In English this term, Beech Class will be building on their existing writing skills, adding tools to their toolkit. They will be reading Aesop’s Fables, looking at how lessons are imparted through the stories. Our first tale will be the story of The Tortoise and the Hare, and the children will be using this story to examine the appearance and personality of the characters. We will be learning about the suffixes -er and -est and how we can compare in order to describe. The children will be applying the spelling rules they have already learnt from adding the suffix -ed.

Through other fables within the text, the children will begin to apply direct speech into their writing, learning about punctuation and reporting clauses to denote which character is speaking. Continuing to expand their descriptive skills, the children will also learn to incorporate similes and exaggeration into their narratives to convey meaning to the reader.

We will be reading the text during daily Whole Class Reading sessions, during which the children will be learning to track the text and develop their fluency by reading aloud. We will develop our comprehension by looking at the words the author uses and retrieving information from the text. The more practise the children have doing this, both at school and home, will be reflected in their progress and success.

In Maths this term, the children will be delving into Multiplication and Division. The children will be developing their knowledge of the 10, 2, 5, and 3 times tables and looking at how multiplication is commutative. They will learn to step count in these numbers as well as solve number sentences and word problems using grouping and arrays. The children will use their knowledge of the two times tables to not only investigate doubling and halving, but also to identify odd and even numbers.  Moving on from multiplication and division, we will explore length and height, developing the skill of measuring using ruler and a tape measure. We will look at both centimetres and metres and learn about the difference between length and height. 

Our History topic this term is Kings, Queens and Leaders. We will explore how the power that Kings and Queens hold has changed over time, from the all-powerful monarchs who could dictate how the country was run and managed, to the establishment of parliament which created a check on the power of the King or Queen. We will focus first on changes within living memory with the present-day monarch (HRH Charles III) and the coronation of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, before exploring the lives of other kings and leaders chronologically. We will learn that there have been Kings and Queens, who have ruled over the land where we live, for a very long time, and that our current monarch is HRH King Charles III. 

As the children progress through the curriculum, they will build on their understanding of monarchy. We will focus on the changing power of monarchs and how King John believed in being an absolute monarch, and how King Charles I believed in the ‘Divine Right of Kings. ’The children will learn about the English Civil War and how Charles I was defeated and removed from the throne. 

In Art, our topic is Styles in Art. We will examine style as ‘how a piece of art looks’ and focus primarily on particular paintings techniques: pointillism used by Seurat and short brushstrokes used by Van Gogh. The children will be given activities to allow them to explore these techniques, reflecting on the effect that they have on the viewer. The activities also allow them to practice mixing tints, revisiting the knowledge and skills gained previously. The children will further explore how ways of applying paint to a surface can show a particular style by looking at the work of Alma Thomas, an American artist who used short dabs of paint over a whole picture which were often inspired by nature. 

The children will also learn that art can tell a story by representing characters and settings, ideas which should be familiar to children from their work in English. The children will learn (by looking at paintings representing the story of St George and the Dragon), that artists can show different characteristics and personalities by the way they draw and paint. To consolidate this idea, children will draw their own versions of the dragon, considering how they can show the character of their own dragon using shape and colour. 

In Science, children will learn that there are different ways in which we damage the earth. This knowledge will be built on as children learn about the difference between natural and manufactured resources, and renewable and non-renewable resources. The class will learn about the positive and negative impacts of logging and explore pollution: how people create it and how it can harm the environment. Later, the children will discover that recycling is one way we can take care of the earth and about the benefits it has for the environment.

Our question in RE this term is: “Why do Christians pray to God and worship him?” The children will learn how prayer is a way for Christians to thank and show their gratitude to God. They will discover that Christians view prayer as a form of conversation between themselves and God. We will learn about the purpose of prayer and how Christians embed this into their lives. We will look at Church practice and how prayer is central to worship within the routines of the Christian church.