WRITING:

This term we will be focusing on creative writing. Pupils will develop the characters, settings and storylines in their own imaginative stories. This will link to our ‘My 5 Senses’ topic as their descriptions of their imaginative settings will include what their characters can see, hear, smell, touch and taste. They will learn to divide their stories into logical paragraphs and incorporate interesting vocabulary, as well as a variety of conjunctions (and, so, but, because), sentence openers, and punctuation. Some pupils may progress to adding dialogue to their stories and learn how to use speech marks. They will all continue to self-assess their own writing in order to identify next steps to improve their stories throughout the term.

SPELLING & PHONICS:

Children will continue to practise phonics and spelling patterns within group activities. Using classroom resources such as learning walls, spell checkers and dictionaries, children will be encouraged to use interesting words in their writing and to take responsibility for checking any words they are unsure of.

READING:

To inspire pupils to use their imagination to write their own stories, this term our class novel will be ‘The Enchanted Wood’ by Enid Blyton. This will help them to understand the development of characters and settings as well as the format of adventure stories.

Using both the Workshop for Literacy approach and Blooms Questions, pupils will continue to learn how to answer literal, inferential and evaluative questions about texts. For this purpose, pupils are encouraged to bring in any picture books they may have at home which feature any of the 5 senses.

As well as visiting the school library this term to select books to read for enjoyment, we will also incorporate short periods of ‘Everyone Reading in Class’ throughout the week. Pupils will be encouraged to find enjoyment in reading while quietly relaxing with their classmates. Reading books will be sent home for homework for pupils to continue practising their reading aloud skills, working on projecting their voices and reading with expression.

LISTENING & TALKING:

Talking and listening skills are practised daily in all areas of the curriculum. Our focus this term will be for pupils to share their favourite stories with classmates – this could be books that they select to read from the school library, from the classroom, reading books they take home for homework, or books from their own collections at home. The children will be encouraged to try to bring their favourite stories to life and develop their skills of persuasion to try to convince their classmates to read the same books.

MATHEMATICS:

Measure

The children will investigate how to use a range of instruments including rulers, metre sticks, digital scales and measuring jugs to measure length, height, weight, volume and area. They will practise estimating measurements before selecting the most appropriate instrument and recording measurements using standard units, such as centimetres, kilograms and litres.

Data Analysis

Pupils will learn to collect, interpret and display information in a variety of charts, diagrams, graphs and tables. They will practise gathering and sorting data using surveys, questionnaires and group tallies, then display and clearly label their data using a variety of different methods, including the use of digital technologies.

NUMERACY:

This term we will be revising the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and introducing fractions with a focus on patterns and equations. Pupils will practise describing number patterns, then create and continue repeating patterns involving numbers as well as shapes, pictures and symbols. They will learn to see equations as a way of balancing sums on either side of the equals sign and will learn to use the = ¹ < and > symbols correctly.

All of the children’s learning will be through practical resources, whiteboard recording and games, as well as some written work to consolidate their knowledge and understanding.  ‘Sumdog’ challenges and games on websites such as ‘Topmarks’ can be used in school or at home to help the children’s mental maths strategies.

Outdoor PE

The class will continue to have fortnightly PE sessions, working on a variety of skills through different sports and challenges, particularly aimed towards sports day activities.  They will work in small groups to recognise the value of good teamwork skills and cooperation with others.

Indoor PE

We will be focussing on dance this term.  We will use our topic of ‘the senses’ to explore a variety of music and movement to create individual, group and class dances.

Health

This term we will be focussing on the themes of friendship, kindness and relationships.  Within this context we will be discussing our mental and physical wellbeing.  The lessons will be based around the Scottish government programme RSHP.  This is a website that has age appropriate lessons around relationships, sexual health and parenthood.  You can access all of the content that will be shared with the class from the following link:

https://rshp.scot/first-level/

We will link most of the lessons to our topic of ‘our senses’ and the steps to wellbeing which we will focus on weekly in class.

Our senses.

Our term 4 topic is ‘our senses’.  This topic covers science, health and wellbeing and social science targets.  The children will have the opportunity to explore how our senses help us navigate our environment to be safe and the limitations they can also have.  We will be looking at the parts of our body that facilitate our senses and conduct experiments to see how our other senses work if one sense is hindered such as blind taste tests, understanding communication without hearing etc.  We will also be learning about organisations that support hearing or visually impaired people such as the guide dog society.