Our Christian value for this half term is joy, which we will be learning about in our class worship sessions alongside the RE topic ‘Christian Aid and Islamic Relief, can it change the world?’ where we will consider concepts such as: interpretations, parables, community and peace.

This half term, our foundation subject is Art, and we will be learning all about ‘Gallery Rebels’.  The children will be immersed into this topic with a trip to Walsall Art Gallery on Thursday 18^th January (details on parent pay), where they will explore Impressionism and Expressionism focussing on the artists - Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edvard Munch and Marc Chigwell.  The children will look at art concepts, developing and exploring them over the term of the topic, creating works of art as we go, they will have the opportunity to screen print whilst at Walsall Art Gallery.

Love 2 Read brings a new text called Framed by Frank Boyce Cottrell, this book is an exciting tale by Frank Cottrell Boyce, set in a tiny Welsh village called Manod.  When the National Gallery is under threat from flooding, the paintings are sent to Manod to be stored in the local slate mine for safe (or not so safe, as it turns out) keeping. Specific National Gallery paintings are woven through the narrative, which centres on 10-year-old Dylan and his family, who live above the village's garage.  This tale links beautifully to our art topic and writing genres.

In English, we will cover historical recounts, whilst following the story of Vincenzo Perrugia, the seemingly innocent museum curator, who successfully swipes the Mona Lisa hiding her in plain sight.  Following this we will cover journalistic writing, the children will become reporters, investigating the event that led to the disappearance of the Mona Lisa!

This half term in maths, there will be a focus on reasoning and arithmetic woven throughout the lessons, whilst we investigate topics such as: fractions, percentages and decimals and the 4 operations.

Personal, Health, Social, Economic and Emotional lessons (PHSEE), will focus on dreams and goals and we will be thinking about setting targets for the year.

Our PE days are changing slightly this half term, we will be having indoor PE on a Wednesday afternoon, and this will be Gymnastics and outdoor PE will be on a Friday - please send the children in on these days in appropriate kit following the school uniform policy.  All those children with long hair should wear it up off their faces please.

The children will continue to be set homework each Friday with the expectation it is handed in for marking the following Friday.  Each week, the children should be completing four ‘at home’ reads, which should be recorded in their reading diaries.  Each Monday they are set new spellings and then tested each Friday in school.  We would like to thank you for your continued support.  We are thoroughly enjoying working with the children and look forward to what the next half term brings!