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 lots of fun at Halloween and that you received lots of tasty treats!

 As the nights begin to draw in and the winter weather approaches, we are going to spend out days learning about Antarctica and the people who were the first to explore it.  We will be especially focusing on the adventures of Earnest Shackleton who, against all the odds, survived for months after his ship The Endurance became trapped in the thick Antarctic ice.

Our swimming sessions continue and will remain on Wednesday mornings.

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 writing recounts of our incredible adventures in Castleton as well as using the experiences of Earnest Shackleton to write our own stories and diary entries.

In our reading sessions, we will be reading Ice Trap by Meredith Hooper. 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 addition and subtraction before moving on to multiplication and division. 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 Light will be our focus.  Acorns will learn about what makes an object transparent, translucent or opaque.

We will also look at how mirrors reflect and how to keep ourselves safe in the dark.