Spring 2024 Letter to parents and Romans in Britain Knowledge Organiser

Dear Parent/Guardian,
 
Welcome back! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
 
We begin this term by being Mantle of the Expert and travelling back in time to Roman Britain.
A Roman soldier, stationed on Hadrian’s Wall, sits alone in the barracks of a hill fort carefully carving a small statue of an elephant. As he carves he thinks of his home and his family, remembering his life in Rome and hoping one day to have children of his own…
 
In our drama we become a legion of Roman soldiers our client is: The Emperor of Rome and our commission is: to protect the northern border of the Roman Empire in Britain.
 
In class will find out all about the Ancient Roman Empire and its impact on Britain, focusing on these key concepts: Conflict, Conquest, Empire, Emperor, military, religion, settlement and trade.
 
Our historical research will include investigating archaeological evidence and evaluating primary and secondary source material. As part of our research we hope to visit Wroxeter a Roman archaeological site.
 
Our Literacy work will cover a range of fiction and non fiction reading and writing genres and will be inspired by the Ancient Roman myths and legend our historical and research and our class novel, “The Thieves of Ostia” from the excellent series the Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence. The book is set in Ostia, a port just outside the city of Rome in AD 79.  The main character Flavia is the inquisitive daughter of a Roman ship’s captain. She and her friends become self-styled detectives solving Roman crimes.

SCIENCE
 
Mrs O’Grady will be teaching “Earth in Space ” in Science children will be looking towards to stars, describing the movement of the earth and other planets and learning about our solar system. We will also be learning about the movement of the moon relative to the earth, they will learn how we have day and night.
 
ART
 
This half term we are going to be learning about mosaics.  We will begin by looking at the Roman mosaics that were found in the ruins of Pompeii.  We shall practise drawing sea creatures and then use our drawings as a basis for creating our own mosaics.