Welcome back, Otter Class! We hope you have had an enjoyable and restful summer break. It only feels like yesterday that we were ending the school year! We have been busy over the summer making sure our learning environment is ready to begin the new school year in. See below some pictures of our classroom, we hope you love it as much as we do.
Learning in Term 1
In English this term we are looking at our key text ‘Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes’. Whilst looking at this text we are incorporating both reading and writing skill learning into our lessons. During our English lessons we will be improving our VIPERS reading skills (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summary). We cannot wait to start exploring our key text!
This year we are continuing to follow Power Maths for our mathematics learning. The Year 3’s will begin by learning about place value within 1,000 and then moving on to addition and subtraction. The Year 4’s will be learning about place value with 4-digit numbers and then also moving on to addition and subtraction.
This year, as a school, we are following a new curriculum called ‘Cornerstones’. This means that over the course of a full term (2 half terms) we will have an overarching topic. Our topic until Christmas will be Invasion- a History-based topic centered around the withdrawal of the Romans. Within this topic we will also learn about Anglo-Saxon and Viking invasions. Whilst we are following our overarching topic, we will also have smaller units that will mostly run for 6 weeks. The smaller units that we will be following are:
Food and the Digestive System- a Science unit looking at exploring the main parts of the body starting with teeth types. This will also be linked to animal diets and constructing food chains
Interconnected World- an exciting Geography unit where they will learn about the tropic and the countries, climates and culture of North and South America
Contrast and Complement- an Art unit looking at the colour wheel and colour mixing. We can’t wait to see the creativity!
Whilst all of this fun learning is going on, we will also have our other wider learning subjects running alongside our Cornerstones units. Our topic for PE this term is Gymnastics and will be on Tuesday afternoons. Please ensure that your child has their full PE kit in school so they can participate in these lessons.
Reading for pleasure will continue on Wednesday afternoons. Your child is able to bring something in to read in this time. This session allows the children dedicated time to be able to immerse themselves into the world of a book in a calm environment. Teaching staff will also be bringing in books for this time so we can share our passion for reading as a class.
What a busy but exciting term we have ahead of us!
Home Learning
This term will see the return of home learning. This will be set on a Tuesday and is to be completed by the following Monday. This will be set on Google Classroom. The home learning task will be focused on our wider learning topics in order to develop a secure understanding of the content
Your child is also expected to be reading regularly. They will be bringing a reading book home with them which will be changed once it is read.
To help develop our knowledge of times tables we also encourage children to be accessing Times Tables Rockstars at home. We would love to see Otter Class at the top of the TT Rockstar leader board!
You can access TT Rockstars on this link https://ttrockstars.com/
Reminders
Children should arrive at school between 8:30am and 8:50am as we would like to start our learning as soon as possible. Children will be dismissed from the school playground at 3:10pm
As you will know, the class is now part of the KS2 cohort which means a different timetable to KS1 (You can see this on our linked timetable). This means that breaktime will now be at 11 o’clock rather than the time they are used to (10 o’clock). This highlights the importance for a healthy snack for break time as I am sure we will have some rumbling tummies to start off with as we adjust to this new time.
Contact us
We are always available on the playground after school if you need to talk! Alternatively, if it is not urgent, you can email the families email. This email is checked regularly and will be forwarded on to the class team. You can find the email here: families@bethersden.kent.sch.uk
We cannot wait to welcome the children in to Otter Class and to begin the exciting learning ahead of us!