We were so pleased to welcome everyone back to Windsor Class after the holidays. The students have settled straight back into the school routine and have been amazing in their task series work – demonstrating excellent motivation and maintaining so much of the progress they made last term. Students are supporting and encouraging each other and it has been lovely to see new friendships forming.
This term we have a humanities topic about Africa. We have begun by learning about the continents and the geography of Africa. We will move on to explore Africa’s past and, in particular, Maafa: the transatlantic slave trade and its consequences.
Our class reader will be a retelling of Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography by Catherine Johnson. We have started learning about the differences between biographies and autobiographies and will do some autobiographical writing of our own. As well as following the narrative in this text, we will explore the vocabulary and techniques used. This book will help us understand the slave trade through one personal journey, of a boy who became a slave but later bought his own freedom and used his story to help change people’s minds about slavery. We will also look at the work of some present-day Black poets, exploring identity and heritage.
We will be looking at different aspects of African culture in Art, Music and Design and Technology – starting with a focus on hearing, playing and making Djembe drums. We will be inspired by ancient artworks from the Kingdom of Benin as well as contemporary African art.
In Science, we will be studying a separate topic on electricity. We will be identifying components and building our own circuits, as well as learning about keeping safe with electricity. Our mathematics work will focus on number and initially place value and partitioning of numbers.
This term is set to be very exciting and thought-provoking, with some challenging themes and ideas. We hope all the students will have a fabulous and very rewarding time.