Welcome to Acorns' Class Page

Welcome to the Acorn's class page.  Here you will find lots of information about what we are doing in school and the different topics that we are learning.

We hope that you have had an incredible summer and that you have had lots of time to play, share time with your families and relax!  Mrs Stevens and Mrs O'Hara cannot wait to see you and hear all about what you have been up to.

 As it is the first term back, we have got so much super learning to fit in.  We will be investigating the Egyptians and finding out all about canopic jars, red and white crowns and how the society of Ancient Egypt was set up. We will also be reading, writing and practising our Maths.

Our swimming sessions start the second Wednesday of term (Sept 17th) and will be held at Queens Park in Chesterfield from now on.

Children will still be having PE on Fridays, however, they will now be bringing in their PE kits and getting changed in school. Please make sure that they have a white t-shirt, black shorts, leggings or joggers and a plain black or red hoodie.

English

In English this term we will be looking at all the ingredients that go together to make us amazing authors.  We will look at different texts such as The Time-Slip Scarab by Pie Corbett and the The Scarab's Secret by Nick Would to see how they used the rich history of Ancient Egypt to bring their stories to life.

In our reading sessions, we will be focusing on a wide variety of texts about The Ancient Egyptians. To do this we will be using our VIPERS skills (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, sequencing and summarising) to look at challenging texts with more depth of understanding.

Not only that, we will also be building up our reading, writing and SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) skills which will build to help us become the best writers!

Maths

In Maths Acorns will spend the term investigating place value. We will be taking a deep dive into how out number system works and how number patterns work across the hundreds, tens and ones for the Year 3s and with the introduction of the thousands for the Year 4s.

As a school, we are also partaking in a Maths Mastery programme which will give all the children the opportunity to investigate patterns and recognise the important links in maths. This means that we will have one day a week where we solve puzzles and answer open ended questions which will make maths even more fun!

Year 4s have their Multiplication Tables Check this year, so there will be a strong focus on learning their times tables up to 12 x 12 and we will be sending home cards to help them build fluency.  There will also be TTRockstars club, which is open to Year 3s and 4s in after school club.

Swimming

We are really excited to be starting Swimming with Qualitas this year. We will be having much longer sessions to give us the best chance of becoming strong, confident and safety- conscious swimmers. 

Our sessions will be at Queen's Park Leisure Centre in Chesterfield and will be led by trained swimming coaches who will support children with their confidence and with their techniques.

Being able to swim also opens the doors to a wide variety of other sports, such a kayaking, canoeing and water polo! 

Science

In Science this term Living Things and their Habitats will be our focus.  Acorns will discover why animals choose to live where they do.

We will also look at how animals are groups and have a go at making branching databases with own questions to help group, identify and name a variety of living things in their natural environment.

As part of our study, we will also investigate how humans have impacted on the habitats of other living things and what we can do to reduce the impact in the future.