Chestnut Class
Chestnut Class - Spring term 2026
Welcome back to school after the Christmas break. This is some information about what we will be covering this term, and always feel free to speak to me if you have any further questions.
English
In term 3, we will be creating a dilemma story based on The Great Kapok Tree, a story about deforestation. In term 4 we will be learning about deforestation of the rainforests and using that information to write persuasive letters. We will also be learning debating skills to help us hone these persuasive techniques. In addition, in term 4 we will be linking our English work to the Science topic, states of matter by creating an information text on the water cycle.
Our whole class guided reading will be the book Lob by Linda Newbery. This whole class approach gives us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a text and to develop not only reading fluency but also comprehension skills such as retrieval, inference and prediction.
Spelling will focus on the statutory Year 3 & 4 list, adding suffixes, prefixes and looking at unusual spelling patterns.
We will be covering a wide range of the technical aspects of writing in our grammar sessions including apostrophes for possession and contraction, recognising and punctuating direct speech, noun phrases and expanded noun phrases, prepositional phrases and word families.
Maths
We will be working on multiplication, division, perimeter, fractions and decimals. We will have some dedicated time to work on times tables fluency, but it would be beneficial for children to practise these little and often at home to support this.
RE
We are using the RE curriculum Understanding Christianity again this year and will be examining some key concepts on the themes of Gospel and Salvation
Science
We will complete the unit on sound. Then electricity and states of matter will be explored in these sessions. This will cover the features of solids, liquids and gases and the water cycle.
Time and Place
We will be studying geographical terms to describe the world around us. We will be investigating continents, countries and capitals of the world and then moving onto a study of European countries and capitals with a focus on one European country. We will be learning terms such as longitude and latitude to help us understand how locations can be exactly pinpointed.
Art and design
Our art and design will link closely to our topic and we will be exploring typography and map-making..
Music
We will continue to have weekly ukulele lessons with Mr Lawrence. Instruments are provided by the school.
ICT
Using the National Centre for Computing Education curriculum, we will be studying repetition in shapes which involves coding and will also be completing a unit on data logging.
PE
Our PE sessions will take place on a Monday morning and Thursday afternoon. Please ensure your child has a labelled PE kit in school all week.
Homework and reading
Homework will be issued on a Wednesday and is due back on Monday. It is not intended to be overwhelming, but gives your child an opportunity to consolidate on the learning they have done during the week. It will usually consist of English, spelling and Maths activities. We expect your child to read for a minimum of 10 minutes a day. We would like them to complete the reading log by making some comments on what they have read each day. This will be checked on Tuesday and Friday. In Year 4, we ask that children take responsibility for changing their books themselves if they are reading from the classroom selection.
If you have any concerns relating to your child and their learning, please do get in touch via the class email address chestnut@st-barnabas.kent.sch.uk . Alternatively, you can speak to me at release time now that restrictions are more relaxed. If your query is urgent, please contact the school office in the first instance.
I am really looking forward to another exciting term with the class!
With best wishes,