Term 4 – Earthquakes: are earthquakes always destructive?

Our learning this term is all about earthquakes – specifically a Geography focus exploring the formation of the earth, the changes within the tectonic plates and the impact of movement within the earth’s crust. The learning builds on our previous learning about the continents and will have links to history and DT, exploring the impact of earthquakes and how humans have learned to cope with these natural disasters.

In RE, our topics this term are:

• Eucharist – Relating: giving and receiving, answering the question “What is more important giving or receiving?” We will do this by gaining a deeper understanding of the symbols and actions within the Eucharist.
• Lent/ Easter – Giving: self-discipline, answering the questions, “Is self-discipline important in life?” We will do this by gaining a deeper understanding of giving and receiving, and sacrifice. We will further our understanding of penitence, contrition and spiritual growth through Lenten promises and prayer.

In Maths, our learning is fractions. We will develop on from the learning in Year 3, being able to define, identify and represent proper fractions before exploring mixed numbers and their equivalent improper fractions. We will extend our knowledge to adding and subtracting fractions.

Our learning then continues with decimals. This will make further links to our previous learning of place value and make connections with equivalent fractions.

In Science, we are going to learn about electricity. We will learn how to identify an appliance before learning how to construct simple circuits. We will be able to identify basic parts of the circuit and explore conductors and insulators.

In Art and Design we will explore the skill of tone and shading learning from the work of Paul Cezanne and emulating his style.

In English, we will further develop our understanding of the formation of the earth, exploring a fiction text The pebble in my pocket: a history of our earth (by Meredith Hooper). We will be developing a non-chronological report, developing factual and technical vocabulary. We will also learn and apply the layout structures of a non-chronological report, whilst writing in the 3^rd person and present tense, specific to our target audience.