Welcome

Spring Term

During the Spring Term, our theme across the Integrated Resource for both Squirrels and Owls will be ‘What are Icebergs?’

“The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.” (Sigmund Freud)

Literacy

Squirrels will begin the spring term by sharing the picture book ‘Poles Apart’ by Jeanne Willis and Jarvis. While Owls will be sharing the book ‘Iceberg’ by Claire Saxby. Over the coming weeks, we will develop our knowledge and understanding of nouns, verbs and adjectives that appear in the vibrant and interesting pictures of these books. The aim by the end of this theme will be to sequence and retell the story in our own words, using the previously learned grammar. In addition and to support our writing, we will explore the story through a range of sensory engaging activities such as painting, model making, role play, singing, dancing and music.

Maths

Squirrels will continue to develop our understanding of cardinality and counting by using a range of resources such as Numicon, Dienes and Cuisenaire rods to expand our knowledge of composition of numbers up to 10, using the part-whole model and polish our efficiency in comparison and subitising, which is useful when counting on and back from the largest set. Using all these mathematical skills we will apply them to help us recall, solve and show answers to addition, subtraction and multiplications calculations while focusing on reading and writing the symbols + – = x.

The Owls will be revisiting addition and subtraction, to refine our skills of using a formal method and problem solving for the Wise Old Owls, and practising counting on or back from the largest number for our Owlets. We will then move on to explore measurement, focussing on mass and capacity. Following this, we will revisit multiplication and division, again refining formal methods and our times table knowledge. Finally, we will explore money. We will practise recognising coins and notes of different values, as well as finding totals and comparing amounts of money. Our Wise Old Owls will engage in solving real life problems.

Afternoon

During the afternoon sessions, for those children who do not integrate with their mainstream classes, we will be continuing with our ‘What are Icebergs?’ topic. We will start as artists and explore the work of Frederick Edwin Church and use the oil painting ‘The Icebergs’ as a stimulus to create our own mixed media, pastel or geometric painting of an iceberg. As geographers we will build on our existing knowledge and skills to help us identify cold areas of the world in relation to the North and South Poles. We will then explore in which oceans icebergs and other physical features such as ice shelves, ice flows can be found. As scientists we will develop our scientific vocabulary to help us classify, ask questions and to explain why some objects float and why some sink. Once we understand these terms, we will use this knowledge when we transform into historians where we will discover where, how and why the Titanic sank. In RHSE, we will investigate how we can stay safe, focussing on dangers around water, particularly in the outdoors and understand what to do to keep ourselves safe. As musicians, we will use our voices expressively and creatively to sing and perform the campfire song “40 Years on and Iceberg”