Week Beginning 5.09.16

Welcome parents, carers, friends and family to our Year 2/3 blog. Our class has had a fantastic start to the school year; renewing friendships, sharing summer holiday stories and enjoying lots of new learning opportunities. 

Music

On Monday, the Year 3's were excited to meet Mrs Furnell: our specialist music teacher. We discovered that we have a very musical year group this year, as we worked on keeping a steady beat and holding a rhythm. This is all in preparation for when we start to learn the viola in a few weeks. 

Spanish

Another new lesson for Year 3! We started off our Spanish lessons by learning how to greet people in Spanish. I'm sure if you asked them, your child would be willing to give you a performance of the 'Hola' song we have learnt. 

Maths

In maths this week, we have been tackling place value. We have been writing large numbers using digits and words and partitioning numbers, making sure we know which each digit in a number represents. Times tables sheets will be going home next week, so don't forget to learn those multiplication tables together at home to earn the gold, silver and bronze award stars. We even investigated pentominoes, trying to find all the solution to a problem during our problem solving lesson this week. Ask us to find out more!

Over the next couple of weeks we will be progressing with our place value knowledge and our adding and subtraction strategies. You can find more information about the methods used in the classroom on the school website in the calculation guide. 

Art 

As an introduction to our Fantasy and Adventure theme that will be running this term, we have been working with absorbent and water repellent materials to create a fearsome Hippocrump's eye. We got the inspiration for our work from the poem about the hideous Hippocrump monster by James Reeves. 

It has been lovely to see so many smart, prepared and enthusiastic learners return to school this week. A full, smart school uniform always help a child identify with, and feel proud to part of our school family, so please make sure ALL uniforms are labelled only then can we  ensure the right items go home with the right pupils! We also ask for girls with long hair to tie their hair back for the school day. 

In our class this year, along with myself, we are fortunate to have the talented support of Mrs Pierce, Mrs Higson and Mrs Fitz-Partick. If you have any queries, concerns or questions please feel free to find one of us at the end of the school day. 

We have P.E on Tuesday and Thursday where a full kit will be needed to ensure safe learning. On the days we do not have P.E, we will be running to complete our weekly 5K challenge, so trainers are essential everyday, thank-you. In addition, our swimming day is Wednesday where your child will swim every fortnight.

Thank-you so much for your continued help and support.I look forward to what will surely be,  another exciting and enjoyable year at Necton Primary School.  

Week Beginning 18.07.16

What a wonderful Year! Many thanks to everyone (parents and the wider family, carers , staff  and all children) that has made my first year at Necton Primary School such a fantastic experience. As we say goodbye to some well-loved and valued members of staff, we wish them  the best for their next adventures. 

I could not have asked for a better Year 3 class, your energy and enthusiasm has led to so much fun throughout the year. Enjoy your summer holidays; you have certainly earned it! Play safely and I look forward to seeing you all, and welcoming the new Year 3 class, in September. 

September 2015

July 2016

Week beginning 11.07.16

As we rapidly speed towards the end of term, as usual, it's been non-stop  fun and learning in Year 3 this week. 

Literacy

We have been watching the animation short 'Bert' and identifying the different mood and atmospheres depicted within the film. We used the feelings identified to write emotively. We used lots of specific adjectives, adverbs and verbs; whilst writing a narrative to the film. We also reviewed all the rules for speech marks and made sure we included them  in our work; making sure we had a good balance of both direct and reported speech. 

Numeracy 

We have been looking at graphs and charts, in particular the different styles of pictograms that can be used to display different sets of data. We looked at a wide range of questions that could be answered using the charts. 

D.T 

We had excellent fun making our very own versions of the traditional Spanish omelette. Over the past few weeks we have been taste testing and designing our own recipes. We had a lot of fun preparing all of our ingredients but even more fun taste testing the results of our hard work. We all agreed that they were even tastier than the shop bought traditional varieties we tried at the beginning of the topic. What a success!

A couple of quick reminders for next week... 

Monday is our viola concert starting at 10.00am in the school hall. We look forward to seeing all those that can make it. Also, Tuesday is our last 'Read to Succeed' day so make sure you all have your t-shirts on to celebrate our reading achievements. Finally, Wednesday is the children's last day of the summer term, please could you send your child in with a bag big enough to bring home school books and work that has been on display. Thank-you.   

Week Beginning 8.07.16

As the time flies by in Year 3 we are still working hard and succeeding in areas we found very tricky at the start of the year...

Maths 

We started the week by finishing off our shape unit by building 3.D shapes using straws and pipe cleaners. we labelled them by with their properties using as much mathematical vocabulary as possible. 

We then moved onto another tricky area of maths; we have been tackling telling the time, We've cracked it! We have all decided that we all feel much more confident telling the time to the nearest minute. We have also been calculating time differences using a number line and solving time word problems. Some of us are even telling the time using the 24 hr clock. 

Science 

We all had a fantastic time with lots of observational tasks and experiments on Tuesday, when we had a science day centered around our topic: Rocks and Soils. We learnt about the structure of the Earth and were amazed to find out that we are all floating around on tectonic plates on a moving layer of magma. Wow! 

We looked at a wide variety of semi-precious and common rocks and stones and organized them into different categories. 

We went on rocks hunts around the school when thinking about the uses of rocks and how they help us in day-to-day life. Our favourite part was definitely when we were learning about the three different rock types: sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic. We made chocolate rocks to help us learn about the different formation processes. 

Looking at them in more detail, we conducted experiments on the durability and permeability of different rocks and used this data to decide what purposes different types of rocks would be good for.  We also looked at fossils and did some close observations of soils and were surprised at the many things that make up the earth below our feet. 

Music 

We now have a date for our music performance,,, Monday the 18th July. The performance starts at 10.00 am sharp (!) so please arrive a few minutes before hand to be seated. We look forward to sharing some songs and tunes that we have been enjoying this academic year. 

Week Beginning 27.06.16

This weeks blog is written by Brandon and Finn.

First of all, thank-you to all that came and supported us by watching our performance. We had a brilliant time learning and creating the show and we are really proud that you all enjoyed it too. 

Literacy

In literacy, we have been writing a persuasive letter to the president of Brazil  because they

are building a Mega Dam on the Xingu river. We thought about how this would affect the tribal people in the area and the animals and their habitats and used our persuasive letter writing skills to tell him about our concerns. 

We were also recapping our knowledge of a how to use apostrophes for possession and omission and learning bout how to use them for plural possession. We completed challenges and played some games to help practise our new skills. 

P.E

In P.E we were playing golden nugget. This helps practise our throwing and aim.

How you play: 

1) You get a tennis ball and some cones.

2) Next, you set some cones up and then get into teams up to 6 players. 

3) Then you take it in turns to hit the other cone.

If you hit it the cone your team gets the cone. The team with most cones wins. 

Maths

We have been identifying parallel and perpendicular lines in 2d and 3d shapes. We have been organising them using Venn diagrams. 

We also did an investigation counting the number of faces, edges and vertices of different based pyramids. We discovered that however many edges the base has, you must add 1 and that will be the number of faces and vertices it has. Each time the amount of edges went up by two. 

Art

We had a special visitor when Mr Long, a local artist (and Necton Primary staff member), came to show us some printing techniques. We learnt all about how he makes his prints and we even had a go ourselves. It was a little messy and quite tricky at times but so much fun. We produced prints inspired by the animals, plants and trees of the rain forest. We were all really proud of our finished results and think they are really eye-catching. 

In other news...

Another thank-you to everyone that came on Thursday to our lunchtime school BBQ.  It was really tasty and it was lovely to see all the families enjoying spending time together at school. Even the sun managed to make a brief appearance.