Week beginning 18.04.16

This weeks blog is by Bethanie and Courtney

Maths

In maths this week we have been we have been working on our times table and division facts. We have been playing lots of games to practise doubling and halving and using 100 squares to play games that revise our times tables and divisions. We also have been looking at multiplication calculations and looking for tricks and patterns. We are also getting confident at multiplying double digit numbers by partitioning.

Literacy

This week we have started looking at information texts. We have discussing the layout and the purpose of each feature. We have been writing questions in our literacy books about our chosen rainforest animal. We have been researching different rainforest animals for our own class information book, using the iPads. We have also been using dictionaries to look up subject specific vocabulary. Miss Palmer gave us some tricky and interesting words to look up and we had a challenge to use them in our questions. 

Science

 In science this week we have been looking at plants and growing our own sunflowers. We thought about what it means to be alive and discussed all the things a plants needs to thrive. We have started to design our own experiments to investigate what happens if you take away any of these things. 

Art

We have been studying the artist Oenone Hammersley, a contempary artist who uses vivid colours to bring rainforest animals alive using water colours and other materials. We have been practising our sketching techniques and water colour skills in preparation for working in response to her art. 

In other news...

Well done to Finn this week for receiving his Read to Succeed certificate and Lewis who has gained enough reading stamps to be invited to the tea party. Keep up the good work 3P!

Remember to bring your trainers next week as we start our new healthy activity 'The Daily Mile'. 

    

Week beginning 11.04.16

This weeks blog is written by Ella Lucia and Mia.

Literacy

We have been using our imagination to describe a peacock by writing metaphors. We turned these ideas into a repeating phrase poem. We looked at MP3s of peacocks pictures and real feathers for inspiration. Look out on next week's blog, when we combine our literacy and artwork and see some examples of our finished work. 

Spellings

Our current spelling focus is the suffix 'ure' and homophones. A homophone is a pair of words (or sometimes three or even four words) that sound the same but are spelt differently and different meanings. How many can you think of?

Geography

In topic, we have been learning about out new subject; the Rainforest. We were amazed to learn about the fish swimming around the trees when the Amazon river bursts its banks. We used atlases and globes to locate where in the world the rainforests are and also learnt about the weather at the equator. 

Maths

In maths, we have been revisiting place value. Marking numbers on empty number lines and adding and subtraction amounts of money using our knowledge of place value. 

Science 

We looked closely at some plants and named the main the part of a flowering plants and thought about what their function in the plant is. 

In other news...
A big well done to all the brave pupils that entered and help present the talent contest this week. Especially Bethanie from year 3 for winning first place, with her brother and sister rendition of Oliver. 

Week beginning 21/03/16

This week in Year 3...

Literacy

We have been finishing and editing our diary entries; writing in role as Howard Carter. During this piece of writing we have been thinking about: rich description, subtly revealing emotions in our writing and time conjunctions. 

Maths 

On an Easter theme, we have been solving different problems, which include working systematically and finding all possibilities. 

History

We have concluded our 'Ancient Times' topic by learning about some of the many ancient Egyptian gods. Also, We have creating our own ancient Egyptian cyber hunts in ICT including all of our new knowledge that we have learnt. 

Art 

We completed our art pieces working in the style of Antony Gormley. This involved thinking about the space and perspective regarding how to position our figures to create an interesting and stunning effect whilst capturing photographs. We enjoyed using both digital cameras and iPads to take photographs from interesting angles.

Happy Easter everybody! Thank-you all for your hard work this term and I look forward to seeing everybody on Monday April 11th refreshed and ready to go!

Week Beginning 14/03/16

Hello! Welcome to another Year 3 weekly blog. We are racing through the spring term with another week packed full of challenges and learning. 

Literacy 

In literacy this week, we have been spending a lot of time empathising. We now know that this means thinking about how others are feeling. We have been learning about the life of local archaeologist Howard Carter and his excavation of the Valley of the Kings. We have been imagining what it must of been like making one of the most important discoveries about ancient Egypt of all time: Tutankhamen's tomb. We have heard about the troubles plaguing the dig and identified different thoughts, feelings and emotions, getting ready to write in role when we re-create is diary entries. 

Maths

In maths we have been continuing with our money skills. We are confident recognising different coins and solving problems involving money. We are now adding up our shopping bills and working out the change. 

Science

We had a very exciting week in science, as we created our very own rainbows. We discovered that white light is actually made up of a spectrum of colours which can be split up when passing light through certain materials. It was tricky setting  everything up but when we found our rainbows we were very excited! Ask us to explain how we did it. 

History

In history this week, we researched how important the river Nile was to the ancient Egyptians and how the farming seasons changed throughout the years because of it. Lucia won the 'Wonderful Work' certificate this week for her fantastic explanation of the three farming seasons: Akhet, Peret and Shemu.

In other news...

We all enjoyed celebrating and raising money for Sports Relief this week. We dressed in our favourite sports gear, donated money to charity, ran a mile and worked together in teams to design our own new team game involving giant balloons and hoops. 

Week Beginning 7.03.16

This blog for this week is by Bethanie.

Maths

In maths this week, we have been starting  our unit on fractions. We have been ordering and comparing fractions and looking at how big the are. It got tricky when the numerator and the denominator weren't the same. We found a very clever trick that was when the numerator is closer to the denominator, it means that the fraction is closer to a whole. 

Literacy

In literacy this week we have been looking at the Egyptian Creation Story. We looked at different animations of it. We retold the story orally, created a comic and completed a written version focusing on time adverbials and conjunctions. Some people had a go at creating  their own! It was super fun and we also compared different versions of it. We wished we could do it again! We looked at how we have improved and Miss Palmer said our writing was amazing and is becoming a  very high quality.

History

In history, we have been learning more about Ancient Egypt. We went to the computer suite to research about the different gods and Miss Palmer re-created the mummification process on Iwan! We completed created a 'How to Make a Mummy' fact sheet. We learned about hieroglyphic and had a go at writing secret messages.  

Art and Science

We had another lesson that was a mixture of subjects again this week. In science we have been investigating how a shadow is formed, we looked at the different shadows of opaque, translucent and transparent materials. We also designed an experiment to investigate what affects the size and shape of a shadow. 

Finally, we created shadow profiles of ourselves. Can you guess who we are? 

Music

In music we have been looking at where the notes go on the piece of paper when reading music. We learned that a crochet is worth one beat and a minim is worth two beats. When we say 'worth' we mean how long you hold it for. For example, a minim has to be held on for two beats, and a crochet has to be hold on for one beat. It was tricky but we really enjoyed it!

Finally, well done to Sam for achieving his silver merit badge and Bethany her bronze. Also, to Ben for receiving the Sportasaurus reward for good teamwork. 

  

Week Beginning 29.03.16

This weeks blog is by Bethanie and Gemma.

Maths

In maths this week, we have been subtracting using different methods and deciding which method is best for certain problems. We have been subtracting using number lines, by counting on or counting back. We have also been rounding and adjusting the numbers. It was quite tricky deciding which was the best method for each different question, but practicing helped us find the method which worked the best.

We have also been working on our problem solving skills. We looked at the layout of a hopscotch game and looked for patterns and sequences. We found that the three times table appeared a lot. We used our knowledge to predict the number of a certain square further along the in the sequence. 

Literacy

In Literacy we have been learning about homophones and explaining what they are. Also, for world book day, we researched our top fives. Such as: favorite book characters, authors and illustrators. Also, for the first time, we were introduced to simple past and perfect present tense. Even our maths that day was themed on the book 'Esio Trot' by Roald Dahl!

Science

In science this week, we have been looking at the dangers of the sun and discussing how we can stay save in the sun. We mixed our science work with literacy and have been writing explanations (using scientific language) explaining the dangers of U.V light. The U.V light is an invisible light to us, but we can still feel the strong, sometimes harmful rays. We explained how to stay safe and even designed our own sunglasses. 

 Art

In art this week we have been looking at sun sets and silhouettes  and designing our own based in a sandy Egyptian desert. We chose translucent material so the sun would shine through the colours but be blocked out by the opaque, black, silhouettes.  Then we laminated them. We found it interesting and we tried not to blow off other people's tissue paper! We found it very fun and wanted to do more!

 In other news...

It was fantastic to see so much effort put into the colourful and imaginative World Book Day costumes. We all enjoyed the opportunity to dress as our favourite character and celebrate books with some book themed activities. Well done to Finn and Charlotte for being the class winners for their Willy Wonker and Cinderella's evil stepmother costumes. We all enjoyed guessing who each member of the class was from their intriguing clues. 

Another well done to those who gained their bronze, silver or gold merit awards this week. What a lot of hard work and what an achievement! 

 

Week Beginning 22/02/16

This is the 3P class blog by Bethanie and Imogen.

 Maths

In maths this week, we have been adding amounts of money and calculating missing numbers. We found it tricky when we crossed the tens barrier and when we had to add up really big numbers. Even though it was tricky, it was very fun and we got used to it once we practised.

Literacy

We really enjoyed literacy because we all worked really hard. We were writing our own adverts using persuasive language. We had to make really boring objects sound like they are the best in the world! We performed our adverts to the class.

We also did some special writing which was based on instructions about catching different creatures like giant griffins or cupboard goblins and dinosaurs. It was good to show all the skills we had learnt.

Science

In science, we have been working on light and dark. We have been telling the differences between them and looking at how reflecting light behaves. We have also been learning about where the light is coming from (source) before it reflects onto the  mirror into our eyes.

History

In history, we have been learning about the Egyptians  and where Egypt  is in Africa. We also learnt different places in that country. We have been learning about how successful they were. We were quite sad when our Ancient Greek topic ended but are happy to start our Ancient Egypt topic.

Music

In music we have been learning how to read a few notes on the viola. We learnt about crochets and minims which are music notes. We learnt about calypso music and learnt the song 'Rain on the Green Grass' which we then played on the viola. Ask us to tell you what the different is between a beat, rhythm and metre!

Art
We have been doing some sculpting in art this week. We have been working in response to the artist Antony Gormly. We discussed his work and created our own figures in the style of his piece 'A Field for Britain'. We liked at although all of the figures looked the same from a distance they all have their own unique differences. 

In other news...

Year 3 received  lots of certificates in our wonderful work assembly on Friday. Well done to Erin for achieving her 5m swimming certificate. 

This week we had two head teachers awards in Year 3! Fantastic effort girls!

Finally, don't forget World Book Day this coming Thursday. The fancy dress challenge is on! Come as your favourite book character complete with 3 clues as to who you are. Prizes for the best costume and clues.