This term in Chestnut Class, the children will be exploring the theme ‘Heroes and Adventurers’. Throughout this theme the children will be learning about different types of heroes and how they have become heroes by completing adventures and participating in activities that have helped shape the world around us. 

In Literacy, our class text will be ‘Supertato’. Throughout our class text, the children will be exploring the characters in the story and the setting of the story. As the children develop a deep familiarity and understanding with the text, they will be able to retell the story. The children will be using props to support their retelling of the story. We will also be exploring different vocabulary choices and learning new vocabulary and applying these into different contexts. The children will be also be writing sentences about the story, using the sounds they know and using their phonic knowledge to reread their work. They will also be developing their independence writing skills, by using finger spaces and full stops in readiness for the transition into Year 1. 

The children will also be learning 2 key rhymes in their daily reading session and literacy inputs. Our 2 key rhymes this term are ‘How to be a Superhero’ and ‘5  Little Firefighters’. The children will also have these rhymes in their rhyme packets. Copies of these are on the right-hand side for you to explore. 

In our Phonics sessions we will be continuing learning the Initial Code of our Sounds Write programme.

Unit 11 – sh, wh, th, ch, tch, ng, ck 

Throughout our phonics sessions, the children will be practicing segmenting and blending CVC, CVCC, CCVCC and CVCCC words, using sounds from Units 1-7 and using new sounds learnt from Unit 11.

In Maths, the children will be continuing to develop their subitising skills using rekenreks. The children will be introduced to these manipulatives to support their subitising and composition skills. We will then move on to counting beyond 20. The children will be focusing on recognising these numerals and then ordering these in the correct order. After this the children will be continuing to develop their comparison skills where they will compare objects by different attributes. Finally, the children will have the opportunity to consolidate their learning on compositions focusing on composition of numbers to 10.   

In addition to this, the children will be consolidating their learning on patterns by recreating their own patterns and identifying which types of patterns we have made. The children will have opportunities to recreate their own patterns and recreate their own pattern rule. Next, we will be learning about describing position of objects. The children will be revisiting positional language that was taught last term to support their mathematical discussions. Finally, the children will be learning how to give instruction  to build. The children will use colours, shapes and sizes to support their instructions. 

In Understanding the World, the children will be learning about ‘Heroes and Adventures’. First, the children will be exploring heroes that have travelled to space. The children will be learning about the first female to travel to space, Valentina Tereshkova. Next, the children will be learning about a different type of hero. These heroes have travelled and completed adventures to a very cold place. The children will be learning about the expedition to the South Pole by Ernest Shackleton. We will be exploring how challenging this adventure was and how he overcame his challenges. After this, the children will be exploring adventures who were the first people to climb Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay. The children will also learn about a hero who worked very hard to have a better education. The children will learn about how Malala Yousafzai worked really hard to go to school and ensure that females were allowed to have an education. Finally, we will be learning about heroes that are local to our community. We will be comparing different types of local communities and how each of these heroes help us. 

The Knowledge Organiser on the right will show you some of the key vocabulary that the children will be learning. During our theme, we will be reading stories to linked to ‘Heroes and Adventurers’. You will also find a list of books that link to our theme ‘Heroes and Adventurers’, that you might want to share with your children. 

In RE, our focus for this term is  ‘How can we care for our wonderful world? Throughout this focus, the children will be learning about their natural environments around them. They will be exploring g the outside world and identifying what they like and how we can care for the world around us. We will also be exploring the Humans are caretakes of the world that God made and how the take care of the world. The children will also be exploring Bible Stories to show how we can take care of the world around us. 

In Art this term the children will be learning about the expedition of Ernest Shackleton. First of all the children will be exploring drawing self-portraits of themselves in different positions. The children will be exploring charcoal, sketching pencils and writing pencils to recreate these drawings. Next, the children will apply their skills previously learnt in their last session and apply these to recreate portraits of Ernest Shackleton. The children will be using photographs of themselves in the same position as Ernest’s statue. After this the children will be moving on to exploring clay. We will be moulding, sculpting and shaping clay to make different sized people in readiness for our final pieces. Finally, the children will be recreating their versions of Ernest Shackleton’s Statue and the Royal Geographical Society in London. The children will be using clay to recreate their statue, thinking how the facial features that are included and how each body part is positioned. 

In our Design Technology unit, the children will be completing their ‘Build’ unit. In this unit the children will learning to use blocks to recreate a house structure. This unit will be broken down into 4 sections; Research and investigate, Design, Make and Use and Evaluate. In Our Research and Investigate session, we will explore the different materials that we are going to use to recreate our house structures. We will also identify different parts and rooms of a house and explore examples of house we could make. In our Design session, the children will become designers and draw a plan of what their house is going to look like. We will be annotating the children’s plans with materials and colours that they would like to use. During our Make session the children will be using cardboard boxes, cardboard and match sticks to recreate their own open house. The children will use their plan to support their making process. Finally, in our Use and Evaluate sessions, we will be exploring and using our houses to see how they work. The children will be thinking about ways to change their house, what they found easy or hard and what they wish to improve on next time. 

Home Learning: 

Each Monday, the children will be visiting the library. The children will be choosing a new library book to borrow for a week. You will find ideas on how to support your child’s storytelling and comprehension skills in your child’s reading packets. 

To support the children’s fluency and comprehension skills, please could you encourage your children to ‘say the sounds and read the words’ in their phonics reading books. The children should be reading every day. Please can you record their reading in the children’s yellow reading diaries. 

As we move into the Summer Term we are focusing developing and supporting the children with their independence.  Your children will have sound packets to independently practise their phonics at home. Children should be encouraged to say the sounds and read the words and say the sounds write the words. 

To help support the children’s maths' learning at home, you can borrow a math’s challenge bag from us and complete a challenge. There are lots on different bags with activities to supporting counting, sorting, matching and making. The maths' bags will be given out each Monday and returned the following Monday. 

Your child has a homework book, which includes a range of challenges linked to our class learning. You can complete these challenges in any order you wish and can add photos and comments in to here. 



Please upload any photos and comments from learning at home onto your child’s Tapestry learning journal.