Our topic this half term is focused on ‘Independent Travel’. We will incorporate English, Maths, PSHE and our community visits to support our understanding of different types of transport as well as how to travel on these independently. During the term we will look at buses, planes and trains as well as other ways of travelling independently. Each week we will take an in depth look at how we could travel independently on different forms of transport and the things that are required to keep ourselves safe when doing this.

This term Monarch Class have the opportunity to attend tennis sessions at Ebbisham Sports Club. These sessions will be run by an LTA accredited coach in a beautiful facility. This is a fantastic opportunity for Monarch Class to develop their confidence through sport as well as build on their tennis skills, develop relationships with peers and broaden their exposure to different sports.

During Literacy, Monarch Class will be completing a Phonics lesson each week linked to sounds and letters. The children will be completing different fine motor tasks to support with their writing. We will take a visit to the school library each week where the children will listen to a story and then look at books individually or with a peer or adult. Our literacy sessions will also provide a link to our topic, and we will complete a reflection each week to continue developing our spoken language skills.

During Maths, we will be focussing on developing our understanding of number, continuing to look at multiplication and division and the relationship between these operations. We will use concrete materials to support the developing contextual understanding of number, and how we can use these skills and the strategies we have developed for addition to support our understanding of multiplication and division. In addition, we will begin looking at position and direction and the language we can use to describe these in relation to everyday objects and coding. Finally, we will focus on recording information in different types of graphs and charts, this will directly link to our science topic where we will categorise different objects by selecting our own criterion.

Within Science, we will be focussing on Chemistry, specifically around rocks and different substances. We will begin by gathering a baseline of knowledge of different natural materials and substances and then begin to work on describing, identifying, and sorting these into specific criterion. This will link directly to our statistics and probability area of maths as well as create opportunities for further outdoor learning.

The theme of our PE sessions this half term will be Eco Dance which covers environmental issues to provide stimuli for pupils’ learning in dance. Children will learn about transitioning between actions in a dance and how to create a recurring motif. They will develop their use of their spatial awareness and their understanding of timing in dance, as well as the way they create lines and shapes with their bodies.

Finally, in cooking we will be looking at a variety of different foods and we will continue to build on our independence when preparing and creating new dishes. We are all looking forward a fantastic half-term! Max and the Team