Term 1 Week 1 – overview

Welcome back to the first full week in Chestnut Class!

We will be beginning our ukulele lessons on Monday afternoon.  We are fortunate to be taught by Mr Lawrence and all instruments are provided by the school.  If you do have your own ukulele and would like to bring it in, you are more than welcome to do so!

Our spelling words this week feature ‘au’ and ‘augh’.  We will be carrying out a range of activities to embed these spellings.  Our handwriting session will focus on writing numbers.

As a school, we are beginning the year with some work on the picture book Something Else by Kathryn Cave and Chris Riddell.  We will be using it to explore differences and friendships.

In Maths, we will be beginning a unit on place value, starting with representing numbers to 1,000, partitioning numbers to 1,000 and number lines to 1,000.  We will also be practising times tables.  Our target in Year 4 is to be secure in all times tables up to 12s and we take the Multiplication Table Check in the summer term.

In RE, we will be beginning a unit on Creation.  We will be placing the text of Genesis in the context of the Big Story of the Bible.  We will be thinking about wonders in the natural world and creating a display for our classroom.

In History, we are studying the Roman invasion of Britain, beginning with work on timelines – where the Roman Empire sits in history and also key events in the life of the Empire.

In Science this term, we will be learning about states of matter.  This week we will be sorting items into the categories of solids, liquids and gases and finding out about how the particles behave in each of those categories.

PE will take place on Monday and Wednesday afternoons with Mr Goodyear.  Please ensure that your child has a named PE kit in school all week.

Reading records will be coming home this week.  We would like pupils to bring them in on Tuesday and Friday each week.  If your child is reading books from the reading scheme, these will be changed for them.  If your child is a free-reader they will be responsible for changing their book.

If you need to contact the class team about non-urgent matters, please use the following email address:

chestnut@st-barnabas.kent.sch.uk

Have a great week.

Best wishes,

Mrs Barter and the Chestnut Team