Year 3

Persuasive letters!

This week in English we have looked at persuasive writing to respond to our letter from J.K Rowling. We are going to be writing our own letters next week persuading her to come and visit our school! We have have all continued our body stretches and different movements in gymnastics and have created a routine. In Computing, we have used Scratch to begin creating our animated poems we wrote last week. We have input backgrounds, sounds, speech and many other codes to make our characters move. Today we have enjoyed house time! We gathered to learn about Chinese new year and take part in some art and crafts. In my house St Oswald’s we created paper rats to celebrate the year of the rat. The children will present the crafts they made in assembly on Monday. We then had our music lesson and kindly, Elizabeth came in to help. We continued working on the C chord from last week and began to learn the F chord.
Have a lovely weekend! 🙂

Edge of an Empire!

This week, to begin our new History topic we took a trip to Segedunum. We looked at artifacts, visited the remains of Hadrians wall and explored the excavated site that was once a roman fort. The children had a great trip, thank you to our parent helpers!

In music we are focusing on stringed instruments such as guitar and ukulele. Luckily for us, school has a class set of ukulele’s so this week we had a go. Some children brought in their own guitars from home so we could listen to the differences between the two instruments, as well as the appearance. We are currently learning ‘Three Little Birds’ so hopefully we will be great by the end of half term.

In PE we have continued to focus on dodging and defense in tag ruby and in gymnastics we moved our movement and balance routine on. We recapped the dish and different holds before trying the straddle sit and stretches.

Have a nice weekend! 🙂

Welcome Back!

We’ve had a great start to the spring term!

In English we are focusing on a video stimulus, ‘Taking Flight’. The children have enjoyed exploring the video this week and writing their own descriptions of the settings and characters. In PE this term we have tag rugby and gymnastics. In tag rugby we focused firstly on the skills of dribbling and avoiding being tagged. In gymnastics we started with body movements, holding different positions to strength our core and stretch.
In RE we have started our new topic ‘Journeys’ with spiritual art. The children completed some wonderful water coloured backgrounds and created a path which they wrote on names of people who have been with them on their journey so far. Our new History topic is ‘Frontier: Edge of an Empire’ and we will begin this with a trip to Segedunum next week.

Have a good weekend 🙂

One week to go!

What a week!
In Math’s we have been focusing on Time. We used lots of practical activities and online games to help us learn how to tell the time from an analogue clock. We visit Walker Dome on Wednesday for a ‘Healthy Active Lifestyle’ session. The children had great fun taking part in all of the different activities that required many different skills. In DT we completed the tie dye of our material for our juggling balls. We are excited to see how the look next week. We have ended the week celebrating Save the Children Christmas Jumper Day. Our £1 donations could change a child’s life. It could help them grow up healthy and safe, and get an education, so they can grow up to be who they want to be.

Have a great weekend. 🙂

19 sleeps until Christmas!

Another busy week!

Our nativity performance is getting closer and we are all getting prepared with our costumes and learning our lines!

This week we explored different types magnets and the strength of them. The children investigated which magnets could lift up/hold the most paper clips. Some of the magnets were so strong that they gathered up in a pile instead of forming a line.

We also had a special visit from Fr Bill. He came in to talk to us about Advent and how we are preparing for Christmas.

Author Visit

We have had a fun filled week. We had a trip to Sacred Heart to take part in their Performing Arts day. The theme was ‘The Circus’, the children sang and danced to music from the Greatest Showman as well as making their own circus mime performances.

We carried out an investigation in Science on magnet materials in our classroom. We then looked at different magnets and their magnetic field using iron filings.

We ended our week with a visit from author and illustrator Liz Million. The children had a great workshop drawing different characters with her and listening to stories about the books she has completed.

Have a great weekend 🙂

Another week closer to Christmas…

This week the children have enjoyed the beginning of rehearsals for our Year 3 and 4 Nativity. We have been working hard learning our Nativity songs over the past few weeks, but now its time to knuckle down with the script!

This week we have also carried out our friction investigation. We used toy cars on different surfaces to look at how far they would travel. We discussed how some surfaces would make it harder for the car to move and how much friction would be caused by soft and uneven surfaces. The children found the car moved the furthest distance on the yard or on our classroom carpet. This is because these surfaces are a lot smoother and caused less friction with the car.

In computing we have been working with Microsoft Word, adding borders, tables, text effects and more. Next week we will be adding in images from google to add to our acrostic poems. In RE we also completed our spiritual art ready for our new topic, Advent.
In English, we have been completing newspaper reports about a crash in school. A satellite fell from the sky and landed in our playground. Did you see it on the news?

Have a lovely weekend! 🙂

Children in Need

What a week!
Year 3 have enjoyed a trip to a local Synagogue for our Other Faiths topic in RE. The children recalled all the correct names for items in the synagogue and amazed the teacher with their knowledge-Well done! WE also had GEM Education in who spent the morning in class with us looking into online safety. We used green screen, iMovie and other apps to create a presentation for our parents. We celebrated Children in Need with a sponsored dance. All the classes were amazing but Year 3 were super! What a great week! Have a good weekend!

Welcome back!

This week we have began all our new and exciting topics!

In Science we started Forces and Magnets. We started by looking into what a force is and at push and pull forces on objects. the children performed freeze frames for their friends to show either a push or pull force.

In PE we have two new sports. We have Badminton on a Monday. We started of by focusing on balance and learning how to hold a racket. The children enjoyed games in teams trying to catch large shuttlecocks in badminton nets.

This term we have a Geography topic called Flow. We began looking at the water cycle and exploring how the water on earth is recycled for thousands of years. We have also enjoyed our ‘Pop-up Poppy Shop’ at break time to raise money for the Royal British Legion.

I am looking forward to another exciting week!

Have a good weekend 🙂

End of Autumn Term 1!

What a week we have had!

Ending our first term in Year 3 with MAD week has been great fun! The children have been focusing on endangered animals, in Years 3 and 4 we looked at the Giant Panda.

We began our week recapping different sketching techniques to sketch our own Panda faces. We looked at hatching, cross hatching and stippling . We then looked at pressure blending using oil pastels to create a green jungle background.

Next, we took part in some textiles work, learning different sewing techniques including overcast and basting. In pairs with some Year 4 children, they practised on some Binca squares to master the different stitches. The children then designed their own puppets and planned the different felt shapes they would use. We then used these skills to stitch together felt and add features to their own panda puppet.

To end the week, we had House Time focusing on our school mission and how we follow this every day. We discussed St Charles’, who he is and how he became a Saint in the lead up to St Charles’ Feast Day after half term.

We have had a great first term and hope everyone has a relaxing break!

Miss Bell 🙂