In both Whole Class Reading and English, we will be delving into the exciting lives of the Ancient Greeks, initially through the short story “The Trojan Horse” by Geraldine McCaughrean, before moving on to the more in depth story of “The Odyssey” by Gillian Cross. It charts the ten year epic voyage of Odysseus as he returns from the Trojan War to the island of Ithaca. On his journey he encounters all manner of perils, from the man-eating Cyclops and the evil sorceress Circe, to the deadly lure of the Sirens and the wrath of the sea-god Poseidon.

During our Whole Class Reading sessions we will be focusing on our fluency, building on our ability to read with expression, and developing our comprehension skills, through our use of the text to retrieve our answers.  We will be using the story to build up our understanding of key characters (particular Zeus and Odysseus) and settings, through the use of expanded noun phrases and series of short sentences.  We will be exploring the three key themes of the story: hospitality, loyalty and vengeance – all of which I am sure will generate a lot of discussion and debate!  In our writing we will explore a range of grammatical devices, including: simple, compound and complex sentences, paragraphs, expanded noun phrases, comma splices, relative pronouns, conjunctions, homophones and similes.  We will use all of the knowledge gained from our Whole Class Reading and English sessions to produce a biography and narrative writing based on “The Odyssey”.

In Maths we will be continuing to develop our understanding of place value and our knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division through daily mental and written challenges.  We will start the term learning about length and perimeter, with a particular focus on how to measure accurately using millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres.  We will then build on our multiplication and division learning from last term, focusing on using our knowledge of factors and using 10 and 100 to solve problems efficiently.  The children will then move on from multiplying using two numbers to solving problems that involve three numbers. Finally this term, the children will be introduced to fractions where they will learn about denominators and numerators and comparing and ordering unit fractions and on a number line.

In Art, we will build on last term’s History theme of Ancient Egypt as we delve in to the amazing world of sculpture, paintings on papyrus and walls and architecture. They will be finding out that this artwork not only shows us what the ancient civilisation believed about the afterlife but also about how they lived, how they were ruled and the power of the pharaohs. With some much incredible artwork to explore, we will be focusing in on the Great Sphinx of Giza, the bust of Nefertiti and the representation of Egyptian gods and goddesses. The children will use their painting, designing and sculpting skills to create their own sphinx from clay, use mixed media to make Egyptian collars and draw Egyptian gods and goddesses in profile on their own homemade papyrus.

In Geography, the children will be developing their understanding and looking closely at rivers. Previously, in our study of settlements, they learnt that rivers were an important resource for travelling and transporting goods in the past and that many cities grew around a river. We will build on this knowledge and move onto understanding how people interact with the world around them. They will explore how people use rivers, for example for irrigation for farmland, for transport and as a water supply. We will also focus on the impact of less than normal rainfall on rivers, specifically the Mississippi River, and then in turn the impact that a drought can have on the people who rely on the river. To help with developing our world wide geographical knowledge we will make extensive use of maps, atlases, globes and digital/computer mapping to locate the rivers, the countries they journey through and to help us describe their features, in particular their shape and direction of travel.

In History, our learning is based around the Anglo Saxons with the children starting with recapping what they have learned so far about the Romans in Britain. They will then move on to learn that after the Romans left, a mix of tribes from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands began to migrate to England. The three biggest tribes were the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, known today as the Anglo Saxons. The children will learn about the lives of people who lived in this period, how they lived, their homes, their jobs, what they ate and what they did for fun. They will discuss how we know about the lives of people who lived so long ago and learn about primary and secondary sources such as artefacts found at Sutton Hoo, places such as West Stow and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. They will also look at religious beliefs of both the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings, and how both were gradually converted from their Pagan beliefs to Christianity. We will be learning about the monk and scholar, Bede the Venerable, who wrote a book about the English people and the church and then move on to study  the Picts and the Scots. We will be discussing how historians find out about these people in the past, and how they engage in historical debate, such as what the symbols on Pictish Stones can tell us.

In Latin we will start to learn about a Roman family, living in England, and learn about their lifestyles, home and food. The children will learn how to read, and translate, stories about the family and how to communicate in simple Latin sentences.  Throughout their learning journey, the children will start to see how the roots of many commonly used English words today actually came from Latin.



In RE we will be exploring the Hindu faith to help us answer the question “How does the story of Rama and Sita inspire Hindus to follow their dharma?”.  The children will explore the concept of “dharma” which means “duty” and can often be described as not letting people down, knowing what your role is in life, choosing the right thing in all situations and not shirking your responsibilities.  The children will learn about the important Hindu story of Rama and Sita and how it demonstrates the concept of “dharma”.  They will also learn about the links between the festival of Diwali and the story of Rama and Sita and how the festival of Raksha Bandhan, focuses on how, through five daily duties, children can show “dharma” to their peers, families and elders.

In Science, the children will learn that light is an energy and that it enables them to see, and interact with, the world around them. They will discover that there are many different sources of light and the light of the sun is vital for life on earth. The children will be working scientifically to find out if materials are transparent or opaque using torches. They will learn that light travels in straight lines and sometimes bounces off from an object or material and that scientists call this reflection. We will extend this concept further as we investigate mirrors and how light reflects from plane, concave and convex mirrors. Working scientifically, children will plan and undertake an investigation to answer the question, “Do shadows stay the same throughout the day?” Planning this investigation will require children to think about the best ways to investigate things, how to make sure their investigation is fair, and how to record their findings.