Our book for this term is The Ice Palace by Robert Swindells. This short novel is a quest story set in another time and place. Ivan, the main character goes in search of his brother taken by the mysterious ‘Starjik’. It is a moving and well written story with strong themes such as family love and bravery and much to explore in terms of character and dilemma.

Our overall aims for this teaching sequence are

• To enjoy a story and discuss its meanings
• To explore narrative plot, settings, characters and draw inferences to aid understanding
• To broaden understanding of writers' use of language and build a varied vocabulary
• To write non-fiction texts based on fictional stimulus
• To write a non-chronological report
• To write a narrative ending

For the first part of this term, in year three, we will be focusing on Money, Fractions and then Time. Year four will learn about Decimals, Fraction and Time . Their KIRF for this term is the 11 x tables with the next term children to know all their times tables up to 12 x 12, with corresponding division facts.

Please make sure that your child is practising their times tables at least three times a week. They can practice these through a fun interactive game on the following website: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button . Alternatively they could practise their times tables on times tables rockstars (ttrockstars.com), where they each have their own log in details and they can even win certificates at school for this. and it is a great resources to practise times tables

Children will explore the resurrection stories including the Journey to Emmaus and be able to link to Christian belief today. Children will have opportunities to ask relevant questions about the resurrection and what happened on the road to Emmaus. They will be consider how artists symbolism in pictures to convey their understanding of the Resurrection/Ascension and Journey to Emmaus.

This unit ‘Forces and magnets’ takes children through six lessons where they learn how to: compare how things move on different surfaces; notice that some forces need contact between 2 objects, but magnetic forces can act at a distance; and observe how magnets attract or repel each other and attract some materials and not others. Children learn how to compare and group together a variety of everyday materials on the basis of whether they are attracted to a magnet, and identify some magnetic materials; describe magnets as having 2 poles and they learn how to predict whether 2 magnets will attract or repel each other, depending on which poles are facing.

The children will be developing their Athletics and Rounders skills.

As a reminder can we please ask that all children wear their PE kits to school on their class’s PE day:

Gazelle – Wednesday and Thursday  

Lemur – Monday and Friday  

Crocodile – Monday and Tuesday

In year 3 and 4, we are extremely lucky; on Thursday afternoons the children participate in recorder lessons in class. Mr York will work with Crocodile, Gazelle and Lemur classes, teaching them how to read music as they learn to play the recorder.

Children's word level and comprehension skills will be developed through whole class guided reading sessions and one to one reading. 

This term, some key children will have catch up interventions with their reading in correspondence to our Little Wandle Phonics Scheme.

Our unit of work for this term is ‘Photo Editing’. Children will develop their understanding of how digital images can be changed and edited, and how they can then be resaved and reused. They will consider the impact that editing images can have, and evaluate the effectiveness of their choices.

 In French, children will be learning about the classroom ‘En Classe’. In this unit the children will learn how to:

• Remember and recall 12 classroom objects with their indefinite article/determiner.
• Replace an indefinite article/determiner with a possessive adjective.
• Say and write what they have and do not have in their pencil case.

In Geography, children will develop their ability to locate countries on maps, identify environmental regions, identify key physical and human characteristics and we will be looking at Arctic Circle in particular. Children will understand similarities and differences between the Arctic and other regions.

In History, children will be learning about the Vikings. Children learn about the life of The Vikings. They understand they were pagans, who had beliefs, and their reputation stemmed from their attacks on monasteries and the accounts of the Monks who had written their accounts at the time. They consider how the Vikings tried to take over Britain and look at which parts they were successful, including Jorvik. Jorvik is examined in closer detail and the children consider what the artefacts tell us about Viking life. They create their own conclusion of what they think about the Vikings and this is enhanced by a class debate.

In this unit, children will be developing their collage skills. They will consider the work of Beatriz Milhazes and create their own collage from Milhazes inspirational work.