Tue Sep 7 2010

Curriculum Newsletter

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Term 6

Summer has finally arrived and the summer holidays are only five weeks away but the children still have so much learning to do.

What exciting topic is it this term? Its......

 "A Bugs Life!"

As you can probably guess from the title we are looking at bugs, insects and their habitats. Yuck we hate bugs!

What are we learning?

Literacy

In Literacy we will be learning about non chronological reports and writing our own fact files about insects. Do you know any good tales from around the world that are about bugs because we will also be learning about stories from other cultures?

So, look forward to some fantastic writing about bugs.

Our writing is improving but we still need to work on our punctuation and grammar and therefore we are continuing this term to focus on:

  • Capital letters, full stops, question marks, exclamation marks and the use of commas
  • Sentence openers
  • Connectives

Also we will be working on organising our writing into paragraphs.

 

The spellings we will be working on are:-

  • Plurals - changing y to ies
  • The high frequency words
  • Connectives
  • Topic vocabulary

Numeracy

In Numeracy we will be learning about:-

  • Identifying patterns, relationships or properties of numbers or shapes
  • Venn and Carroll diagrams
  • Angles
  • 2D shapes
  • 3D shapes
  • Compass points
  • Fractions

We will also be focusing on developing our mathematical investigation skills and each week we will be tackling a mathematical problem.

What other exciting things will we be doing?

  • Science - finding out about invertebrates and vertebrates, plants, habitats and how animals have adapted to their environment
  • ICT - carrying out research, creating branching databases and powerpoint presentations.
  • Geography - finding out about the different continents and comparing a European country with our own.
  • Art - observational drawings, line drawings and blending watercolours.
  • Music - combining and using different sounds expressively.
  • RE - comparing different religions.

PE

All three classes will do PE on Wednesdays and Fridays. It is helpful if children have their PE kits in school all week as we sometimes add in extra PE sessions if they fit in with our theme for the week.

During the hot weather keeping hydrated is so important so please ensure your child has a fresh water bottle daily.

Home Learning

  • To read as often as possible and share their reading with an adult at least twice a week.
  • Topic based activities given out on Thursdays, to be returned the following Tuesday.
  • Basic number bonds and/or times tables.

We look forward to working in partnership with you and seeing you at our Open Afternoon on 7th July at 2pm.

Any problems or concerns?  Do not hesitate to come and see us any time after school if we can help you.

Miss V. T. Homewood
Deputy Head

The Year 3/4 Team

Ms. I. Gudrups             Mrs S Holman              Mrs M Hickmott 
Turtle Class (5)            Tiger Class (6)             Panda Class (7)