Welcome back everyone and a Happy New Year! We hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your families and are looking forward to our new term. We have so many wonderful learning opportunities planned for you and lots of visits, visitors and celebrations to look forward to.

This year we will be continuing to develop the four purposes of the new curriculum for Wales:

* Ambitious, capable learners ready to learn throughout their lives

* Enterprising, creative contributors ready to play a full part in life and work

* Ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world

* Healthy, confident individuals ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society

This term, our topic is Invasion, where we will explore an important chapter in Welsh history: the Age of the Princes. This period, during the 12th and 13th centuries, saw Welsh leaders such as Llywelyn the Great and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd defending their land and identity against Norman and English invasions. We will learn about the challenges they faced and how these events shaped Wales. As part of our learning, we will be exploring aspects of medieval life, including castles, food, and clothing. We will design and create our own coat of arms, learning about its meaning and symbolism. We will be writing our own myths and legends, inspired by Welsh stories from the time and investigating key historical figures and events that influenced Wales during this era.

In Literacy this term we will be building up our writing skills and developing our reading and oracy skills .We will be writing a fact file about castles from the past and will be having a go at writing our own myth about the Welsh dragons. We will also take part in hot seating being a knight living in the castle.

In ICT this term we will be looking at animation and designing our own cartoon character.

We will be continuing to practise our handwriting daily with our letter join scheme and our daily phonics challenges.

In Maths, we will be developing our skills in place value and number work ,concentrating on the three times table alongside counting in steps of 2, 5, 10 . We will be looking at 3d shape and money . We will also be exploring our map skills through the use of coordinate plotting to locate significant castles in Wales.

Our RE topic this term is Galilee to Jerusalem. We will be looking at the journey of the Magi as they follow the star to Jesus and will be looking at the parables of Jesus including the sower and the seed from the Gospel of Matthew. We will be talking about the Kingdom of God and what it means to us and reflecting on our own behaviour.

This term, we are focusing on the virtues of being curious and active. These virtues help us grow not only as learners but as kind and respectful individuals.

· Curious: We encourage pupils to be curious—asking questions, exploring ideas, and wanting to learn more about the world and their faith.

· Active: We want pupils to be active—taking part, helping others, and using their talents to make a positive difference in school and the community.

· These virtues will be woven into our daily learning and celebrated in our classroom environment.

Homework

Monday Bug club

Tuesday MyMaths

Friday

PE (Please ensure you have PE Kit)

Dates for your diary:

22nd January – Class mass @ St John Lloyd Church at 9:30am.

27th January – Class trip to Cardiff Castle.

Just a reminder please label all items of clothing and ensure your child comes to school with a raincoat ever day. Hoop earrings are dangerous for PE and other physical daily activities.

Thank you for your ongoing support.