Spring Term 1

Welcome back: we hope you have had a lovely Christmas and a well deserved break.

Value and RE

Our Christian value for this half term is joy which we will be learning about in our class worship sessions alongside the RE topic ‘What matters most?’  During this topic we will explore right and wrong with Christians and Humanists?’ and we will look at bible stories and learn through a range of creative activities.

Art

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 memorable experience: a trip to Walsall Art Gallery (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.  At the end of the unit, they will create their own art gallery for other classes to come and visit and show off their fantastic artwork.

Reading

This half term we will be reading a book called Framed by Frank Boyce Cottrell which is linked to our Art topic.  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.

English

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!

Maths

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.  Every Friday, the children will continue to have an arithmetic test to recap on core skills and aim on developing retention on all operations – particularly fractions and long multiplication and division.

Science

For science this half term, we will be recapping on the 3 core concepts to allow the children to develop their understanding of these in science.  Our focus will be Living things and their habitats, linking to biology and building on the prior knowledge from Year 5.

PHSEE

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.

Homework and activities at home:

The children will continue to be set homework each Friday with the expectation it is handed in for marking the following Friday.  Last half term, with forest school, we struggled to go through it on Friday.  However, we will allocate time for this to take place this half term therefore, homework will be given out on Friday and should be returned before 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!

Tuition

Some children will be given letter regarding tuition.  We strongly encourage you to take this opportunity and attend these sessions as they will be really purposeful and allow your child to develop key skills that will prepare them for not only their SATs but also secondary school.