Year 3 News 2021-2022
The Tunnel
To introduce Year 3’s new book they will be learning about this half term, the children had a special surprise when they entered the classroom after break time. There was a huge tunnel that had appeared! To start with, the children walked around the outside of the tunnel and thought about the question: where would you find a tunnel like this? Next, year 3 were able to crawl inside the tunnel and think about the questions: who might the characters be that would go through this tunnel? Where might the tunnel lead? What might the tunnel be like inside? After lots of discussion, the children wrote their predictions down. At the end of the lesson, the year 3 were finally shown the front cover of the book and the name of the book is ‘the Tunnel’.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Roman Food and Cooking
In this half term, Year 3 have been research and cooking Roman dishes. To begin with, we looked at the different ingredients that the Romans used for their food and compared these with ingredients that we have today. Some are similar to our current ingredients such as the fruits and vegetables, but others are different such as, giraffe, flamingo and garum sauce (fish guts and blood). To consolidate our learning in the final lesson, Year 3 created their own Roman menus which they made look from ancient times by using tea bags and water to age them. Year 3 have thoroughly enjoyed this topic and learnt lots of new skills to support their cooking and baking knowledge.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Fireworks
Year 3 have really enjoyed their DT topic on Fireworks this half term. In English, we have completed firework poems and are now reading the story ‘The Firework Maker’s Daughter’ so decided to make a cross-curricular link and create beautiful firework sewing pictures. The children learnt the skill of threading a needle, choosing their colours and sewing this onto a black piece of material. The hoops were used to keep the material tight which really helped the learning of the sewing skills. We hope you enjoy looking at our beautiful work and can’t wait to bring our creations home.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Conquering Romans
As part of their history curriculum the Year 3 children have been studying the Roman Empire and how the Roman Army was successful in its conquests. Last week the children designed and created their own Roman shields and this week they have tried out some Roman army formations, including the “tortoise” and the “wedge”.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Firework Emotion Poems
Year 3 have really enjoyed their topic on poetry for the first few weeks of term. During this topic; they performed poems that they chose themselves, as well as poems provided for them, they compared and gave opinions on poems they liked and disliked and answered questions to show their understanding of poetry. Finally, the children wrote their own poems based on their learning of how poems show emotions, as well as including onomatopoeias. To create a beautiful display, the children wrote their Firework Emotion Poems into shape poems and added some colour.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Mrs Creedon's Book Shop
Year 3 took on the role of shop keepers during this lesson, working for Mrs Creedon at her book shop. To begin with, they used their hundred squares to recap how to add and subtract 10 from any number less than 100.
They then moved onto understanding this as taking 10p off a price of a book during a sale. What if the sale was only 9p off every book? The children had a practise at using their hundred square to take away 10p then put 1p back on as we had taken away too many.
However, Mrs Creedon says she is a very generous shop keeper and was actually having a sale of 19p off her books! After doing a few examples of this as a class using their hundred squares, the children had to work independently to choose a book and work out 19p off before the book shop opened at 10am!
In addition to this, the children thought and talked about how they would work out if the price off was actually 11p or 21p. They discovered that they would still subtract 10p but then they needed to subtract another 1p to make a sale price off of 11p.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Frozen 3D Landscapes
This half term, Year 3 completed a project to build 3D landscapes of a wintery setting. Firstly, the children put together their design ideas, knowing this may need to be adapted throughout. Next, they decorated the bases with snow, mud and lakes or rivers. Now they were ready to make it 3D. Using the technique of origami, year 3 folded paper to make green fir forest trees. They then painted beautiful animals that would live in a frosty setting such as wolves, polar bears and penguins. Finally, the children used their junk modelling skills to create Ice Palaces, like they have been reading about in English. They chose appropriate colours to paint and decorate these before adding them to their 3D landscapes. We hope you enjoy our final masterpieces. Well done Year 3!
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Magical Potion Making
Year 3 have been enjoying their exciting maths lessons this week on volume. They have been learning what measurements we use: litres and millilitres, how to estimate, compare, measure and add volumes of liquids. In our final lesson, we made potions for the evil character, Starjik, from the book we are learning in English, the ‘Ice Palace’.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Ice Palace
This half term in Year 3, we have been reading the book ‘Ice Palace’ by Robert Swindells. To support their understanding, Year 3 have been creating freeze frames to show how characters are feeling and taking on the role to see what the character’s might be thinking. They have then written beautiful paragraphs, describing events from their story in their own words, using excellent vocabulary and our new learning on prepositions and fronted adverbials.
There are have been many cliffhangers throughout were the children have been really eager to know what happens next. All of Year 3 have really enjoyed reading this story and were excited to read there was a happy ending after all.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Completing Our Woolly Mammoths
They are complete! In our final art lesson of half term, year 3 completed their adorable milk bottle woolly mammoths. After finishing the fur using the brown tissue paper, the children added a tail, eyes, ears, tusks and a little tuft of hair on top. Check out the pictures in our gallery to see their fantastic creations and how proud Year 3 are of making them.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Team Building in P.E.
Yesterday in their P.E. lesson, Year 3 had a challenging problem solving and team building session. The problem: how to get six children from a mat at one end of the hall to a mat at the other end, without touching the floor, using only five stepping stones.
Working in two teams, the children discussed how to tackle the challenge and then trialled their ideas. Some worked and some did not. With careful balancing, it was possible to get some of the team across but some were still on the first mat. As it was a race between the two teams, there were more suggestions about the quickest way to get the remaining children over to the second mat.
With great excitement, the race began: both teams succeeded, with one team winning by a narrow margin.
Great team work and problem solving, Year 3.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Making Woolly Mammoths in Art
Year 3 have really enjoyed the book, 'How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth.' This week in Art, Year 3 have had lots of fun starting to create their own 'woolly mammoths' out of plastic milk bottles! The first part of the activity involved cutting the milk bottle in half and cutting out the leg shapes for the mammoths to stand on! Next the children had to cover their 'mammoth shape' in tissues paper using pva glue. Tune in next week when the finished products will be revealed!
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery
Wonderful Wednesday
As part of our 'Mental Wellbeing Week,' 'Wonderful Wednesday' had Year 3 'wondering' about lots of different things! For example, they wondered, ' Why does a banana develop brown spots??' After some research, Year 3 discovered that bananas with brown spots are riper, softer, and, also have a much higher sugar content than bananas which are greener! Year 3 also went outside to do some yoga stretches, practise balancing on one leg and take part in some mindful breathing which involved taking deep breaths in through the nose and exhaling fully through the mouth. This helped us feel calm and relaxed before the start of our Maths lesson!
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery.
Creating our Own Books
After lots of hard work in English these last few weeks, Year 3 have create their own books. Firstly, we discovered what book we were reading by looking at clues such as pieces of fur, soap, sponges, bubbles and animal footprints. After that, we read the book ‘How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth’. We discussed what we liked about the book and any questions we had for the author. Next, we delved into instructions as the book is set out in steps to guide the reader on how to wash a woolly mammoth. We found out all the features we need to include in instructions and learnt the correct names for these, such as imperative verbs, adverbs and fronted adverbials of time. Finally, we wrote our own set of instructions on an animal of our choosing that we wrote up neatly into our own books. These are now displayed outside our classroom.
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery.
Measurements
This week in maths, Year 3 are completing some work on measurement. To start off the week, the children looked at metre rulers. They converted between centimetres and metres and as a class, we looked around the room to measure things that we thought were more than 1 metre. We found that the window was 1m 58cm which we converted to 158cm. We also discovered that the door was over 2m (2m 13cm) which we converted to 213cm. For our main activity, we had a range of Stone Age animal photos lay out around the room. In a carousel, we took turns to measure each animal using our metre rulers and recorded our results in a table.
In our second lesson, we looked at millimetres. We learnt that there are 10mm in 1cm and that millimetres are really small. In this lesson, around the classroom were Stone Age animal footprints, we used our smaller rulers to measure the footprints in millimetres, then converted these into cm and mm.
We have loved doing our cross-curricular learning on the Stone Age in maths!
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery.
Investigating Rocks
Year 3 were super scientists and worked hard to investigate different rocks.
They tested the rocks to check their hardness, their weight and whether or not they absorbed water. They also drew some fantastic sketches of the rocks and described the appearance of them.
Fantastic Rock Stars!
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery.
Year 3 Go Off To The Beach
This week, Year 3 were very excited to go to the beach for their first Beach School session of the term. We walked together to Cubbins Beach, carrying all the equipment that we would need between us. When we got to the beach, we set up our 'boundary' so that we made sure we all stayed safe. Mrs Gardener taught us about the two different tides - a Spring tide and a Neap tide. We discovered that the type of tide depends on the position of the Earth, sun and moon. With our eco-friendly 'paint' and 'paintbrushes, 'which we had made earlier on in school, we each found three rocks and painted them to represent the Earth, sun and moon.
We also had great fun playing a game which involved trying to turn a tarpaulin over as a team whilst still standing on it! Anyone, who stepped off the tarpaulin was in 'quicksand' and had to 'starfish' on the beach! We also learned how to tie a special kind of knot using a piece of string and a thin, wooden 'stake.' We were very lucky to have lovely weather for our trip and everyone had such a wonderful learning experience with lots of fun thrown in for good measure! Thank you to Mrs Gardener for organising everything! We cannot wait for our next Beach School session next week!
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery.
Place Value Maths
For Year 3’s first two weeks in maths, we have been learning about place value.
In our first lessons, we used post-it notes and tape to create large numbers: 0-100 and 0-1000. We worked in groups, to make two and three digit numbers using place value cards and added these to the number lines where we think they should go.
Next, we used place value counters to make three digit numbers and wrote these as addition sums; e.g. 200 + 40 + 7 = 247. To understand place value even further, we looked at each column and discussed what would happen if we took all the counters away. After having a go, we learnt that we put a 0 in the column as a place holder. E.g. 247 – 40 = 207
We are looking forward to learning more maths this year!
For more photos please the Year 3 Gallery.
