This half term, our core text is ‘Windrush Child’ written by the late Benjamin Zephaniah.  Pupils will be immersed in learning about the Windrush generation through English and in geography. In their writing, pupils will focus on writing a narrative in first-person.  Pupils will plan and write sections based on key moments in the text, ensuring that they include all the structural and language features. They will edit as they go along re-reading and improving the grammatical structures within their writing.

The children will continue to develop their reading and comprehension skills by making predictions based on visual images and the text. They will also be inferring and clarifying their understanding of words and phrases based on evidence from the text. 

They will make links with real events that have happened in the world around us and continue to develop their learning behaviours such as supporting and actively listening to each other. 

This term we will be looking at 'Why do people judge'. In this unit the children will look at what is a hate crime. They will learn various strategies to use against bullying and hate crime. Knowing about Anne Frank and the Holocaust will be a key learning point in this unit as well as looking into how we could bridge-builders between people in order to reduce prejudice and hate crimes in our communities.

In maths, the children will continue to use and apply multiplication and division facts and understanding within their learning. They will  be building on their knowledge of fractions and decimals and begin to link to percentages. They will then move on to learn more about fractions. For this unit the children will be finding equivalent fractions, converting improper fractions to mixed number and conclude with ordering fractions greater than and less than 1.

There will also be a focus on mental calculation strategies through the term, which will be regularly revised each week during daily and weekly arithmetic sessions. Ensuring you child is fluent with their times tables up to 12 x 12 would be very helpful. There will be opportunities to apply what they have learnt on a daily basis through reasoning and problem-solving activities.  

This term pupils will being attending weekly swimming sessions. Pupils will learn about safety when swimming in the water and will learn about how to control their strokes and kick in the water to help stay afloat and swim using front crawl and back stroke to begin with. The second PE session will be taught by a PE coach and will involve multi-skills focussing on the key fundamentals of agility, balance and control. PE games will include net games such as mini-volleyball and tennis.

In science, the children will be developing their knowledge of Earth and space.  They will be analysing the historical theories of the Earth and other planets. The phases of the moon will be studied along with investigating how day and night occur. This will help pupils to understand different time zones around the world, which links with learning in geography this term. Pupils will be researching how the seasons are created and the movement of the planets in the solar system.

This half term we will be looking at the unit Safety. The children will learn to identify possible dangers online, and suggest ways to stay safe, using the web to research relevant information. They will recognize when someone is choking and understand some of the reasons adults decide to drink or not drink alcohol. They will then move on to analyze how other people can influence our decisions but we have the right to make our own choices.

In geography this term, pupils will be learning about immigration to London through the impact and experiences of the Windrush Generation. They will explore the continents, climates and temperatures associated with the climate zones across the 7 biomes. Pupils will explore the biomes within the Caribbean and the UK, making links with the Windrush movement as inspired by this term's core text in English: The Windrush Child by Benjamin Zephaniah. Pupils will examine factors that affect global migration and evaluate geographical sources to draw their conclusions on global migration.

Pupils will learn about coding using the program 'Crumble'. They will design and create a 'fairground' which will be programmed using code to light up, spin and reverse. 

The children will investigating artwork created by Basil Watson. Pupils will be creating a small figure sculpture based on the sculptures made by Basil Watson.  The process to make the small figure sculptures will begin by sketching and drawing in proportion, then pupils will mould the figure shape with foil. Finally, they will add paper-mache to strengthen the shape. To finish, children will spray paint their sculptures to make it look like the artist's sculpture.

In French, the children will be learning about the cross-curricular unit of planets and the Solar System. They will learn a key set of adjectives and will apply knowledge of adjectival agreement to describe the Solar System elements in the foreign language and will also work on creating longer and more detailed sentences, with conjunctions and intensifiers to extend their descriptions. Pupils will build towards performing a role-play task in pairs for a pretend interview between an astrophysicist and an astronaut preparing for a space expedition.

This half term the children will be exploring the unit 'Composing and Chords'. The children will create music in response to music and video stimuli. They will then use chords to compose music that evokes a specific atmosphere, mood or environment. Throughout the unit the children will ensure to use e a wider range of dynamics, including fortissimo (very loud), pianissimo (very quiet), mezzoforte (moderately loud) and mezzo piano (moderately quiet). 

• Weekly swimming lessons commence - Friday 10th January 2024