Thank you for amazing homework

Dear Children

You have all produced such amazing homework - well done everyone!  I thought that I would share a few examples with you here on the Blog.

As I explained, Mr Wainwright asked to see examples of your homework at our staff meeting this week.  This is why you will only be getting your homework books back tomorrow (Friday).  Your homework for this week, in addition to the Active Learn and Bug Club books, will be to design an information text (only over a double-page of your homework book please), on Equivalent Fractions.  Imagine you are teaching another child all about equivalent fractions, what would you tell them? Think about the design - bright, colourful, are you going to have key facts, text boxes, examples of equivalent fractions?  These are just some ideas - make it your own!!  I look forward to receiving your homework which I would like returned by Friday, 8th May.

For now here are the photos:

Dig for Victory - We Need You! Fantastic 'job' opportunity - hours to suit!!

Growing Club needs your help!

We are looking for any adults who enjoy gardening and have some spare time to help us.  Do you know your weeds from your sprouting bean?  Can you help us, or know perhaps someone who might like to?

We desperately need adults to help us clear and maintain our school garden. It is overrun with weeds and nettles in places and our children, although enthusiastic, cannot clear it and maintain it in our weekly hour of growing club!

We would love an 'army' of volunteers who can just turn up during the week (hours to suit) and give whatever time they have available to help keep on top of this wonderful resource.  

If you, or anyone you know, are in a position to give us some free time we would love to hear from you.

Come lose yourself in our garden -  we may even be able to stretch to a cuppa and biscuit!

We look forward to hearing from you.




Mrs Smith, Mrs Ray and the Children of Growing Club

And the winners are ....

Well done Yellow House in Class 3.  You won our 'house of the week' and I very much look forward to seeing if you can keep it up for next week.  Enjoy sitting on the winner's table.

Red, Blue and Green houses - you know what to do, the bar has been set!!  You surely don't want Yellow House to be the winning House in Class 3 again next week?  I doubt it, and I am sure you are all going to impress me and earn those vital house points.  Good Luck.

Mrs S

The Week Ahead and finally Bug Club news!!

Dear Parents

Firstly, I know I often say this but it is so true, I am so, so proud of everyone in Class 3 for their work on Fractions last week.  The buzz and vibrancy as the children choose their own challenge for each maths lesson was quite something.  I think the children will agree that they love choosing their own challenges - and all progressed beyond their own expectations.  Well done Class 3.

As for next week, I do not want to lose the momentum set by t he children, so I have planned to continue a little more on Fractions.  We will spend some time on tenths and hundredths before moving on to answering 'word' problems.  An area the children all feel a little uneasy with and I want to sure them that it's not the words that matter but the maths they are being asked to do.

Literacy sees us working towards writing an independent opening to 'Up - the Sequel'.  Again, as in previous posts, whilst reading with your children please have a look at how their reading book began and, in particular, the way in which the reader is 'hooked' into the story.

RE will be our main focus during the afternoons and we shall be learning about Muhammad and the Qur'an.  This learning will link to our PSHE objective to appreciate the range of national, regional, religious and ethnic identities in the United Kingdom.

In computing Mrs Sibley will be teaching the children to create their own Excel spreadsheets.  This will incorporate learning how to create the appropriate formula to be able to estimate how many balloons the children will need to sell, and at what price, in order to make a profit for our Class 3 Balloon Race (to take place at the end of Sports Day). The money raised from the Balloon Race will go towards the School adoption of an animal at Colchester Zoo.

Finally, I am hopeful that I have cracked it and all children have now been allocated 2 reading books on Bug Club and 2 Active Learn games (on fractions).  The children are all aware that both can now be accessed through their Active Learn log-in (they no longer have a separate Bug Club log-in).  We have been through this in class, so I am confident they will all be able to find their allocations.

I hope that you will have all seen my previous post regarding house points - come on everyone, help your child earn house points on our Class Blog, join the fun and become part of our fantastic Class 3 community!

Mrs Smith

Class 3 children and parents: Easy way to earn vital house points!!

Dear Class 3

I will be giving away house points to everyone who responds to our Class 3 blogs from now on.  It's easy to respond and earn a house point. Every week I let your parents know what have been the highlights of the week, what we have learnt and what we will be learning the following week.  Let everyone know how your week has been for example: what have you enjoyed, what did you feel were the areas you improved most in, was there a struggle at the beginning of the week that you overcame during the week or maybe something that you would like to learn about!  Your comments can be about any learning during the week - literacy, maths, pe, computing etc. You don't have to wait for the end of the week either - you may go home excited about something that has happened that day - just add them to my last post on the Blog.  The world is your oyster!!

Encourage your adults at home (parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles etc) to write a response on our Class Blogs.  It could be a comment about something you have learnt that you have talked about at home, their views on Bug Club or Active Learn, questions about the week ahead.  Anything which is relevant to Class 3 (and not too difficult for me to answer!).

But please, always let me know if you or your adult at home has responded (we don't want to loose those vital house points).

Remember your house points matter - just one more house point could make all the difference  as to whether your house is on the 'winner's table' for the following week or not. Go grab them, I know that you can.

Mrs S

Reading Activity

Dear Parents

A thought whilst Bug Club issues are sorted ....

We spent the week (and will carry on next week), looking at the openings to stories. Can I suggest that as a reading task you may wish to look at the opening of your child's reading book.  Discuss how the story opens - particularly moving away from "One day ... ", which quite a few children still prefer!  Discuss how the setting is described, adjectives that are used to describe it and how characters are introduced.  All you children are fab at identifying fronted adverbials - can they find any and explain to you what they are?

All examples can be written in their reading journals - house points on offer for those with the most examples!!

Again, for fear of becoming a nag, please continue to practice times tables and reading analogue clocks.  Whilst I am sure they all wish to race out of bed on a school day, tell them the time when they get up, explain that breakfast will be in 10, 15, 20 minutes - what time will it be?  Discuss the duration of travelling time to school, how many minutes will it take to get to school?  Questions such as "School starts at 8,40 am - how long until breaktime (10.30 am)" etc, all help to reinforce time. Once more house points will be on offer to the children who tell me they have solved time problems!!

Many thanks

Mrs S

Bug Club and Active Learn issues/Rainforest Link

Dear Parents

It has come to our attention that when a recent upgrade was carried out by Active Learn (to incorporate Bug Club), there were some technical hitches which resulted in a whole host of issues relating to the children's allocation of both homework and reading books.

I tried to resolve these by de-alloating all the children's reading books on Friday, which I had allocated over the Easter holidays.

I have today tried to allocate both Active Learn games and Bug Club books but keep getting timed out.  I am hoping that this may be something connected to my own intermittent broadband connection at home and shall try to re-allocate all games and books tomorrow at school (when I will also have technical support, aka Mr Wainwright!).

Please bear with me, in the meantime I promised the children an espresso link to look at with regard to the rainforest (we have looked briefly at this in class).  It is as follows, the children should be able to recognise the link to National Geographic.  They were really keen to investigate this further.  I hope that this link may also help as a starting point for their Rainforest information text that I have asked them to prepare as homework this week.  Please be reminded that this is not due in until Monday, 27th April in order to give the children time to produce a 'quality' rather than 'quantity' piece of homework!

https://central.espresso.co.uk/espresso/modules/www/geography/kids_corner/content.html

As always many thanks for your patience and understanding.

Mrs S

Summer Term, Summer Learning!!

Welcome back to everyone!!

What a fantastic week it has been.  Class 3 are using the film 'Up' to drive their learning this term. We have already looked at the beginning of the film to help us learn more about fronted adverbials and pronouns.  We have ended the week creating a 'class' opening for the film which the children shall learn using Talk for Writing strategies,before innovating this to write their own opening next week.

In Maths we have been learning time.  There are some children who struggle a little with reading an analogue clock and therefore  I would be grateful if parents could help support their children to tell the time using an analogue clock (I do understand that nearly almost all the clocks we have are digital nowadays).  Time tables, this is such an important knowledge.  The expectation is that by the end of Year 4 all children will know their first 12 times tables.   Can I, once again, stress the need for you to be working with your child on these.

In Science, KS2 have begun to look at Plants (Year 4 continue to have Mrs Dixon and Year 3 remain with me).  We had some extremely detailed drawings/observations of plants yesterday - we were very impressed, well done Year 3s!

Finally Oaks and Acorns met on Thursday.  We combined this visit between a presentation from Mr Randall on trees and planting sunflower seeds with myself.  Everyone seemed to love the activities.

Next week in Maths we shall return to equivalent fractions.  In Literacy the children will write their own opening for their version of "Up - the Sequel", we will learn more about Plants in Science and travel to South America in Geography.  In PE the children are learning Cricket and Rounders.

Homework has been given out today.  I have asked the children to research the Amazon Rainforest. They can present their work/research anyway they chose but it must be in their homework books and no bigger than a double-page spread please.  This homework does not need to be handed in until Monday, 28th April 2015.  I have also allocated new books on Bug Club and Active Learn tasks

Mrs Smith

Lydia's drawing

Beautiful drawing by Louis

Oaks and Acorns planting Sunflower Seeds

Year 3 observing plants