In English this term we will begin by exploring different Roman myths and legends before moving on to stories with humour. This unit will be focusing on the David Walliams book “Mr Stink”. We will look at the style and characters of his work, which will lead to us writing our own stories inspired by the book.

We will also be learning about odes and insult poems where we will look at language features, imagery and analysing poetry using Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’ as our inspiration. We will be learning about stories from other cultures immersing ourselves in wonderful stories from Africa such as ‘Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters’ and ‘The Pot of Wisdom’ with the aim of writing our own Ananse stories using extended sentences.

Finally, we will learn about performance poetry where we will explore various poems looking at what makes a good performance before writing and performing our own poems.

Listening to your child read continues to be very important, as does discussing their understanding of the texts they are reading. There will be daily classroom time for reading, handwriting, grammar and spelling activities.  Children must bring their reading records and books to class every day.

Maths:

This term we are building our multiplication and division knowledge with initial focus on our times tables. We will revise the 3-, 4- and 8-times tables before looking at multiplying and dividing by 10 and 100. We will use our knowledge of the 3 times table to help us understand the 6- and 9-times tables before learning about factor pairs and the 7-, 1- and 12-times tables. We will then move on to written methods for multiplying and dividing 3-digit numbers. After this we will learn how to calculate the area of a shape before moving on to fractions which will include adding and subtracting fractions, equivalent fractions and calculating fractions of amounts. This will help our understanding of the final maths topic of the term-decimals.

At home it would be helpful if you practiced telling the time both analogue and digital and continued practicing times tables and related division facts using Times Table Rockstar (5-10 minutes as often as possible). This will also help to prepare children for the times tables test later in the term.

Science:

This term we are learning about states of matter. We will learn about solids, liquids and gases, different ways that liquids behave, evaporation, heating and cooling including using a thermometer and the water cycle.

History:

In history this half term we will be learning about Roman Britain. This will include when and how the Roman’s invaded Britain, the life of Queen Boudicca, what the Romans built after settling here and what important things the Romans did for Britain.

Geography:

After the half term break, we will be learning about volcanoes and earthquakes. During this topic we will learn about the layers of the earth including tectonic plates. We will look at what happens at the borders of these plates, the features of a volcano, famous earthquakes and volcanoes and effects caused by both.

French:

In French we will be continually revising vocabulary for greetings, days, months and numbers. Our topic for the first half term is les temps in which we will be learning how to describe the weather, this will be followed by le transport where we will be learning about different types of transport and explaining how we get to school.

PSHE:

Our PSHE learning will look at the topic Living in the Wider World which supports ‘Belonging to a Community: The values of rules and law; rights, freedoms and responsibilities’ and ‘Money and Work: Different jobs and skills; job stereotypes; setting personal goals.

Music:

This term we are fortunate enough to have music lessons through the ‘Play It’ scheme provided by Essex music services. Mr Malam will be coming to school to teach the children brass every other Thursday.

PE:

For the first ten weeks of term, we will be swimming on a Monday morning at Grange Paddocks. Please ensure that your child has the correct kit including swimming cap and, if coming to school wearing swimwear, they have their underwear in their bags.

Our second PE session of the week is on a Thursday with Mr Snelling in which the children will be learning hockey (plastic sticks and balls).

Please ensure correct PE kit is in school all week as we occasionally have coaches visit for extra sessions.

Computing:

We will be learning about coding in sorting games and exploring ‘Garageband’ making our own music.

Art/DT:

In DT we will be designing and making our own Roman catapults and in art we will look at the volcano and mountain paintings of Hokusai and Warhol.

RE:

In RE we will be learning about the significance of the bible to Christians including stories featuring the 12 disciples. We will also learn about Pesach, the seder plate and the easter story including the last supper.

Children are actively encouraged to bring in water, and a snack for break time each day. It is often a long time between breakfast and lunch and a snack is important to keep us all going. Please remember that we ask that these are healthy, in line with our Healthy Schools ethos (fruit or vegetables only).

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to speak to me at the end of the day or contact the office to arrange an appointment/call before or after school.

Best wishes

Mrs Tokeley