Year 3 - Autumn 1 - Week 4

Date: 29th Sep 2022 @ 4:05pm

It has been another fun and productive week in Year 3!

We began the week with a more reflective tone as we went to St Peter's Church for a Harvest service led by the Year 5 students.  It was heartwarming to see all of the donations that the children brought in so that they could help others who are in need in our community.  Hopefully, this kind act of giving will inspire them as they get older to continue to be charitable and to think of the needs of others.  If you were in attendance, then I am sure that you would agree their behaviour and their singing were impeccable!

Our focus in RE this week was the Prophet Jonah.  We revisited his story from the Bible and learned about his journey of listening to God's call and his struggle to do what God asked at the beginning.  Using key events from his story, the children created a book cover--including a title, an illustration and a blurb--that summarised what would be in a book about his life.  Next week, we will be creating and annotating a memory board about Jonah and using this to retell his Bible story.

As we wrapped-up our Collective Worship services for September, we had one last lesson together that taught us about having respect for others.  We wrote a poem with ideas for how we can show respect at our school and the children created kind, thoughtful ideas for how they would like to be treated and how they want to behave towards others.  In October, our Collective Worship lessons will be all about generosity.

In our English lessons, the students have been learning how to use a richer vocabulary and how to extend their sentences using words they have found in their texts.  Next week, we will be asking questions to improve our understanding of texts and drawing inferences from characters' actions and speech.

During maths, the students have been practising flexible partitioning as we approach the end of our place value unit.  We are going to finish our last lessons for this unit which will include number line work and estimation.  Next week, we will move onto addition and subtraction lessons.  Our first few sessions will address adding and subtracting ones, tens and hundreds; any extra practice you can complete at home with this topic will be helpful to our work in class.

In Science this week, the students really enjoyed learning about the three different types of rocks.  First, the children all researched features of these rocks using their laptops and recorded what they found independently.  Then, we used chocolate to learn about the formation of Igneous rocks and various food cupboard items to make our own Sedimentary rocks.  (Please ask your child at home to give you more details about the formation of these rocks and explain what they learned.)  Next week, we will be continuing our study of rocks and we will be finding out how fossils are formed.

We are continuing our study of the landscape of India in geography.  This week, the children looked at a few of the major mountain ranges in India and created an educational poster that highlighted their significant features.  Next week, we will be exploring some of the major rivers in India.  If any of you have been to India and have any photographs or stories to share with the class, then please send them in to enhance our discussion in geography lessons.

This week in PE, the children developed more of their gymnastics and netball skills.  In gymnastics, they learned about the straight, barrel and forward rolls.  In netball, we worked on our movement skills in order to lose a defender.  Next week, the children will be learning how to transition smoothly into and out of balances in gymnastics and in netball, they will learn how to defend an opponent and try to win the ball. 

And finally, during our D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read) time, we started a new chapter book which the children are really loving.  It's the first in a series called Little Legends by Tom Percival.  I've even heard audible laughter which doesn't happen with every class read-aloud!  So, if you are looking for a great bedtime story to share together, then you may want to check out this series at the library.

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful weekend!

Reminders: 

Please do not bring any football cards into school. 

Remember to reserve a time for a Parent-Teacher meeting.