Welcome back Y3!

It has been so lovely to be back together as a class this week! We started our week by throwing ourselves into learning about the Romans! We found out they were a powerful army who invaded Britain. We found out all about their army uniform and then created our own shields using symbols and patterns important to the Romans. We firstly designed them in our sketch books and then brought them to life on life size shields, using acrylic paints and gutta to outline our patterns. They are all now proudly on display in our classroom for everyone to see. It was a lovely start to our week.

On Monday you had your music lesson with Mrs Swan, where you began your recorder unit. Each child has been allocated their own clean recorder which only they will be using and they are regularly put through the dishwasher!
You learnt how to hold the recorder and play the note B. Ukuleles last term and recorders this term, there is no stopping you!

In English this week, we focused our learning about the Romans. We learnt about Roman soldiers and labelled their uniform parts. We developed our vocab when reading about the Romans and found the meaning of words like 'century', 'tribe', 'settlements' and 'destructive'. We wrote questions of what we want to find out this term about the Romans and this has now formed part of our display. We listened to two songs about the Romans and we were also introduced to the sponge on a stick...can you tell your parents what this was used for in Roman times??!

In maths this week, we started off looking at Roman numerals as a gentle start back into formal maths learning. We were interested to find out the Romans didn't use the same numbers as us so we used their code to write our own calculations. As the week carried on, we have recapped counting in 3s, 5s, and 10s and worked on missing number problems. We finished our week off with finding out all about the census (see below for more information) creating tally charts and interpreting the information we collected in our class.

This week in school was also very special as it was census week. On Thursday we found out all about the census, what it is and why we do it. We then decided to find out some of our own information. We asked the question 'Who is Y3s favourite author?' and then played games to find out as much information as possible from the results. You then created your own bar charts or pictograms in your table teams. I was very impressed with your collaborative learning and your enthusiasm. The next day, a few of you came into school excited to tell me you had a census letter through the post after our lesson!

In reading time this week, we have really got to know our Roman non fiction books and get reacquainted with our Reading Challenge books. It has been so lovely to see you find out new facts, share books with each other and be excited about the books in our classroom.

We also wrote up our recipes that you completed at home during lockdown. You spend time on presenting these beautifully and they look book worthy! I can't wait to see them in our lockdown cookbook – coming soon!

In science we started our unit on humans and animals by learning about vertebrates and invertebrates with a focus on the human skeleton. We worked in groups to test our knowledge by drawing around ourselves and adding all of the bones of the skeleton that we knew. After watching a video to find out what a skeleton is for, we put our own paper skeleton together and labelled the different bones. Did you know there are over 200 bones in the human body? To finish we looked at the differences between vertebrates and invertebrates and learned a new word, exoskeleton!

We also had a visit from PC Nick. He talked to us about keeping safe on the road, out walking and on our bikes. You listened well and asked some really good questions too.

For our wellbeing Friday afternoon, we continued to work on creating our own dots based on the book 'The Dot' by Peter Reynolds. We now have enough dots to create our own whole school masterpiece and I can't wait to see it on the wall. We listened to music and chatted to each other which was a lovely way to end our first week back to school.

I hope you enjoyed your first week back as much as a did and I hope you've had a well deserved rest too!

See you on Monday,
Miss McCurrie