|
Welcome back to a new term. I hope you all had a super Easter break and everyone is ready for their final term as a Year 3 or Year 4. Mr A :)
This Term's Topic
Our topic this Spring term is a Gepgraphy theme all about the rainforests which poses the question... Why should the rainforests be important to all of us? During the term, children will learn about the location, value and diversity along with the threats faced by such habitats. During this unit, we will develop our geography skills by:
- Learning how longitude and latitude are used to locate places in the world.
- Use atlases to locate the world’s rainforest, particularly those in South America.
- Explore the climatic conditions that support rainforests and the impact rainforests have on global weather.
- Understand the impact of human activities on the natural rainforest habitats and steps taken to protect them.
Literacy
We begin with a story that links to our rainforest topic, which is called ‘There the Forest Meets the Sea’. This tackles the issue of habitat loss in the rainforests and the impact this has on wildlife in a clever and imaginative way.
Within this unit, the children will have opportunities to further build rich and varied vocabulary, to explore the effectiveness of organisational devices such as headings and subheadings within non-narrative writing as well as the grammar rules around possessive apostrophes.
We will also investigate the non-narrative book ‘100 Rainforest Facts’ before combining these skills to create an information board for a zoo exhibit.
Science
Our science topic will be 'All Living Things' where we will investigate:
- recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways
- know the difference between vertebrate and invertebrate, and begin to understand the meaning of exoskeleton
- begin to put vertebrate animals into groups such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals and put invertebrates into slugs, snails, worms, spiders and insects.
- explore and use classification keys to help group, identify and name a variety of living things in their local and wider environment
|
|
We will be reviewing our class rules to ensure we have a happy and safe class this year and will share them here soon.
|
Homework
We will be returning to setting reguar weekly homework tasks. These will be set on a Thursday and will be due in on a Monday. In addition, a half term's spelling list will be set home at the start of the half term.
|
Reading
With reading being such an important part of every child's learning, we are really encouraging all pupils to read as much as possible out of school as well as during the school day.
All children will be able to choose a book from our class library to be kept in school so they can read at opportunities during the day-which will ideally be every day!
In the juniors, we will introduce a class book as part of guided reading sessions where the children will have the opportunity to widen their vocabulary and deepen their understanding, as well as having independent reading time.
|
PE
Children will need to have their PE kits in school and this will need to come in on a Monday and can go home on a Friday if necessary. Also it is essential that long hair is tied back and earrings needed to be covered for safety. Please remember that some of our sessions are held outside so the children will also need a long-sleeved top and jogging bottoms with their usual PE kit.
This half term we will have an outdoor PE session on Monday afternoon where the focus is on 'Fitness'. On Wednesday afternoon we will be outside looking at Basketball and Netball skills, with a sports coach, to help progress the children's skills.
|
