In English we will continue to work on our key text "Tom’s Midnight Garden" by Philippa Pearce. In our writing, we will explore a range of grammatical devices, including: dashes, hyphens, conjunctions, complex and compound sentences, expanded noun phrases, relative clauses, paragraphing, subjunctive form and passive voice. We will then apply this knowledge to narrative writing linked to the text as well as thinking about developing our letter writing and biography skills. In our whole class reading, we will explore a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts, working on our fluency as well as continuing to develop our ability to retrieve information from a text. We will continue to learn how to make inferences to help us understand a character’s actions and how to ask questions to improve our understanding of texts. We will make predictions about what might happen from details the author has given, learning how to justify these predictions with evidence from the text.

In Maths we will be continuing to develop our understanding of place value and the four operations, as well as extending our knowledge of fractions and their decimal and percentage equivalents. We will continue to cycle back and review our work on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division while building on this prior knowledge to extend our written methods. We will develop our fraction, decimal and percentage work by looking at equivalent fractions, ordering fractions and finding percentages of amounts.  We will begin to investigate ratio and how this links to our work on fractions and decimals. To tie this all together, as we work through, we will be applying everything we learn to word based problems, which will help us develop our reasoning and problem-solving.

In History, we will build on our work on the Industrial Revolution and look at life in Britain during the Victorian Age. We will learn about the life of Queen Victoria: both her personal life and some of her decisions as a monarch, including her involvement with the British Empire. In addition to the political context of this time, this unit also delves deeper into the social aspects of Victorian Britain, looking in particular at the lives of the poor. We will consider the similarities and differences between the lives of the rich and the poor in Victorian England and use primary sources to explore what it was like to live in a Victorian slum or Workhouse. The children will also learn about more positive aspects of the Victorian period, looking at the significance of the Great Exhibition and the growth in technology and new discoveries made by the Victorians. This will build on children’s previous learning about the Industrial Revolution. The children will complete the unit looking at the legacy of the Victorians, analysing the similarities and differences between life in the 1900s and life in Britain today and considering the question "What has changed/stayed the same since the Victorian era?"

In Geography, we will be studying the human and physical geography of Australia, using maps of Australia to identify key settlements, such as the capital city of Canberra, and identifying biomes and rivers. We will study physical aspects of Australia’s geography such as the desert, the tropical rainforests, the mountains and the rivers before learning about the importance of Uluru and how it is respected by the Aboriginal people of Australia as a sacred site. We will learn about the climate and how unreliable rainfall causes problems for people who depend on water for irrigation and farming. Using population maps, the children will locate areas of dense population and major settlements within Australia. Throughout this unit, we will work on forming an understanding that Australia is a diverse place that is home to contrasting landscapes including rural and urban environments. We will also learn about Aboriginal people who have lived on the continent for thousands of years and how Aboriginal populations suffered when British explorers claimed land as their own. 

In Science, we will be giving the children the opportunity to build on their knowledge of forces as pushes and pulls. The children will learn that forces can make things increase their speed, reduce their speed, change direction or change shape. They will study gravity, friction air resistance and water resistance, looking at ways in which all of these forces act upon objects such as parachutes, boats and footballs. We will work scientifically to plan and undertake an investigation to see how water and air resistance act in opposition to gravity. There will be an opportunity to research scientists who worked on developing our understanding of forces such as Isaac Newton, considering how understanding forces is vital to many different roles today.

In Art, we will focus on Chinese brush painting: the materials used for paintings and calligraphy, subject matter and typical compositional devices. Traditional Chinese painting, which is displayed in scrolls, has clear, defined features. It is often of nature, uses black ink or limited colour and has a symmetrical, simplified and ideal (rather than real) design. We will take the time to explore all of these aspects of Chinese brush painting before moving on to explore Chinese ceramics. At first, we will investigate Ming Dynasty porcelain, how this was made and decorated with cobalt blue. We will then learn how the Chinese traded porcelain with Europe, the Portuguese and then the Dutch, until the trade diminished in the early 1700s when the Europeans started to make porcelain themselves. We will use traditional Chinese painting materials for calligraphy and for painting typical Chinese subjects such as bamboo and flowers. The use of these materials will allow us to focus on producing clear, expressive brushstrokes.

In Design Technology, we will be learning about cooking and nutrition before embarking on the task of baking honey muffins. The first session of this sequence introduces the children to the recipe by exploring how honey is produced. This builds on knowledge from our science work on Living Things and Their Habitats and explores the life cycle of a bumblebee. In session 2 the children will make the muffins and then taste and evaluate what they have made in session 3. 

Finally, in RE we will investigate the question "How does the Triple Refuge help Buddhists in their journey through life?" Many people recognise the need to take refuge in their everyday life as a way of refuelling for their life-journey. Within the idea of refuge is both the notion of a ‘haven’ or place of safety and rest, and a place where life is nourished and strengthened for the journey towards the ultimate destination. We will learn how the Buddha knew it would be difficult for people to follow his teachings on their own, so he established Three Refuges for them to rely on: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. These are also known as the Three Jewels or the Triple Gem, in recognition of their importance in supporting Buddhists in their own journeys towards enlightenment. We will learn how a central practice, across all branches of Buddhism is that of ‘taking’ the Three Refuges (also known as the Triple or Threefold Refuge). We will explore how, for a Buddhist, taking refuge is the first step on the path to enlightenment and we will look carefully at what this looks like in practise for Buddhist in their daily lives.