Willow Term 6 Newsletter – ‘Ancient Greece’

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Dear Parents,

I hope you had a fabulous half-term holiday and are ready for the final term! We are continuing our learning about the Ancient Greeks and have learnt a lot already!  We will be continuing to read ‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ by Rick Riordan, and learning more about the myths and legends of that time. We will be doing some persuasive writing about Pandora’s Box and finishing off the term by writing our own myths!  Our topic sessions will focus on the Olympics and the differences between the Athenians and the Spartans and our D.T. will involve getting messy with some clay! In maths, we are revisiting a lot of the areas we have already learnt about to consolidate and deepen the children’s understanding.The MyMaths homework will be based around the week’s learning.

We are really looking forward to our trip to Chiddingly where we will experience hands-on learning and deepen our understanding of a whole range of Ancient Greek information. If you haven’t yet returned your permission slip, please do this asap.

Our PE days are Monday and Friday; please ensure your child’s kit is always in school; trainers everyday are essential.

Times Tables

By the end of Year 4, all children should know their times tables up to 12 x 12. We are doing at least one session a week focused on these, but please do practice with your children at home, as much as possible. Times Table Rockstars is a really useful website for this as it tests the children on their tables at their own pace. It will start off ensuring they are secure on their 10s, before moving onto 2s, and then 5s. The children also need to be secure on the inverse calculations – e.g. 100 ÷ 10 = 10.

Termly Project

This project will continue to stretch through Term 6 as we will be continuing our focus on the Ancient Greeks.

For this project, the children can use their imaginations to create a Greek artefact. This could be a pot with paintings on, a Greek head wreath, a model of a Greek warrior, some Greek food to share with the class or anything else that captures their imagination as we learn more about the culture of the Ancient Greeks. So we can display as many of these as possible, please keep in mind what size the projects are. Models that would fit inside a shoe box are the perfect size as they will fit into the white units that we use to display work.

Please have your project in school by no later than Tuesday 25 June so we can share them and put them on display!

Helping to Enrich Our Topics

It is always great to have items or visitors that support our topic, so if anyone has any experience or items that may help us with any of the work above that we could hear about or borrow, we would love to see and hear about them.

Reminders

Please make sure your child brings in a water bottle each day with fresh water; ensure all jumpers are labelled and bring a coat for any wet weather.

Many thanks for your continued support,

Miss Hare and Mrs Fry

Useful Websites

Questions You Could Ask Your Child About Their Learning This Term

  • Which of the words below have you learnt the meaning of?
  • What is the decimal equivalent to ½, ¼ and ¾?
  • What is your prediction for the tooth experiment?
  • What happened in Pandora’s Box?
  • Who are the Spartans and Athenians?
  • Do you know any differences between Spartans and Athenians?
  • Which prefixes have you learnt the meanings of?

Vocabulary We Will Learn This Term

Pandora prediction results conclusion
Athenian Spartan tenth hundredth
Olympics tradition algorithm sequence
prefix suffix clause subordinate

Learning Map

Willow Term 5 Newsletter – ‘Ancient Greece’

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Dear Parents,

I hope you had a fabulous Easter break and are feeling refreshed and ready for another term. Our topic for the next two terms is ‘Ancient Greece’.  We will be reading ‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ by Rick Riordan, and writing our own myths based on a selection of Greek myths and legends. Our topic sessions will teach us all about how the Greeks lived, what they ate and how similar/different they were to us today.

In maths, we are looking at shape, money and revisiting fractions. Fractions can be an area that children find particularly difficult so any extra support at home, and with their My Maths homework, would really benefit them.

Our PE days are Monday and Friday; please ensure your child’s kit is always in school; trainers everyday are essential.

Times Tables

By the end of Year 4, all children should know their times tables up to 12 x 12. We are doing at least one session a week focused on these, but please do practice with your children at home, as much as possible. Times Table Rockstars is a really useful website for this as it tests the children on their tables at their own pace. It will start off ensuring they are secure on their 10s, before moving onto 2s, and then 5s. The children also need to be secure on the inverse calculations – e.g. 100 ÷ 10 = 10.

Termly Project

This project will stretch over the next two terms as we will be continuing our focus on the Ancient Greeks in Term 6. For this project, the children can use their imaginations to create a Greek artefact. This could be a pot with paintings on, a Greek head wreath, a model of a Greek warrior, some Greek food to share with the class or anything else that captures their imagination as we learn more about the culture of the Ancient Greeks. So we can display as many of these as possible, please keep in mind what size the projects are. Models that would fit inside a shoe box are the perfect size as they will fit into the white units that we use to display work.

Helping to Enrich Our Topics

It is always great to have items or visitors that support our topic, so if anyone has any experience or items that may help us with any of the work above that we could hear about or borrow, we would love to see and hear about them.

Reminders

Please make sure your child brings in a water bottle each day with fresh water; ensure all jumpers are labelled and bring a coat for any wet weather.

Many thanks for your continued support,

Miss Hare and Mrs Fry

Useful Websites

Questions You Could Ask Your Child About Their Learning This Term

  • Which Gods and Goddesses did the Ancient Greeks believe in?
  • When did the Ancient Greeks live?
  • Why do we use paragraphs?
  • How many teeth does the average grown adult have?
  • How do you calculate the perimeter of a shape?
  • Which times tables do you need to practice?
  • Which of the words below have you learnt the meaning of?

Vocabulary We Will Learn This Term

ancient democracy myths century
AD / BC chronological Hercules Icarus
Daedalus civilisation sources empire
canines molars incisors digestion
stomach intestines function oesophagus

Learning Map

Willow Term 4 Newsletter – ‘Amazon Adventures’

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Dear Parents,

I hope you have had a wonderful half term break. We are continuing our focus on Geography this term and our topic is based around the Amazon Rainforest! We will be reading ‘The Explorer’ by Katherine Rundell, and doing lots of different styles of non-fiction writing to display our knowledge. Our Geography sessions will focus on comparing our lifestyles to what it might be like to live in the rainforest climate and discussing deforestation.

In maths, we are beginning to tackle fractions and decimals! This can be an area that children find particularly difficult so any extra support at home, and with their My Maths homework, would really benefit them.

We are planning a trip to Drusillas on Wednesday 27th March and a letter with more details will be sent out soon.

We will be having our class assembly on Thursday 4th April at 9:00am and we hope you can all join us. We are really looking forward to sharing the children’s work from the term with you.

Our PE days are Monday and Friday; please ensure your child’s kit is always in school; trainers everyday are essential.

Times Tables

By the end of Year 4, all children should know their times tables up to 12 x 12. We are doing at least one session a week focused on these, but please do practice with your children at home, as much as possible. Times Table Rockstars is a really useful website for this as it tests the children on their tables at their own pace. It will start off ensuring they are secure on their 10s, before moving onto 2s, and then 5s. The children also need to be secure on the inverse calculations – e.g. 100 ÷ 10 = 10.

Termly Project

This term, it would be great to have some models of animals or the rainforest that we could display in the corridor for visitors to see. So we can display as many of these as possible, please keep in mind what size the projects are. Models that would fit inside a shoe box are the perfect size as they will fit into the white units that we use to display work.

Helping to Enrich Our Topics

It is always great to have items or visitors that support our topic, so if anyone has any experience or items that may help us with any of the work above that we could hear about or borrow, we would love to see and hear about them.

Reminders

Please make sure your child brings in a water bottle each day with fresh water; ensure all jumpers are labelled and bring a coat for any wet weather.

Many thanks for your continued support,

Miss Hare and Mrs Fry

Useful Websites

Questions You Could Ask Your Child About Their Learning This Term:

  • Where is the Amazon Rainforest?
  • What animals live in the rainforest?
  • How do you add fractions with the same denominator?
  • What is a decimal number?
  • What is the climate like in the rainforest?
  • What is a preposition?

Learning Map

Willow Term 3 Newsletter – ‘Where in the World Are We?’’

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Dear Parents,

I hope you have had a wonderful Christmas break! Our topic for Term 3 is called ‘Where in the world are we?’ and we will be doing lots of (virtual…) exploring of the world! We will be spending two weeks focusing on different continents – Africa, Antarctica and Asia. During each focus, we will read a different book and use them to write our own stories! We will also be learning about Hartfield and the history of the village. Willow are continuing to do a big focus on times tables and would really appreciate your support in helping them learn these at home too.
Our PE days are Monday and Friday; please ensure your child’s kit is always in school; trainers everyday are essential.

Termly Project

This term, it would be great if the children could research a country or continent or city of their choice. This could be presented in a variety of ways such as a scrapbook, powerpoint, poster or leaflet. We will have sessions dedicated to sharing these with the rest of the class towards the end of the term.

Please let me know if there are any questions.

Helping to Enrich Our Topics

It is always great to have items or visitors that support our topic, so if anyone has any experience or items that may help us with any of the work above that we could hear about or borrow, we would love to see and hear about them.

Reminders

Please make sure your child brings in a water bottle each day with fresh water; ensure all jumpers are labelled and bring a coat for any wet weather.

Many thanks for your support,

Miss Hare

Useful Websites

Questions You Could Ask Your Child About Their Learning This Term

  • What are the seven continents?
  • Can you name any other counties that are on the same continent as the UK?
  • How did the first church begin?
  • Can you say your 4x and 3x table?
  • How can you classify living things?
  • What has happened in the stories you have read so far?
  • What is a homophone?

Learning Map

Willow Term 2 Newsletter – ‘Energising Engineers’

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Dear Parents,
I hope you have had a fantastic half term break! Our topic for term 2 is ‘Energising Engineers’ and we will be reading ‘Rosie Revere, Engineer’ to help us learn about what it means to be an engineer. We are also looking forward to celebrating 100 years since the end of WW1 on the second week of term, with a whole week focused on WW1. We will be using a book called ‘Archie’s War’ to help us with writing our own diaries and creating scrap books about what it would be like to be a school child during this time. We have also book a trip for Wednesday 28th November to visit the iconic British Airways i360 in Brighton and then onto the Pavillion to visit the Brighton Museum. A letter with further information will be sent out next week.

We will also be really focusing on timestables this term. The expectation is that children should know all their tables up to 12×12 by the end of year 4. This term, we will be especially focusing on the 3x, 4x, 6x and 8x tables. Please do as much as you can at home to learn these as they make so many areas of maths so much easier.

Our PE days are Tuesday and Friday; please ensure your child’s kit is always in school; trainers everyday are essential.

Termly Project

As our topic is based on Engineers, the children’s termly project will be to invent something to solve a problem. They could solve one of these three problems:

  • Something that makes one of your chores easier to do
  • A new way to package food to reduce plastic waste
  • A new, original piece of playground equipment
  • …or create something to solve a problem of their own! The children could make their creations or draw a design for their invention and explain how it would work. I look forward to seeing some genius inventions!

Helping To Enrich Our Topics

It is always great to have items or visitors that support our topic, so if anyone has any experience or items that may help us with any of the work above that we could hear about or borrow, we would love to see and hear about them.

Reminders

Please can you make sure your child brings in a water bottle each day with fresh water; ensure all jumpers are labelled and bring a coat for any wet weather.

Many thanks for your support,

Miss Hare

Useful Websites

Questions you could ask your child about their learning this term

  • Why are we celebrating WW1?
  • Which famous inventors have you learnt about?
  • Who discovered gravity and how? What is friction?

Learning Map

Willow Term 1 Newsletter – ‘Roald Dahl’

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Dear Parents,

I hope you have had a wonderful summer holiday! The children have settled really well into the new Willow Class and we have enjoyed getting to know each other this week. Our topic for term 1 is ‘Roald Dahl’ and we will be reading a few of his books over the tem – including ‘The Twits’, ‘The Magic Finger’ and ‘The Giraffe, Pelly and me’. Our topic work this term will be based on Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake and how to create our own stories. Our PE days are Tuesday and Friday; please ensure your child’s kit is always in school; trainers everyday are essential.

The way we are sending out homework has slightly changed for this year – please see the attached letter for further information and please don’t hesitate to come and see me if there are any questions. A copy of this will also be stuck into your child’s homework book which will be sent out on Mondays.

Termly Project

As our topic is based on Roald Dahl, the children’s task this term is to create a piece of artwork or design technology project based on their favourite character from his books! They could draw or paint or collage a picture of their favourite character, or create a 3-D model out of whatever they like. I look forward to seeing some creative designs!

Helping to Enrich Our Topics

It is always great to have items or visitors that support our topic, so if anyone has any experience or items that may help us with any of the work above that we could hear about or borrow, we would love to see and hear about them.
Many thanks for your support,

Miss Hare

Useful Websites

Questions You Could Ask Your Child About Their Learning This Term

  • Which books did Roald Dahl write?
  • Who was his illustrator?
  • What are the states of matter?
  • Why is it important to protect our environment?
  • Which parable did you learn about this week?

Learning Map