Week 4 

Take a look at some of the amazing, creative work we have been doing over the past few days. 

📚 English 📚

Based on our narrative about ‘Fox’, we are now working on our non-fiction unit in Writing and have been asked, by Mr Fox, to write an information report about foxes and try to show people a nicer side to them. We have used the iPads to gather information, thought about how to speak and write formally and also identified the key features of a report to be able to plan and write our own in a couple of weeks.   

🔢 Maths 🔢

Our learning of addition and subtraction has continued this week, focusing on adding ones, tens and hundreds to three-digit numbers and understanding which digits will always change and which might not. We have started to move on to adding across the tens and hundreds by using our number bond knowledge, number lines and base ten to help us understand exchanging.  

🔬 Science 🔬

This week in Science, we moved on to looking at soils. We learnt that soil makes up the outer layer of our planet and there are different types of soil that can be used for different things. We looked at some soil samples and used water to help us see what it was made up of. We saw some organic material and some small rocks from our observations. 

🌍 Geography 🌍

In Geography, we travelled to the desert regions of the planet. We discussed what makes a desert a desert and what plants and animals have adapted to live there. Using our knowledge, we created some amazing dioramas showcasing the creatures and some fascinating facts that we could recall all about this particular climate.  

🤸🏻‍♀️ PE 🤸🏻‍♀️

This week, we have been practicing for our final dance performance which is in a couple of weeks. The children have worked amazingly hard over the past few weeks with Mrs Winward and have shown excellent perseverance and skill in what will be an amazing performance! It includes a wide range of gymnastic movements and balances which the children have worked hard on the perfect. 

What a fantastic week of learning we have had in Year 3! We have been working hard across all of our subjects and learning lots of new and exciting things. 

📚 English 📚

This week we concluded our writing by completing our own fable narratives about the Fox and the Magpie. We used expanded noun phrases to describe and used our learning of inverted commas to include speech between the characters. Here are just some snippets of the amazing pieces from the children. 

🔢 Maths 🔢

We are now looking at addition and subtraction in our maths lessons and have spent time this week recapping what we know. We looked at how we can use number bonds to help us solve larger problems and how to add ones and tens to three-digit numbers.  

🔬 Science 🔬

Our Science learning continued with our topic on rocks. This week, we moved on to learning about fossilisation. We discovered how fossils are formed over millions of years and learnt about the different stages involved in the fossilisation process. We enjoyed finding out how fossils can help scientists learn about life from long ago. 

🌍 Geography 🌍

In Geography, we explored the fascinating polar biome. We learnt about where the polar regions are located and discovered the types of animals and plants that can survive in these extremely cold environments. We discussed how animals such as polar bears, penguins, seals and Arctic foxes have special adaptations that help them live in these harsh conditions. 

⛪️ RE ⛪️

We have continued our learning about Harvest and this week looked at Pongal Festival. We reminded ourselves why Harvest is celebrated and how communities give thanks for food and crops. We then learnt about Pongal, a Hindu festival that celebrates the harvest season, and explored some of the traditions, celebrations and special foods associated with it. 

This week was very busy at school as, along with our usual learning, we had our first outdoor learning day with Louise.

📚 English 📚

Our writing this week started with us using our plans to write the first few paragraphs of our own fable narratives about a fox and a magpie. We thought about all of the vocabulary and grammar skills that we had learnt over the past couple of weeks to help make our writing descriptive and exciting to read. 

🔢 Maths 🔢

We came to the end of our place value unit this week and built on our understanding of three-digit numbers. We spent some time looking at number lines and working out where numbers would go by first working out what they were going up or down by. To end the week, we had some practice counting in fifties by using our knowledge of the five times tables. 

🔬 Science 🔬 

This week in Science we carried out another investigation on our rock samples. We retested the hardness of the rocks and also tested their buoyancy and how porous they were. We used water to see if they would float or sink and pipettes to carefully drip water onto the surfaces to see if it would absorb or not. 

🍂 Outdoor Learning 🍂

We had a brilliant outdoor learning session with Louise who took us on a walk down the stream to collect some soil samples. We then examined the samples to see what the soil was made up of, which will help us with our learning in Science. We then got some time to explore lots of fantastic activities including bubbles making, den building, wood whittling and some of us relaxed in the hammocks.

⛪️ RE ⛪️

Our RE lesson was very busy this week as we learnt about the Jewish festival of Sukkot. We found out that they make Sukkahs for their family to sit in and eat and celebrate together. We worked in pairs to make our own Sukkahs and thought carefully about the features they needed including small holes in the roof and decorations of leaves and fruit.

Week 3

It has been another busy week at school filled with excellent attitudes and effort from all of Year 3! 

📚 English 📚

We continued to explore the story ‘Fox’ by Margaret Wild and focused on some new grammar skills including using inverted commas to write speech. We thought carefully about the characters and their personalities to help us think what they might say to one another and how they might say it. We also thought about the setting of the story and use noun phrases to describe a desert setting.  
 

🔢 Maths 🔢

This week we have started to look at larger numbers to 1000. We have been thinking about the place value of each digit and have spent time partitioning them into hundreds, tens and ones. For a couple of days, we focused on finding 1, 10 and 100 more or less than a number and we used the base ten equipment and played a loop card game to help us understand this further.  
 

🔬 Science 🔬

We continued our learning about rocks this week by carrying out our first investigation. We were testing which rocks were hard and why it is important to know this. We used different objects to try and scratch the rocks and found that some rocks, like granite, are harder than others, such as chalk.  

🌍 Geography 🌍

After learning about the equator and the hemispheres last week, we focused on some other areas of our planet that help us understand the weather and climate in different places. We used a globe and some torches to demonstrate how the sun’s rays are concentrated on different parts of the earth at different times of day and at different times throughout the year. We then used this to help us understand where the tropics and the arctic circle is.  

⛪️ RE ⛪️

As Christians, we understand why Harvest festival is important to us, so this week we looked at other harvest festivals around the world including Bali, Germany, Italy and America. We thought about what made these festivals similar and what made them all special in their own way. We noticed that all of the festivals are about celebrating food and being together.  

Welcome to Year 3!

Welcome to our Year 3 class blog! It has been a very busy couple of weeks back at school and we have had a brilliant start to our learning across the curriculum.

English

We have been introduced to our class story for this half term which is ‘Fox’ by Margaret Wild. We looked at the events in the story and thought carefully about the feelings of the main character, Magpie. We imagined we were Magpie and completed our first piece of independent writing by creating a diary entry of our day and how we felt after we were betrayed by Fox.

Maths

We have been spending some time looking back at what we know about numbers and how to build, partition and write two-digit numbers. We are now starting to think about three-digit numbers and how to make them in different way.

Science

Our first topic in Science is Rocks and, on Monday, we looked at lots of different types of rocks, looking carefully to see if we could spot crystals, grains or even evidence of fossils within them.

Geography

We used the iPads this week to travel the world on Google Earth. We were introduced to the equator and how the countries which lie on it are very hot compared to the North and South poles. We also learnt that the earth has two hemispheres and that we live in the Northern Hemisphere.

RE

It is Harvest time in the Christian calendar so we are learning about this special time of year and why it is important to us and other Christians. We listened to some fun harvest songs and talked about how the lyrics helped us to understand why Harvest is celebrated.

Art

Our Art unit this half term is sculpture and, to begin with, we celebrated the work of Anthony Caro. We look at pieces of his work and researched some information about him before we will start to look at how we can design and make our own sculptures.