Term 2 - Rivers: how do rivers change our landscape?

Our learning this term is all about rivers - specifically a Geography focus exploring the formation of rivers, the water cycle, how humans have utilised rivers and how extreme weather impacts those who live along rivers. We will continue to develop on the Year 3 learning of weather and climate using secondary sources gain a deeper understanding of the impact of rivers in the UK and around the world.

In RE, our topics this term are:

• Baptism and Confirmation - Belonging: called, where we will develop a deeper understanding of what it means to be chosen and called to follow Jesus' mission.
• Gift – Advent: loving, where we will explore the gifts bestowed on us by God, the Good News and the symbolism of giving and receiving gifts during Advent, Christmastide and Epiphany.
• Local church – community, where we will identify the role of the parish and the parishioners, those who help us and those who lead, understanding what it means to be a part of a community.
• Hinduism, our world faith day where we will make links between the way people worship in Hinduism and Christianity. We will focus on 3 key areas: making links between places of worship for Hinduism and Christianity; exploring the concept of different manifestations of one divinity; and understanding that Hindus believe that there is one divine agency, Brahman, who can appear in many forms.

In Maths, our learning is addition and subtraction, area and multiplication and division. We will be focusing on understanding the concept of area, making links to arrays and learning further about rectilinear shapes. In multiplication and division we will be exploring number patterns, learning to manipulate calculations confidently, partitioning and regroup whilst becoming more confident with our times tables and related number facts.

In Science, we are continuing to learn to compare and group materials together, according to whether they are solids, liquids or gases. We will then investigate the impact of temperature on materials and make links to the water cycle.

In Art and Design we will explore French artist, Claude Monet, focusing on impressionist paintings of rivers, specifically Monet’s collection of the Palace of Westminster. In Design Technology, our focus is in textiles where we will complete the design process to create a Christmas stocking; researching and evaluating existing products, creating patterns and understanding a variety of ways to join fabrics.

In English, we will continue to explore Rivers looking at a non-fiction text Rushing Rivers (by Kingfisher publications). We will also use Pie Corbet’s How to care for a dragon as inspiration for us to create an instructional text explain how to care for a mermaid or siren. We will also create a non-chronological report about our mercreature.