Sycamore Class

Welcome to Sycamore Class

Being a Technologist

Why was the German airforce used in invade Britain? Did technology have anything to do with this or was it something else?

This Spring term, we will be discovering all about an aspect of Britain since 1940 and focusing on the Battle of Britain. We will explore the impact it had on our lives today.  Why children were evacuated and where to will both be investigated. Using multi-media technology, we will be producing a sound-scape and visual effects to accompany poetry writing about the Blitz. We will be looking at how people prepared for and dealt with the war through rationing; scaling recipes up and down to cook some war time as food technologists.

Using maps with different scales, we will explore which countries were part of World War 2, how land use in our local area has changed since the war and where children were evacuated to.

As always, reading will continue to be a focus and is so pinnacle to the whole curriculum. Through our work on developing stamina and fluency, alongside our love of reading and comprehension skills we also use high-quality texts to support our ideas for writing. Fluent readers can read quickly, accurately and with appropriate intonation and pace, so this is our aim for all Sycamore children!

A fluent reading style supports comprehension because children are freed from the focus of just word recognition. There are no quick ways to achieve this, so we are doing sustained focused reading regularly to help children really read without being distracted. Reading daily and widely will be encouraged both in school and at home.

We will be reading Once and While the Storm Rages this term in class.

In Science, we are going to be learning all about light and sound. Through investigations, we will explore many aspects of shadows, and learn about how light and sound travel. The anatomy of the ear and eye will also be explored.

RE this term will focus on whether the story of creation and scientific ideas are conflicting or complimentary. Can scientists also be Christians? How is Genesis 1 interpreted in different ways?

Learning at home – All children are expected to read at home four times per week – Reading books and reading record folders should be brought to school every day and we have a wonderful list of great books for the children to choose from too. Home learning is based on the Learning passports and helps to reinforce previous learning or as research for new information.

We also encourage children to use TTRockstars, or another method, to continually rehearse their Times Tables, which really does help with success in maths.

Do look at our topic web for more information about our learning this term.