It's hard to image that the children have been absent for 8 weeks of this term, as they have settled back like summer flip flops on the beach. 

Poetry! That's all we have been doing (in English). The children have been engaged, they have performed, written and performed again. On our Google Classroom page you can see the first set of poems that I have managed to film. If you want to leave supportive comments then please do. 

In Maths, we have started looking at place value again. Just to refresh our memories.

Art - we focussed on Rembrandt and his obsession with noses. We created a scribbled pencil page then sketched portraits of our classmates using only erasers. 

Homework

Mathletics - there are 2 new tasks due for Tuesday

Spelling Shed - Due Tuesday

TT Rockstars - we are focussing on the 6 timetables. 

Reminders

PE - Tuesday and Thursday

Library change - Thursday

Reading books changed Wednesday and Friday

This week

A busy week in English, we have learnt: what an imperative verb is and how to use it! When we should use exclamation marks, we have looked at some of the problems with plastic pollution in our reading and finally, we have planned letters to write to Julian Lewis to ask him to petition Boris Johnson to ban single use plastics. 

In Mathematics, we have taken small steps into understanding how fractions are created. We firstly looked at Europe as our whole and countries within Europe as our parts of our whole. We have moved onto understanding how to write fractions and what a unit fraction is. 

In geography, we looked at wind turbines and solar farms and asked why they are becoming more popular. 

In PE we rolled around on mats a lot. This was part of our movements in gymnastics topic. Outdoor PE, we looked at sidestepping and pivoting, which we then used to play a game of piggy-in-the-middle. 

The photo above is from last. 

For next Wednesday ...

Could all children bring in plastic rubbish that has been washed. The plastic rubbish must be cuttable using the school scissors and not too sharp once it has been cut. Could they also bring plastic that can be wrapped, so that we can wrap it around a thick tube. All will become clearer next week. 

This week

We have been writing our first drafts of our wolf leaflets. The aim was to convince Europeans that wolves should be given a place to stay in Europe. 

In Maths we have continued with money. If you get a change to practice and play with coins, this would be useful as coins are becoming used less. 

Our Geography topic is Sustainability for this half term.  Students should develop an idea about what we can do to make our environment better and what the problems are. 

For PE we are working on gymnastics and bench ball. The skills we are focussing on are challenging yourself understanding where we are with our learning.  

This Week

The tension in the classroom was a torrent of fear, as a wolf stalked a rabbit as she read her book. Children used drama to recreate the story of Wolves by Emily Gravett (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9taIhqvyul4).  Pupils focussed in on their writing mission this week, which is to create a leaflet, raising awareness of the threat to grey wolves in Europe. We looked at what a sentence needs in order to make sense (a verb) and discovered how confusing life is without them. 

For maths, we have carried on with our 3 x tables and started adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers and ones.

Here is 3 x table song to practice.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XzfQUXqiYY 

Our weekly warriors showed skills in patience, appreciation, effort, kindness and presentation. 

We have many heroes in this classroom. After an assembly about making small differences that add up to big changes, two Year 3 heroes litter picked for their entire breaktime.

During art, children experimented with their paint brushes and water colours. They were (amazingly) neat, yet colourful, and creative. There were multiple techniques that the children had to master with the brush and the end results were very creative. 

In Maths, I had further classroom heroes,  children who challenged themselves without fear of error and children who carefully unpicked difficult question. We worked on place value questions and the children have learnt varying ways in which to represent numbers using pictures and resources. 

In English, our classroom heroes took feedback, acted on it and made a lovely setting descriptions. The were writing about what it looks like to live in the Stone Age. We practised by describing photos that our friends couldn't see, but later had to draw using our descriptions. Later, we Freeze Framed our future story plans, that we aer preparing to write next week about the Stone Age.

I would like to add that I am very impressed with the attitudes of Year 3 students. They listen well, are very respectful and are enjoyable to teach.  It has been a great start to the year.