Week ending 10th January 2025

 Hello All,

Welcome back to a new year and lots of work! It was great to see the children so ready and happy to be back at school.

I will explain the topics that we will be covering this half term.

English

Every day the children learn their spellings for the week and are expected to practise them at home. We carry out comprehension activities three/four days a week. We will be focussing on a book called 'The Tear Thief' by Carol Ann Duffy. It is a magical story, full of imagination. We will be working from this book. The children will be reading aloud, in pairs and independently. They will be learning about similes and metaphors, poetry writing and using adverbials. They will be using the past tense to write diary entries. They will be learning and using emotive nouns in their writing, completing sentence stems for conjunctions and sorting information into paragraphs.

Maths

This half term we will be covering multiplication and division. The children are doing so well learning their times tables. Please keep this up! It is such an asset to know the times tables when covering this work. 

I am surprised at how quickly they are learning their tables, thank you for supporting this at home. They do love times table bingo and it is a good method to learn tables whilst having fun!

Please encourage your child to use 'TT Rockstars' as often as they can. Also, please ensure that your child takes some time going back over the tables already learned as well as the one currently being practised.

We will also be learning about length and perimeter.

Science

Our project is 'light,' This week we focussed on light and dark, recognising that we need light to see things and that dark is the absence of light. We will also be learning about reflective surfaces, how mirrors reflect light, and how the sun can be dangerous for our eyes. We will be observing how shadows are formed when the light from a light source is blocked by a solid shape.

Geography

Our study is Antarctica. We will begin by learning about the physical features of Antarctica and the vocabulary for areas within it. We will be using globes, atlas' and maps. The children will learn to use a four figure grid reference and the 8 compass points. We will be looking at an aerial view of school on google maps.

Computing

This half term the children will explore a new programming environment. They will identify the objects in scratch explain that they have attributes linked to them. They will learn to identify commands that have an outcome. They will recognise that a sequence of commands can have an order by explaining what the sequence is. They will be making design choices.

D and T

We will be revising  our learning on food groups, as we design and make a sandwich. The children will taste a variety of different breads and flavours, examining textures and flavours. They will design and make a healthy sandwich and evaluate the finished product.

RE

We have already begun to look at leadership and recognise the qualities needed to be a good leader. We will move on to learn about religious leaders in Christianity and Hinduism. We will explore Lent in Christianity, looking at fasting, giving, preparing and praying. 

Spanish

Today we learned the names for class room items in Spanish. The children could play the games we learned at home. They found it great fun! We will be writing descriptions of what could be inside a pencil case. They will learn phrases to explain what is and is not in a pencil case. We will practise daily instructions in Spanish and everyday conversation. The children order their lunches in Spanish. 

We will be revising animals and completing sentences about animals, translating from English to Spanish. We will be describing animals in Spanish.

PHSE

Our focus this half term is on dreams and goals. Today we talked about different challenging scenarios and the feelings they may evoke. We discussed what we could do to help someone manage a stressful situation. 

We will continue to look at our own dreams and goals throughout this half term.

I will be sending details of the home project next week.

I hope you have a restful weekend. The children seemed quite tired today after their first week back.

Ms Davis