Eagles Class

Eagles Planning Letter: Autumn Term 1/2 2023 - The Mayans - Miss Norvell & Mrs Cranston

Welcome to the start of a new school year- we hope that you have enjoyed your summer holidays and are ready for a fun-filled year in Eagles.

This term our learning is based around historical enquiries of the Mayans. There is much fascination about the Mayans including how they were able to build, develop, and sustain a great civilization in the middle of the rainforest. In this topic, we will explore how they managed this and much more besides…

English

Children will be exploring the texts: The Chocolate Tree (Linda Lowery) and Rainplayer (David Wisniewski).

They will use the texts as stimuli to develop several pieces of writing, including:

Non-chronological reports

Explanation texts

Balanced arguments

Folk tales.

In whole class reading sessions, the children will explore the following books: Holes (Louis Sachaar) and The Girl of Ink and Stars (Kiran Millwood Hargrave).

Science

This term we will learn about: Properties and changes of materials. We will compare and group together everyday materials on the basis of their properties. The children will demonstrate that dissolving, mixing and changes of state are reversible changes. They will also be able to explain that some changes result in the formation of new materials.

Homework Expectations

Thank you for supporting your children with consolidating their learning at home.

The homework expectations are:

5 x 10 mins reading

Spellings (Spelling Shed and paper format- due weekly).

Activities in CGP books (year 6 only).

Mathletics assigned tasks

Termly task from home learning menu

Homework

Thank you for your continued support: if you are available to help in the classroom, to hear readers or offer assistance in any way please let us know, all of your help is gratefully received.

Maths

In maths this term, children will develop fluency, problem solving and reasoning with Miss Norvell (Place Value and Four operations) and Mrs Cranston (fractions). They will cover the following:

Writing, recognising and comparing numbers up to 1,000,000 (year 5) 10,000,000 (year 6).

Interpreting negative numbers and looking at intervals between them.

Rounding numbers of greater value. Rounding decimals and whole numbers.

Use mental and formal written methods for all four operations

Add and subtract numbers mentally with increasingly large numbers

Use rounding to check answers and determine, in the context of a problem, levels of accuracy

Solve multi-step problems in contexts, deciding which operations and methods to use and why

Understand what an equivalent fraction is and use this knowledge to simplify fractions

Convert fractions between mixed and improper fractions

Compare and order fractions

History & Geography

This term, we will explore the Mayan civilisation. We will place significant events on a time line, explore where the Mayans lived and see how their lives, customs and significant events of their time have impacted on life today.

Useful websites

mayas.mrdonn.org

www.history.com/topics/ancient-americas/maya

www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/zsdrqty