Autumn Term 1

Reading:

Our reading focus this term is skimming and scanning. We will recap these skills and use them in larger texts to gain a deeper understanding of the text and answer questions using evidence gathered. These core skills are vital in helping retrieve information, make inferences about a text and provide evidence to support the opinion or point being made. Later in the term we will begin to read our class reader ‘The Explorer’. We will use this text to develop our skimming and scanning skills as well as identify features of a description text.

Writing:

To begin our English topic this term we will look at non-chronological reports. We will explore the genre identifying the key features and using them to write our own non-chronological report on our class animal. During our Rainbow Grammar lessons, we will develop our knowledge of modal verbs and the impact they have in non-chronological reports, and subordinating conjunctions. 

We will then look at narrative based on a journey story recipe. During the planning stage of the journey story, the children will create their own characters, using character profiles. They will explore the setting of the Amazon Rainforest and Rio de Janeiro, develop their knowledge and understanding of survival skills, during forest schools sessions, and carefully plan the purpose and impact of each section of their writing. Our Rainbow Grammar lessons will focus on punctuating speech correctly, non-finite clauses and figurative language (personification, similes and metaphors). The children will then produce a wonderful, captivating story of bravery, resilience and pride that they will bring home to share with family members. 

Oracy

During this half term, we will be using our oracy skills to express our views and opinions. We will take part in a Soapbox Challenge week,  where we will create our own speeches about a topic we feel passionate about.