Year 3 - Autumn 1 - Week 5
Date: 7th Oct 2022 @ 5:31am
What a wonderful week of learning and growing in Year 3 it has been!
In RE this week, we went on a learning journey about a great lady’s life: her name was Mary Seacole and besides being a believer of Jesus, she did some fantastic work to help others. The students used various websites to learn more about Seacole and from her actions, inferred how she showed she was a follower of Christ. Ask your child this weekend what they learned about Mary Seacole and what they think it means to be “called by God.”
The children were really impressive during music class this week because they were able to sing using a 2-part harmony! Using our song for this term, Let Your Spirit Fly, everyone got a chance to practise singing the ‘background vocals’ to harmonise with the melody. We added “2-part,” “melody” and “harmony” to our musical Star Vocabulary.
In PSHE, we learned about the importance of connecting with others and calming ourselves for a few minutes of quiet. The children played a game in a large circle and when they heard a statement, such as “I love to draw and paint in my free-time,” then they swapped places with another child in the circle. Whilst swapping over, the students took a mental note of who else they saw in the middle before they sat down. At the end, they discussed what they learned about their classmates and how they could use this knowledge to ‘connect’ with someone new this week. After our fun game outside, we went back into the classroom to practise some calming breathing techniques. The children learned that they could use these techniques whenever they need a quiet moment during the day at school or at home.
During English this week, the children learned how to use inverted commas and make sensible choices for their reported clause following direct speech. For instance, they created choices such as ‘whispered,’ ‘replied’ and ‘exclaimed.’ We discussed when all of these would be appropriate to use in our writing, depending upon how the character was speaking. As for the reading lessons in English, our focus was on the layout of a non-fiction text and answering retrieval questions. We looked at how the author chose to present her headings, subheadings, technical language, and diagrams in The Sea Book. We also used this book to retrieve answers to questions about the information presented.
We finalised our work with number and place value this week in maths as the children completed their number line work and counted in steps of 2s, 5s, 10s and/or 50s. Later in the week, we moved on to addition and subtraction learning goals. Our focus was on finding patterns in number sequences, adding 1s across a 10 and adding 10s across 100. Next week, the learning will focus on subtracting 1s and 10s and adding and subtracting without exchanging.
The class had a wonderful time this week in science as we explored the formation of fossils. There was a great group discussion as we tried to sequence the steps of how a fossil is made and put the order into our ‘own words.’ If you have discovered any fossils and would like to send a photograph of them (or the fossil itself) in to help enhance our science lessons, then please do! The children would love to examine fossils more closely. On Thursday, we also had a Mad Science assembly in the hall all about how sound is made. It was very entertaining and the children were hanging on the scientist’s every word. Ask your child what they enjoyed most about the presentation and check their bag for information about how to join the Mad Science after-school club.
In geography, we continued working on our educational posters about the mountains of India. The children presented their work to other groups and gave feedback to each other about facts that they chose to include and the layout of their work (relating to our learning goals in reading). We began talking about the rivers in India, and next week, the children will complete activities on this topic.
On Monday, the children worked on creating balances and transitions from one balance to the next in PE. This gymnastics lesson ended with a mini-presentation as the children performed in pairs to show the class their ‘show’ of at least three balances and two transitions (different forms of travel). Today, the children furthered their netball skills by learning how to defend an opponent and win the ball. Moreover, we tried to learn more about working collaboratively with others. The children’s teamwork skills have been improving over the term, but this is still an area that we will continue working on as a class; once this skill is sharpened, our PE lessons will run even better and we will have more time for fun games.
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful weekend!
Reminders:
Remember to reserve a time for a Parent-Teacher meeting for either this coming Wednesday or Thursday.
Please access our virtual classroom if you would like to see what the children have been working on in school. This will help you if you are looking for ideas for extra homework to complete (in the areas of maths, spelling, punctuation and grammar, etc.).
Check your child’s bag for information about Mad Science and the new after-school club.