Swarcliffe Primary School

Our Staff

Autumn Term 2 - What Lies Beyond Earth?

This half term we will be learning about Space! We will explore the planets and our solar system, the moon and sun and space exploration.

English

 In English, we will begin the half term looking at poetry as we pay our respects to the fallen creating Remembrance Day poems. We will then move on to some 

Non-fiction writing, where we will research the range of orbits that control day and night and the seasons. We will then apply our learning in to creating a formal, informative and scientific report. Finally, we will write our first narrative of the year - using what we have read so far to create a tense, maybe even scary, science-fiction story! Our class novel this half-term is The Kid who came from Space by Ross Welford. An adventure story full of science-fiction, twists and turns and even some heart break.

Maths

Maths this half-term will be fractions! Every child's favourite topic... We will start off by exploring fractions and how they are represented - including looking at equivalence and ordering. We will the move on to adding and subtracting fractions - this requires the children to use their understanding of times tables to find common denominators. Following this, we will look at multiplying and dividing fractions - which crazily, is actually easier than adding and subtracting!

A bit of support can be found here -> https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z9n4k7h#zwfq3qt

Science

Science is where we will do most of our Space exploration! We will first explore our Solar System including the planets (and maybe Pluto), The Sun and the Moon. We will look at the how the orbits impact night and day and how the Earth's 'wobble' creates seasons. We will explain the difference between orbits, rotations and revolutions! We will then move on to looking at how we can use Science to understand that the Earth is Spherical.

Design Technology

 Continuing our Space theme - Design Technology will look at moon buggies! The children will first explore what a moon buggy is, what they were for and how they were made. The children will then design their own buggy use design criteria to ensure they include all critical components. Finally, we will spend several lessons building! We will be sawing (using vices for safety) and hot glue guns. The children will the use their understanding of electrical circuits to build a circuit that drives a motor so they are left with working, self-propelling moon buggies! We might even race them! 

Computing

Coding will be the focus of computing this half term. Over the course of 6 lessons the children will be designing their own computer game. They will create moving parts through creating their own algorithms and will have to debug at each step to avoid issues and solve problems. They will then create backgrounds, walls and even characters (and enemies) to go in to the game to make it exciting!

PE

PE this half-term is Golf. The children will develop their control across 3 main shots: driving, chipping and putting. They will then apply their new skills in to game play situations where they must choose and execute the correct shot for the situation. We will also look at some of the tactics golfers use to be as competitive as possible.

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Autumn Term 1 - How did we Evolve?

This term we will focus our learning around evolution and inheritance. We will spend time exploring the Stone Age and how early man developed in order to survive.

English

Our class novel this half-term is the classic: Stig of the Dump. We will go on a journey of discovery with a young boy called Barney, who finds an unusual and rather unexpected guest dwelling in the dump behind his Grandma's house.

We will begin English with a character description. Once the children have met Stig, they will work collaboratively to gather as much vocabulary as they can that could be used to describe the caveman. They will then up-level their language before combining it into fantastic, descriptive sentences.

After this, the children will work on writing a newspaper report, reporting on a major incident from the book (I can't tell you what yet, I don't want to ruin it for the kids... shhh).

They will explore the different features, both language based and organisational, to create a formal, informative and engaging news report.

Maths

Autumn term Maths will focus on basic skills and cementing the children's understanding of key processes before moving on to more complicated topics. They will first recap place value, looking at the value of each digit in a number all the way up to numbers in the tens of millions.

This will then progress in to exploring ordering, rounding and multiplying and dividing by 10,100 and 1000.

They will then spend the rest of the half term looking at the four operations: addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. In 5/6 they are introduced to new methods including short division (often called bustop method). By the end, the children should be trying to multiply and divide using numbers with two or more digits.

Science

In Science, the children will look at evolution and inheritance. They will explore how man evolved from apes, looking at the physical developments they made that allowed them to successfully hunt and gather as well as to develop many other skills (and intelligence) that enabled them to survive. We will then develop out understanding of evolution in animals. Using their geography understanding developed in previous years, the children will research how animals have adapted physical traits in order to survive. They will use studies such as Charles Darwin's Galapagos Finches to expand their understanding.

PE

The PE focus this half term will be golf. They will practice driving, chipping and putting as well as exploring the rules and scoring. They will finally apply their skills in to matches against their peers.

History

In History the children will be learning about the Stone Age Era. They will first look at early man and how they lived, including how and what they ate, the houses they lived in and the tools they invented. We will then follow the timeline along and to see what changes occured as they moved in to the Iron Age. We will make comparisons between the two Eras and try to understand why the Stone Age Era was left behind.