Year 3 - Autumn 2 - Week 4

Date: 25th Nov 2022 @ 6:03pm

 Another amazing, fun-filled week in Year 3!

 During Collective Worship this week, we focused on how nature can be peaceful and we thought about our peaceful places.

 In RE, the children thought about the impact Jesus had on people's lives who he met on Earth. Then, we discussed ways that Jesus has an impact on our lives today and how we live differently because of Him.  Next week, we will complete our unit about "Christmas, God with Us" further exploring the impact of Jesus's birth on the world.

 In English, with Miss Lucas, we have continued our work on Winter’s Child. We had a great discussion about a new character we have been introduced to in the story. The children made accurate predictions based on what they know from the text. Miss Lucas challenged us to explain how we knew, where the evidence was from for our thoughts and to ponder on questions and puzzling elements of the story. Excellent retrieval skills used to evidence opinions this week. We also focused on the use of conjunctions in our sentences and explored placing them at the start of sentences to vary sentence structure.

 In Mrs McRae's writing group, the children have completed their hedgehog reports and will be bringing home their final versions to share with you today.  A copy of their work will be in their books at school, but they were so proud of their reports that they wanted to share their good work with you. Next week, we will be starting a new Christmas-themed text.

 In Maths, with Miss Lucas, we have concentrated on estimating, using inverse operations, compliments to 100 and discussing strategies we can use to ensure our working out is accurate. Every lesson, there are challenges for the children to complete. These can also be found on Google Classroom, if children want to explore these further at home. Each week, we will focus on our multiplication knowledge and linking this with the corresponding division facts.

 In Mrs McRae's maths group, we worked on adding across tens by partitioning numbers.  For instance, to add 36 + 9, we started with 36 + 4 to get to the next multiple of ten.  After that, we added 40 + 5 to get our answer.  It was tricky at first, but the children were more confident with this method by the end of the week.  Next week, we will be focusing on adding and subtracting two 2-digit numbers.  All of the work the children will be completing will be posted onto their Google Classroom. 

 Through the Young Writers company, we are entering another writing competition.  (The results from the poetry competition will not be revealed until the new year.)  The children are planning a descriptive story about entering through a magic door and finding a winter wonderland.  We are still in the planning stage; but next week, we will begin writing after creating interesting sentence starters and star vocabulary.

 With Dom, from Active Sefton, the children learned all about saturated and unsaturated fats. They sorted foods into the correct categories and found out there are 'good' and 'bad' fats for our bodies.  Dom showed what can happen to our arteries over time if we eat too many saturated fats and the children learned that a balanced diet and exercise can help them be the healthiest version of themselves.

 In Reading, we have completed our book ‘Blue’ and discussed themes throughout the book and made connections between the beginning and end of the book. We also tracked the character’s emotions throughout the book using an emotion chart. We zoned in further, focusing on wellbeing, by retrieving information from a non-fiction text based on strategies we can use if we find a friend is feeling blue. This was a nice follow up from Kindness Week.

 In History, the children were eager to delve further into evidence from the Stone Age. We looked at when farming was introduced and using our thinking hats to make decisions about what elements were big changes, small changes and which feature of life stayed the same when farming was introduced. Lots of speaking and listening opportunities where apparent in this lesson.

 In Spanish, we have continued our learning of vocabulary for animals. The children are becoming more confident with the different pronunciations used in the Spanish language.

Thursday and Friday afternoons were focused on our Art unit of work for this half term which focuses on the artist William Morris and his technique of printing. We investigated his work, used his ideas and adapted them to create our own printing tools to create wrapping paper designs just in time for Christmas.

 We hope you have a lovely weekend; lots of families are already getting into the Christmas spirit!

 We are looking forward to Monday already!

Reminders:

• Next Friday is the Christmas Extravaganza, and therefore, mufti.
• On Wednesday, children will have the opportunity to visit the present room. Please ensure you have requested this on school money.
• Don’t forget the book fair is still on next week.