Year 3 news 1.7.21

Well Y3 were busy bees last week learning all about pollination in our new science unit all about plants! But first, let's see what we got up to for the rest of the week.

In English last week, we put the finishing touches to our diary writes, writing about a day in the life of a Roman soldier. When we edited our writing with a partner, we went back to the toolkit we wrote at the beginning of the unit and checked we had included important events, time connectives, events in the correct order, interesting word choices, feelings and paragraphing. After all that work, we were ready to write up our work in our best handwriting for study work. I know you are keen to show off this piece of writing Y3 and rightly so!

In maths last week, we revisited our addition and subtraction unit focusing on part whole models and bar models. We used these representations to show our workings out and then put the addition and subtraction calculations into word problems using maths language such as altogether and how many more to work out if we had to add or subtract.

And then we were busy bees! We learnt all about the pollination process by making our own bees and using them to drink some nectar from the flowers. Whilst they were visiting the flowers they got covered in pollen from the flowers (or wotsits!!) and then we took the bees to go and drink more nectar from the other flowers and drop off some pollen which was stuck to their hairy legs!

What are the main parts and functions of a flowering plant? This was our question in Science this week. Firstly, we used a selection of artificial flowers to identify the main parts to include, the petals, stem and leaves. We then thought about which parts we couldn't see, the roots, and the important role they have. We enjoyed using our prior learning about pollination to learn about anthers and we found out that this is where the pollen is stored. By the end of the lesson we had fun creating giant flowering plants using different materials and the details on them were fantastic!

We continued with pollination in our computing lessons, using the iPads to find photos of the process, saving the photos, recording our voices over the photos to explain the pollination process. You then edited your work and saved it too. We will create QR codes for these videos so they can be shared in our study work books!

In our reading time, we decided on our favourite reading challenge book and reviewed this to our friends. We then designed our own version of the front cover and I'm sure you'll be as impressed as I was with our art work! Have a look in the photos.

This week in our HeartSmart lesson, we discussed building friendships based on truth. We know friendships require truth in order to build trust. Truth and kindness are essential elements to a true relationship. We know that saying kind things to people 'builds them up' and makes them a stronger person. Every brick of our character and the things we like about ourselves are because of other people's, encouragement, love and support. We then added characteristics to our own word walls. We labelled the bottom – Truth and added the qualities we would like in friendships as well as what we offer our friends. The more qualities we added, the stronger our walls became. Bible reference – 'The wise man built his house on rock. Matthew 7:24.

In music this week, you completed your study work page all about John Williams and you told me all of the different music he has made. We listened to some of throughout our different lessons this week too as background music! You also performed an individual recorder or glockenspiel piece to have in your study work book and it was lovely to see you all so proud.