Please click on the button below to see the full term topic about Ancient Civilisations.
Welcome to the home page for the first half of the spring term 2024. You will find our fortnightly learning blog here which will give you a flavour of our learning.
Week 5
We had a very busy week to the end of the half term and finished with FoBFS ‘Break the rules day’ on Friday. Everyone made a huge effort to break as many rules as they could.
At the beginning of the week, we worked hard to complete our English narrative writing ‘Once upon a tune’ where we have made cross-curricular links and explored stories told through famous pieces of music. Everyone worked really hard to plan and select a range of language features we have looked at during the half term. Once the stories were finished and edited it was then time to share them with Mrs Clark, an amazing job Maserati!
In maths we finished off our last lessons on length and perimeter. Year 3’s have been measuring and converting lengths, matching equivalent lengths and calculating the perimeter of rectangles. Year 4’s have been revising different lengths millimetre, centimetres, metres and kilometres. The children then moved onto finding the perimeter of shapes, drawing shapes with set perimeters, ordering shapes with different perimeters and solving word problems.
We have had a busy few weeks in science as we have been investigating sound, how it travels through the air and travels down into your ear. Everyone finished their learning completing a double-page spread with some wonderful planned pieces.
In History we have travelled back to the Ancient Egyptian times and have learn about how life was back then. The Egyptians like the Sumerians relied on the river to help fertilise crops and help them grow. Farming was different back then an everyone even the children had to help out. We used famous paintings and pictures to find out about houses, jobs, leisure time and religion.
In preparation for the Italian festa of ‘Carnevale’ next week, the children learnt about the tradition in our Italian lessons. The children all made and decorated a colourful Carnevale mask.
Week 3 and 4
It has been busy as ever in Maserati over the last two weeks.
In English we have started a new book ‘Once upon and tune’ where stories have come alive with music elements. We have listened to a range of stories around their Musical components from ‘The Scorer’s Apprentice’……., ‘Hall of the Mountain King’ by Peer Gynt and his story and ‘Peter and the Wolf’ by ……. All of the class have worked hard to listen to the stories and re-tell them orally, created story maps and wrote character setting and plots for Cinderella looking at language and building skills. Next week we will be retelling ‘Peter and the wolf’.
In math’s we have finished multiplication and division looking at written methods in Year 4 and using partitioning in Year 3. All the children know how important it is to keep on practicing their timetables to help with multiplying and dividing. This week we have moved onto our new topic of length and permieter for Year 3 and a quick re-cap of measuring for Year 4’s with an overall focus of perimeter. Within this we will be looking at perimeter of rectangles and irregular shapes.
In science we have looked how sound travels in waves, hearing vibrations and how to change pitch. We have been Scientists an investigated how to change the pitch inside a bottle and found out depending on the level of water changes the sound either to a high or low pitch. We have written up our investigations and recorded the results carefully.
Our topic has moved from the Ancient Sumerians to another civilisation and back to the Egyptians. During this part of History rivers were very important to the people as they used them for drinking, washing, fishing, trade and transport. Maserati class have all worked hard to label maps of the areas and look at the how the people lived thousands of years ago. We have been drawing sketches of figures and figurines from these times in Art.
In geography our focus has moved to looking at significant places around the United Kingdom to locate human and physical features. This week a challenge was set to find out more about the characteristics of a county in the United Kingdom we have focused our learning to describe its size, location and position in relation to other places.
This week we visited the Maristi Italian School in Guliana, where we started the morning speed dating to practice our English or Italian skills. This gave us plenty of time to think carefully about how to greet people and hold a short conversation. Everyone had a wonderful time during the visit playing games and completing short activities together.
For the final piece this week I would like to share PE. Our trips onto NATO to use the Sports Hall have been wonderful and the short drills and games to learn how to play handball. Maserati have also had a fun few weeks of line dancing with some classic songs.
Week 1 and 2
Our new topic is ‘Ancient Civilisations’ where we have travelled back thousands of years to the time of the Sumerian people and Ancient Sumer. We have started the topic finding out where the Sumerian people lived and settled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. We have looked at new and useful topic words, including social hierarchy, land and infrastructure and organised religion. After posing some class questions we have started to think about why the ancient civilisation of Sumer grew, including the geography of the area, such as the Fertile Crescent, rivers and floodplains and how it became the first empire. In art we will be completing a unit for ‘Statues, statuettes and figurines’ figure drawing’ drawing figures and forms, especially from direct observation.
Over the half term in maths, we will be continuing with our topic multiplication and division, before moving onto length and perimeter, fractions, mass and capacity and Year 4 will start a section on decimals.
In science this half term, we will be exploring sound waves, hearing, volume and pitch. The pupils will be setting up scientific enquiries and
In PE on Tuesdays, we will be using the JFC gym to develop the skills of handball through skills practise and games. On Thursdays, we will complete the Dance unit which is focused on creating circuits to improve our fitness.
In English over the last two weeks, we have been working on planning and drafting a double-page spread on an environmental issue. We started by thinking about how we want the completed writing to be presented look at Jess French book ‘What a waste’. As a class, we mapped out the key features of information texts including heading and sub-headings, introduction, factual information and pictures.
Once we had done this, we were able to begin drafting. We reminded ourselves of how the model text was set out and then began by writing an introduction and key information. While we did this, we were thinking carefully about the words and phrases we could use for our final piece of writing.
In our guided reading lessons, we have continued to explore a range texts linked with an environment theme, completed word work using dictionaries and thesauruses, making links with book, retrieving information, predicting and explaining about the text. We have had plenty of time to talk and worked on solo questions using what we have read.
In maths over the last two weeks has continued to explore multiplication and division and build on existing skills. Their knowledge of the multiplication facts to 12 x 12 is being put to the test daily! The children have worked very hard on making sure that their calculations are set out clearly and they are systematically checking their workings to ensure they haven’t made any errors.
Our topic lessons have focused on researching Ancient Sumerians and we have been looking at maps, finding rivers and places along the Tigris and Euphrates river. We have started to look at how the Fertile Crescent played a very important part to Sumerian life and trade.
In Science, we have begun to explore our topic which is all about Sound. We have investigated sound through playing different instruments and though about how sounds are made and if they are high or low.