Kingfisher Class

8th September 2023

How lovely to see your children again after the Summer break!

We are really excited about the academic year ahead and would like to share a little information about what we have planned for the Autumn term. Mrs Wiseman will continue to teach on Mondays and Mrs Evans will teach the rest of the week.

Our first topic is ‘Africa’. Learning will include looking at what makes Africa unique; looking at its biomes, wildlife and links with human history. The second topic is ‘Healthy Me!’. More details about these topics and specific subjects can be found in the topic knowledge organisers on the school website. (Link to knowledge organisers: https://www.wilbyprimary.org.uk/Knowledge-organisers/)

In RE, under the overarching Big Question: ‘Do beliefs make any difference to someone’s life?’, we will look at how Christians show reconciliation with God and others, and we will look at how Muslims might show their submission and obedience to Allah.

Science learning is about electricity and circuits followed by discovering what happens to our food. In Music with Mr Haynes, the children will be playing recorders and learning about music history and appreciation and in ICT, they will be constructing a branching database with Power-point, using hyperlinks;  exploring Scratch and using ‘Storyboarding’ to compare algorithms.

In Literacy, we will begin the term with George’s Marvellous Medicine and writing character descriptions followed by further ‘Write Stuff’ units. There will also be a big focus on Wilby’s ‘non-negotiables’ and on handwriting over the coming term. We will be focusing on the correct pencil grip, letter formation and revising the joins. A love of reading will continue to be promoted by having a class reader and also by doing guided group reading sessions each week which will also focus on the following comprehension skills: vocabulary knowledge, inference, prediction, explaining what you have read, retrieval, sequencing & summarising. Please can we ask that you also continue to read regularly with your child and sign their orange reading log book with any comments. 

In Maths, we will continue to use ‘Power Maths’ and initially will be re-visiting number & place value, money, addition & subtraction, multiplication & division and times tables. Children will be able to make use of manipulatives in lessons and will be encouraged to draw and use formal written methods to work out maths problems.

In Art & Design this term with Mrs Walpole, we are doing a unit called ‘Cloth, Thread & Paint’ - where we explore how artists combine media to create landscapes; we will create African inspired pieces on fabric. Design & Technology in the second half of the Autumn term will be Cooking & Nutrition: Eating Seasonally.

HOMEWORK: 

On Mondays, spellings, sentence and times tables homework will be set. This must be completed every week and handed in on the following Monday. Regular, weekly spellings and times tables tests will also take place on a Monday.

• SPELLING & SENTENCE WORK: All writing must be neatly completed in pencil please.

The children will have ‘Look, Cover , Write Check’ sheets in their homework books which need to be completed in their neatest handwriting following the letter formation and joins that are illustrated for each word on the sheet.                                                                

Each week your child will also need to choose three of their spellings to write in their spellings book. They will have written the date in digits in their book in school each week and they should leave a line under this before writing a separate sentence for each word chosen. In week one we will write the first sentence in their books to model this for you. Each sentence should be on a new line. They must write in pencil and underline (using a ruler) the spelling that they have chosen. They must check their own spelling and punctuation carefully. 

• TIMES TABLES: From now on, we will follow the times table system that we started in class last year, where pupils move from colour-band to colour band, learning new times tables as they go. Because all pupils are now in Lower Key Stage 2 and our Year 4 pupils will take the Government Multiplication Check next Summer, we will focus on doing timed tests on a Monday. Pupils will be allowed 6 seconds per question in line with the Govt. test. Although this might seem quite ‘scary’ at first, 6 seconds is in fact plenty of time to answer questions when facts are known securely. We’ll be teaching children and giving them lots of support and encouragement in lessons too. Each Monday, children will know which multiplication facts to learn / focus on for the following week. Please look in the children’s yellow books to see which they should be learning. (*More information to help you support your child’s times tables learning, practice and testing will be sent home soon.)

On Thursdays, an additional homework task will be set which should be handed in the following Wednesday. This could be a variety of different things over the term and may be linked to literacy, maths, our topic, art or may be research or some home learning linked to another area of the curriculum.

PE: Please ensure children come to school in their PE kits on a Wednesday: blue or black shorts / joggers; a Wilby PE T shirt, trainers and a school jumper. Can all PE kit be clearly named - thank you!

MORNING SNACKS: Please can you send children to school with a fruit snack for morning break. Some have been hungry and we do not have much left over fruit from KS1 to go around. LKS2 and KS2 children should bring in their own fruit snacks. Thank you.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any concerns about well-being or educational needs - and do continue to use Class Dojo to contact us or phone to make an appointment if you would prefer an opportunity to discuss anything further.

Kindest regards,

Mrs Evans and Mrs Wiseman