Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to the new autumn term this academic year and a big welcome to all the new pupils joining class 3. I hope you all have had a wonderful summer break.

During our first seven weeks, in the afternoons, key stage 2 pupils will be focused on geography. Years 3 and 4 will be studying Spain, the European country which occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula, stretching south from the Pyrenees Mountains to the Strait of Gibraltar. In years 5 and 6, the focus will be on The Amazon. Occupying much of Brazil and Peru, and also parts of Guyana, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Suriname, French Guiana, and Venezuela, the Amazon River Basin is the world’s largest drainage system. We will be researching the complexity of the world’s largest rainforest, famed for its biodiversity and will offer explanations around the importance of protecting this precious environment.

Our focus in English will be on writing explanations texts based on the learning around The Amazon, explaining its importance and asking questions around why it is one of the planet’s most threatened areas. Our book study will focus on The Explorer by Katherine Rundell, acclaimed children’s author. This is a story set in the Amazon jungle-a thrilling modern classic of adventure, friendship and survival.

In maths, we will revisit place value and practise mental skills around addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, practise fractions, decimals and their equivalents, convert measure and identify and classify 2D and 3D shapes. Please see our project map for more detail on all other subjects taught in our curriculum.

Staffing: Mrs Kilpin teaches year 5 and 6 every morning and key stage 2 in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Mr Waters in class as a higher level teaching assistant.

Routines: PE lessons will be on Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Children’s PE and wet weather kits should be kept in school at all times if possible. We try to do go outdoors to learn regularly so we also ask that children should keep outdoor shoes/wellies at school if possible.

Thank you again for all of your support; please do contact me if you have any questions.

Mrs Kilpin