Year 3 News 19.1.24 and 26.1.24

Our Year 3 weekly news round up from the last two weeks of school.

In maths, we have completed our multiplication unit on x3, x4 and x8s, where you have learnt different strategies to help you work out these multiplications. We enjoyed playing a game to practise counting in steps of 3 and 4. We have also built upon our skills to multiply and divide 8. Keep practising these at home too and of course on TT Rock Stars. Let's try and win the trophy again next week!

In English this week, we have continued to read our new story Fox by Margaret Wild. I have been so impressed with your setting and character descriptions this week and we have also been spag detectives, hunting for all of the spag in the example text to help us when we come to write our own. Alliteration and speech marks were your favourite this week! We have also spent time writing speech sentences using inverted commas. Today, we took part in a drama task to freeze frame how the magpie and fox feel in the story. 

In computing, we started our new unit of stop motion animation. We learnt firstly what it is and where we might have seen it before. We watched clips of behind the scenes of Wallace and Gromit and listened to some top tips when making stop motion films. We then worked in partners to create our own short stop motions using whiteboards, pens and writing our names. We enjoyed watching each others and look forward to starting our project next week.

In science, we continued with our light unit. We recapped on our light sources lesson from last week and listed as many sources as we could remember from last week. This week, we were focusing on how light works and how we can see things if they don't provide light themselves. We found out that back in the Egyptian times, glass mirrors hadn't been invented but they loved to look good so what could they have used instead? We investigated lots of different items and tested how reflective they were, deciding which one would make the best material for an Egyptian mirror. What did you decide would make the best mirror and why?

Wednesdays bring us our weekly swimming lesson where you shone again. The swimming teachers commented on your resilience as a whole group and you made me a proud teacher again! It is clear to see how much you are enjoying your lessons!

The title of our new RE unit is How does/did Jesus change lives? We began by thinking about what change means to us. We decided that some changes are permanent, and some change back and return to how things were before. We then read the bible story called the Calling of Levi. It was great to see us use our new Questful learning map to share our ideas. We also thought about what happens when Jesus changes a person's life. To help us understand this more, we learnt about the story of Zacchaeus. We labelled a picture of Zacchaeus with his actions and feelings before and after meeting Jesus. We also thought about what questions we would like to ask Zacchaeus. Year 3, you came up with some wonderful ideas.

In PSHE, our time has been spent practising our culinary skills to create a healthy snack using the change for life snack swaps promotion. We followed a recipe and practised our cutting skills. What a great job you did, Year 3! Your snacks looked delicious and lots of us said how nice they tasted. Thank you for practising this recipe at home too. 

We also started our new PSHE unit Too much selfie isn't healthy. We began by thinking about whether it is better to give or receive from others. Boris reminded us that that our heart is strengthened, as are others, when we think of others. This links to the bible quote Love your neighbour as yourself, from Mark 12:31. We also looked at the ways that we had been unselfie last week, and decided how the person that was helped felt and what it feels like to help someone. We then moved onto learning ways to recognise and celebrate the impact kindness can have on another person. We learnt about the kindness shared been two people; Winston Churchill and his Nanny. This gave us the opportunity to think about how important it is to care for someone. This links to the bible quote; God is fair; he will not forget the work you did and the love you showed for him by helping his people. And he will remember that you are still helping them. Hebrews 6:10.

As Geographers, we began our unit why is climate important? by getting to know three new words; weather, climate and biomes. This was our first introduction to find out how these three words are connected. We did a wonderful job to get to know the new vocabulary by drawing different symbols.

We have also been wonderful artists, and we would like to share some examples of our artwork. We are very impressed by the detail you added.

This weekend, we have set Spagtastic homework. We hope you have a wonderful weekend,

Miss McCurrie and Mrs Pointon