Oak Class

Oak Class Information

Term 1 2025-26

Curriculum:

We are enjoying reading the book ‘Tar Beach’ by Faith Ringgold as part of our writing lessons. This beautiful picture book tells the story of a family living in Harlem about 100 years ago, and the dreams that they have for themselves and the people they love. We started off the term by writing poetry about the theme of ‘freedom’, and throughout the term will be writing letters, dialogue, descriptions and even a script for our own 3-part mini-series, which we will perform and record at the end of the term! 

In our spelling sessions, we are focusing on:

• the /u/ sound spelt ‘oul’ as in the words would, could and should
• adding the suffix -ing to verbs, as in the words making, running and flying
• using apostrophes for contraction, as in the words doesn’t, won’t  and can’t

Our reading lessons are based around the book ‘Charlie Changes Into A Chicken’ by Sam Copeland. This funny book has got our year off to a great start and we always look forward to reading the next chapter together. As we explore the book, we are developing our stamina and love for reading, some new vocabulary, and other important reading skills such as prediction and inference.

Our Maths this term is largely focused around place value, with Year 3s exploring numbers to 1,000 and Year 4s going up to 10,000. We are recapping some of the key knowledge from previous year groups to help us to get to grips with these larger numbers. Meanwhile, Year 4s are continuing on their quest to master all of their times tables by the end of the year. After recapping the times tables that we already know, we will move on to our 3 times table. Year 3s are recapping their 2s and 10s before embarking on more structured teaching after Christmas. All children have regular opportunities in school to practise on TT Rockstars and we encourage you to make sure they are logging in at home, too, to get up to speed!

In our wider curriculum, we have some big questions to explore. In Geography we are asking ‘Why is London the capital city of the UK?’ – we will explore what a capital city is, learn about capital cities of other countries, and dig deep into some of London’s transport systems and famous buildings. In Science, we are using investigations, research and building on our prior knowledge to answer the question ‘What role do the different parts of flowering plants play in keeping them healthy?’, and in RWV we are asking ‘How special is the relationship Jews have with God?’. Our Music lessons will see us explore ‘How does music bring us closer together?’ as we play, sing and compose together, learning more about how music can be written down; in French we are learning how to greet each other and introduce ourselves through different speaking, listening, reading and writing activities.

Our PE days are Wednesdays and Fridays – we are learning Dodgeball with Mrs Hobbs on Wednesday mornings, and on Fridays we learn Cricket with our visiting coach, Mr Cox. Children will come home in their PE kit on a Friday and we ask you to make sure it comes back into school with them on Monday mornings, ready for their PE lessons that week.

Home learning

Please continue to support and encourage your child to read daily at home. By the time they are on the purple book band they should be capable of enjoying a book independently, although they always love to read to an adult! We ask that an adult signs their child’s reading record at least 3 times per week to confirm that they are reading regularly at home, and we will continue to celebrate and reward those who have 3 signatures in their book at the end of each week.

TT Rockstars logins are kept in the children’s reading records, but please don’t hesitate to be in touch if your child is having trouble getting online. We recommend the ‘Jamming’ and ‘Garage’ games while children are still getting to grips with the platform, though they are welcome to explore the other games too!