Welcome to Maple Class

Welcome back to the Spring term. We are looking forward to the exciting things that we have planned for this term and we can't wait to share them with you. Please keep checking back for updates and photos of our work as we embark on a range of new topics and activities!

Class Reader

We are so excited to have started our new class reader The Boy at the Back of the Class. We are thoroughly enjoying it. The story is sparking great discussions and inspiring us to reflect on kindness, understanding, and empathy.

Literacy

For Spring 1 in Literacy, we’re building on our skills as writers and performers while exploring two exciting units: thriller writing and discussion texts. We’ll be work on building suspense and advancing action using dialogue, while also developing our proofreading skills to make our writing as effective as possible. We are going to carry on working hard to improve our handwriting for both presentation and also speed for fluency.

Maths

In Maths, we’re going to be investigating fractions, decimals, and percentages. Through practical and problem-solving activities, we’ll be focusing on comparing and ordering fractions with related denominators, converting between improper fractions and mixed numbers as well as adding, subtracting, and multiplying fractions before moving on to reading and writing decimals as fractions, and recognising thousandths. We are looking forward to building our confidence of rounding decimals to the nearest whole number or 1 decimal place and solving problems involving numbers with up to 3 decimal places.

Topic – The Maya Civilisation

Our focus in History is the fascinating Maya civilisation. From comparing their advanced number system ours and their belief in maize as the source of life, we’re uncovering how they lived, worshipped and built cities in the rainforest. We’ll also learn about their writing system, gods and how their civilisation met its end with the arrival of Spanish explorers.

Science: Properties of Materials

In Science, we will become Chemists where we will be comparing and grouping everyday materials based on their properties, investigating solutions and exploring how to separate mixtures. We will be investigating reversible and irreversible changes and how chemical changes impact our lives. We are looking forward to the practical experiments exploring these in more detail.

French: Bonjour Paris

We are having great fun sending and receiving letters with our French pen pals. We are learning so much from their culture while sharing ours. We are busy planning a video diary we can send them of a day in the life at Chase Lane.

PSHE - Dreams and Goals

In PSHE, we are thinking about the future! By exploring different jobs, understanding what motivates us and looking at the dreams and goals of young people in other cultures, we’re discovering how to support one another—both locally and globally.

R.E

In R.E, we are becoming Philosophers where we will be exploring big ideas like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, comparing Karmic and Christian beliefs and investigating Buddhist teachings on leading a good life. We will spend time delving into the purpose of celebrations, reflect on the Gospels of Christ’s Resurrection and debate the significance of Easter for Christians.

My Happymind

In our Happy Minds sessions, the children have been learning all about the amazing power of their brains and we have begun our new unit of Gratitude which encourages the children to embrace the power of gratitude, exploring how it uplifts our minds and releases feel-good dopamine. We are spending time noticing gratitude in three areas: ourselves (building confidence), others (celebrating relationships), and experiences (savouring life’s simple joys). To promote this, we’ve also added a Gratitude Wheel of Fortune to the class, where we spin and share what we’re thankful for! It is having a really positive effect!