Hello and welcome back! We hope you have enjoyed your summer holidays as much as we have. Thank you to all who took time to send postcards in about their holiday, we have thoroughly enjoyed reading  and sharing them in class.

Topic

During Autumn, we will be going back to 1666 and the era of the Stuarts as we find out about the Great Fire of London and the effect it had on the people of the time. We will be finding out when, where, how and why the Great Fire happened, as well as exploring how we know about it through the diary of Samuel Pepys and other sources. We will also spend some time learning about why we celebrate Bonfire night, learning about Guy Fawkes and King James. Finally we will end out topic by finding out about our very own famous fire of Gateshead and Newcastle, including an interesting trip to the Quayside, Newcastle. We will also be covering ICT throughout topic too, directing bee bots to different places around London.

English

In English this term we are beginning with The Tiger Child and How Rabbit Stole The Fire. We will be completing lots of exciting work on both texts including drama and hot seating. We will be learning to use adjectives to describe characters and use our imaginations to extend stories and create new characters. We will then move onto planning and writing our own stories. Through this we will be focusing on using correct punctuation and trying to use connectives to extend our sentences. We will also be building on phonic knowledge acquired in Year 1 and continuing to use sounds they  know to read and spell words.

We will also be thinking more about the Great Fire of London and we will be writing an imaginary recount about escaping from the fire. We will learn more about Pepys, then pretend we are children from that time and write a diary.

Maths

We will begin by focusing on place value and number, learning to read and write numbers to 100. We will look at what each digit represents and practice counting in 2s, 5s, 10s and 3s. We will then use this knowledge to help us add and subtract numbers to 100.

We will complete work on measures, choosing  and using appropriate standard units to estimate and measure length, height and mass. We will also be learning about 2D and 3D shapes, naming  and identifying properties, then using this knowledge to sort and compare shapes.

Science

Our first Science topic is everyday materials and we will be learning to:

• distinguish between an object and the material from which it is made
• identify and name a variety of everyday materials, including wood, plastic, glass, metal, water, and rock
• describe the simple physical properties of a variety of everyday materials
• compare and group together a variety of everyday materials on the basis of their simple physical properties.

PE

PE lessons will be completed  on Mondays and Fridays. Please ensure your child has their full PE kit in school and that all items are clearly labelled.

Homework

Homework may be given on a Friday and will be expected to be returned by the following Thursday. It would also be beneficial if your child read every night as this has great benefits for reading progression.

Reading

Please could we ask that your child brings their reading books and records into school on their reading day so we can ensure reading books are changed regularly.

Water Bottles

The children should bring their own water bottles to keep in class, which they can access throughout the day. Please make sure your child’s name is written clearly on their water bottle.

We have had a lovely start to our school year 🙂

Thank you!

Mrs Franchi and Mrs Kiely