Apes - Can apes and humans coexist?

During this term, we will explore Anthony Browne's book; Gorilla. This text provides the children with the perfect opportunity to find out more about apes and how we can ensure their survival. Furthermore, the children will be immersed into a whole array of exciting and emotive learning around the theme of rainforests, within which we will consider elements such as, rainforest inspired music and cultural dance.

Whilst keeping this term's topic as cross-curricular as possible, the main focus for our learning will very much be geography-based encompassing all aspects of the rainforest as a habitat.

English - For the first half term children will be focussing on persuasive writing. We will delve into persuasive texts and we will be writing persuasive letters! Later on in the term, we will switch to explore a new topic; Refugees. Our main focus for this term in writing will be to develop our emotive vocabulary and explore the effects of a range of different sentence openers in our writing. 

Maths - We will have a heavy focus on learning our times tables alongside written formal methods of multiplication and division. Later on in the term we will look at calculating length and perimeter where possible linking this to our overarching topic of Apes!

Science - We will be investigating animals including humans and exploring the ways in which we are similar to our counterpart of the animal kingdom; apes. 

RE - We will investigate Buddhism and the ways in which Budhists lead a good life. 

Geography - This topic will allow the children to explore many areas of geography including features of the rainforest, many different endangered animals (including Ourangutans), and the water cycle!

Music - We shall be listening to an array of rainforest music and will have the opporunitiy to compose their own rainforest peices using percussion instruments. 

Art/Design Technology - We shall be focusing upon the See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil monkeys as part of our art this term. We will explore how to use pop-art to construct our own pieces.

Finally, in Design Technology, the children shall create their own rainsticks to represent the different noises of the rainforest. 

Physical Education - Through a series of gymnastics lessons inspired by our cheeky ape ancestors, we will develop our balance and coordination, whilst deepening our understanding of how apes move and interact with each other.