Week beginning 18.12.2023

After a few days of Maths revision and grammar activities, the Year 3 team would like to wish you all a very merry christmas and a happy new year. We hope you have a restful break with your loved ones and we look forward to seeing you in January!

Week beginning 11.12.2023

Maths

In Maths this week we have been doing our end of term arithmetic and reasoning assessments. The children have tackled these brilliantly and have shown us how much they have learned already in year 3. 

English

In English we planned, drafted and edited a set of instructions to make a black bean taco. We made sure to use the features we have learned about, such as imperative verbs, bullet points, adverbs and colons. 

Design Technology

In DT we have designed our own tacos, thinking carefully about the ingredients and how they will look. We then made vegetable tacos - we chopped all the vegetables, fried them first and then roasted them in the oven. We then put the cooked mixture in a wrap and topped with cheese. They were delicious! There are photos below of all of our cooking. 

Week beginning 4.12.07

Maths

This week in Maths we have practiced:

The 4 times-table

Multiply by 8

Divide by 8

The 8 times-table

The 2, 4 and 8 times-tables

We have completed lots of questions which all look very different but all based on times table knowledge. 

English

In English we have completed reading, grammar and spelling assessments. The children have tackled these brilliantly and should feel very proud of themselves.

Week beginning 27.11.2023

English

In English we have started a new unit on non-fiction instruction writing. 

We have learned about:

Present tense

Imperative verbs

Adverbs of time

Adverbs of manner

Prepositions

Adjectives

We are going to be doing some cooking in DT so we are working hard to make sure that we can write a really good set of instructions.

Maths

We have been acing our times tables this week. We have learned our 3 and 4 times table and have been learning how to use our knowledge in our maths questions. 
So far, the children should have mastered the 2, 5 and 10 times tables, and should be learning the 3 and 4 times tables. 

Wider Curriculum

Have a look below for pictures of our amazing clay beaker pottery!

Week beginning 20.11.2023

Maths

In Maths we have studied:

Multiplication using equal groups

Use arrays

Multiples of 2

Multiples of 5 and 10

Sharing and grouping

English

In English we have planned, drafted, written and published our poems about The Great Northern Race. We have had a big focus on verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns in this unit and the children have done a marvellous job including these in their writing. 

Wider Curriculum

In Art, we have been making clay beaker pots. First we rolled a ball of clay, then we pushed our thumb into the middle to make a hole. After that, we pinched around the edge of the pot to create the shape. We then built height by using rolled up 'sausages' and moulding them on top of our pot. 

Week beginning 13.11.2023

Maths

In Maths we have finished our unit on addition and subtraction. We estimated answers, used inverse operations and also solved lots of worded problems! 

Next up is multiplication and division. The expectation in Year 3 is that the children know their 2, 5, 10, 3, 4 and 8 times tables fluently. Please help them at home (TTRS is a great site to use) as much as possible with these times tables. 

English

In English we have been studying free verse poetry. We have specifically focused on how we can use adjectives, nouns, verbs and adverbs to create an interesting poem. We are using our class story as inspiration. The children are getting really good at being able to give examples of the four word classes. Please help them at home by asking them questions such as:

Name 4 nouns you can see.

Which 3 adjectives could you use to describe a .....

Which verb/adverb could you use to describe that dog in the park?

Wider Curriculum

We have had two sets of visitors this week! 

First, we had the road safety show in and Year 3 were treated to a special workshop! We also had PCSO Sue from Thames Valley Police visit us to talk about what makes us unique. 

Week beginning 6.11.2023

Maths

In maths this week we have worked hard on using our number knowledge to support us with addition and subtraction. We have covered:

Add 10s across a 100

Subtract 1s across a 10

Subtract 10s across a 100

Make connections

Complements to 100

As shown in the picture above, this is all about trying to make the maths as easy and efficient as possible. 

English

In English we have continued to enjoy Pugs of the Frozen North. The children have written some fantastic diaries entries from the perspective of Shen. We have been looking specifically at adverbs, contractions, first person and past tense. The children have been brilliant at spotting these features in their own reading books too!

Wider Curriculum

Some of our wider curriculum slots this week have been full of looking back across our learning over the term so far ready to present in our assembly to you on Wednesday at 3pm! 

We have also begun to learn some clay skills in Art ready to make our very own Beaker pots just like they did thousands of years ago. 

On Monday afternoon, we cut the bottom off plastic bottles, painted them red, and attached them to wooden rods to create a poppy. We will combine our poppies with those made by the rest of the school as a tribute to Remembrance Day. 

The children have had a fantastic start to Autumn 2 and settled well back into their routines. This half term, we are continuing with our Through the Ages topic.

Week beginning 30.10.2023

Maths

In Maths, we have had a week of number revision. We have practiced counting forwards and backwards in 10s, including across hundreds. We have revised addition and subtraction using the column method and the number line. We have also revised our number bonds and how to use these to help us with our calculations.

English

In English we have started a new book which we are loving! It is called Pugs of the Frozen North and is all about a boy called Shen who was in a shipwreck. We are preparing to write a diary entry and have been looking carefully at the features we will need to include, such as 1^st person, past tense, contractions, adverbs, and thoughts and feelings. The children have been absolutely amazing at spotting these features in their own books.

Topic

In Science we looked at the muscles in our body and how we use them. In Topic we have studied the end of the Bronze Age. We learnt three different theories about why the Bronze Age may have ended, and decided which one we thought was correct.

w/c 16^th October

Maths

In maths this week we have continued using the column method to subtract 2 numbers across a ten and a hundred. We made sure to carefully exchange and include our exchange at the top. For example.

English

We have planned and written our final piece on what a scrapyard looks like. We focussed on including lots of description and saying where things were to include prepositions.

Wider curriculum

In Science we have looked at joints. We completed an experiment which involved putting a cardboard tube around our elbow so that we could not bend our arm and trying to take a drink of water. We found this difficult and now understand why joints are so important.

In topic we looked at how the bronze age was different from the stone age. We found out that people moved around less and started to create nicer items of clothing and wore jewellery. We also created our own bronze age weapons using foil.

w/c 9^th October

Maths

In maths this week we have focused on adding 2 numbers across both a ten and a hundred. We have made sure to carefully exchange 10 ones for a ten or 10 tens for a hundred and then put that below our column method. For example:

Next week we will be looking at how to exchange when subtracting 2 numbers.

English

In English this week we have been reading ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes. This is a book about a colossal robot who begins eating people machinery and then they trap him in a hole. He then escapes and they lead him to a scrapyard so that he can eat all the metal he wants. Which is leading up to us writing a description of the scrapyard next week. In preparation we have looked at a model piece of writing and have looked at what prepositions of place are and how to use them in writing.

Wider curriculum

Violin lessons have been continuing with great success with the children beginning to use bows.

In topic, we compared different aspects of life in the stone age to the bronze age. We found a main difference was in wealth, with wealth being shown through bronze jewellery.

In science, we looked at the bones in a human body. We then had labels and the children carefully labelled the main bones on their peers.

w/b 2^nd October

Maths

This week we have continued our new unit of addition and subtraction. We have looked at adding just ones, just tens and just hundreds. We noticed that each time only that column would change. Next week we will begin looking at column addition.

English

We have begun writing our Stonehenge recount. We carefully thought about what we did and how to carefully change our plan from notes to a good piece of writing. On Thursday we then began publishing our work.

Wider Curriculum

In Science this week we completed an investigation into how much fat was in certain foods. To do this we crushed different foods and put it onto brown packing paper. The packing paper then showed lots of fat in some of the foods. We were surprised that the investigations showed that there was not any fat that transferred from the chocolate to the paper.

In art, we created a watercolour background using cool or warm colours for our final art piece. Next week we will be drawing Stonehenge on black paper to stick on top.

In guided reading this week we have been practising poems in our houses for the big poetry slam competition this term. We then filmed these poems and will be watching them next week and voting for our favourites across the school.

w/b 25^th September

Maths

This week in maths we completed our end of unit challenge for our place value unit. We then began looking at addition and subtraction, focusing on applying our number bonds within 10. For example, if we know 5 + 2 = 7 then we know that 50 + 20 = 70 and we also know 500 + 200 = 700.

English

This we began looking at using coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. We also looked at acronyms to remember these. Then we made sentences about our trip using the different conjunctions.

Wider curriculum

In science, we look at different animals and how their diet changes due to the time of year.

In art, we carefully looked at the different types of colours we have looked at so far and put them in our art books. For example, warm and cool colours, analogous colours and complimentary colours.

This week we went on out school trip. The children had such fun looking at the stones, learning more about the stone age and trying to put the massive sarsen rock! We took part in a led activity that involved us creating a timeline form today all the way back to the stone age. We also saw some real stone age clothes, thought about how they transported the rocks and looked in the stoneage huts. Enjoy some photos from our trip.

w/c 18^th September

Maths

In maths this week we have focused on comparing and ordering numbers to 1000. To do this, we have had to remember how to partition numbers so that we can decide what number is bigger. For example:

We have also looked at counting in 50s. To do this we had to think of our 5 times tables.

English

In English this week we have completed our retell of ‘the hike’. We have used everything we have learnt so far, including past tense, third person, and expanded noun phrases. We have also looked ahead at what our next piece of writing will be: a recount of our trip to stone henge. To do this we began looking at the features we would need to include and identified these in a model piece of writing.

Wider curriculum

In Art we have looked further into colour theory. We found out more about tertiary, complimentary, and analogous colours. We then used our knowledge of colour to create a colour wheel.

In science we have looked at a balanced diet. This included looking at the 5 different food groups and what types of food are in each group.

In topic, we investigated the different stone age settlements. We saw that some were temporary, and some were permanent. We then looked at one of the most preserved settlements (Skara Brae) and found out some interesting facts about it.

w/c 11th September

English

In English this week we have honed our description skills by carefully building expanded noun phrases. We then created sentences using these expanded noun phrases. Then, towards the end of the week we looked at a new planning sheet and began planning our retell as a class.

Maths

In maths this week we continued looking at place value. We carefully partitioned numbers into hundreds, tens and ones and discussed the possibility of flexibly portioning numbers. For example, instead of 500 + 20 + 5 = 525 we could have 400 + 120 + 5 = 525.

Wider curriculum

In PE this week, Sycamore class began their unit of dance. They embodied the character of Matilda and learnt how to perform the jazz move ‘box step’. Chestnut class began their unit of football. They carefully thought about how to kick a ball, focusing on strengthening their passing skills.

In Science, we have looked at the 3 groups animals are split into depending on their diet: carnivore, herbivore and omnivore. We looked at why each animal had certain features (eyes in the front of their head, camouflaged fur etc) and looked at the diet of humans.

In Music the children had their first taste of violins and cellos. They also looked at how to play notes.

w/c 4.09.23

It has been lovely getting to know the new classes over the last few days. They have begun settling into a new routine and are creating new relationships. We’ve been really impressed with their kind and brilliant choices and look forward to this continuing throughout the year.

English

In English, we have started a picture book called ‘The Hike’, illustrated by Pete Oswald. This week and over the next two weeks we will be closely looking at the features of a retell. So far, we have investigated carefully using past tense and using different third person pronouns to reduce repetition in our writing.

Maths

In Maths we have started our unit of place value. We have carefully considered how to represent and partition numbers to 100. We then looked at labelling number lines carefully. To do this we had to find the value of the number line and divide that by the number of intervals. See below how we did this.

We then finished the week by carefully counting in our hundreds and answering reasoning and problem-solving questions.

Wider curriculum

We began the week by looking at our topic for this term. We found out more about when the stone age began, how long it lasted and the different periods that were in it; palaeolithic, Mesolithic and neolithic. We then ended the week by looking into different things stone age people used and had and why they needed them.

In Science we looked at what we already knew about plants and living things. We recapped plants and what they needed to survive. Then we looked at the features of humans and animals and why they have them.

In PE we began looking at hockey. We focused on how to hold a hockey stick, how to hit a ball and how to carefully pass to a partner.

In Art we experimented with water colours. We began looking at colours and how watercolours are different from acrylic or poster paints.