A good time to reflect ..

As our first half term draws to an end it is a good time to reflect on the learning in Class 3. We have been super busy and I cannot believe all that the children (and adults!) have managed to achieve in just one half term.  The children all seem to have grown in maturity since September and it has been an absolute pleasure to watch them develop.

To finish in style during the last week, the children were entertained by Mr Rob Malcolm's apple press and took great delight in sampling fresh apple juice.  Of course we had our little show of acting skills in "The Enormous Fordham Turnip" and to complete the week the children learnt about many Special Places of Worship with Mrs Allen and used the ipads to 'green screen' themselves at these places of worship.

It was a delight to meet all the parents with their children during our two-day parent consultation sessions.  I hope that these were beneficial to you.  It certainly was for me, I have never known the children so quite!

The home learning has been incredible this half term and I would like to thank all who have actively encouraged or worked alongside their children to produce some wonderful work.  It was lovely to hear such enthusiasm at the parent consultations. And of course I have taken on many suggestions and yes, you will be building your own rocket (thank you Mr Browne!).

On return to school our destination will be Space.  With the arrival of a Space Dome to start our topic week we shall be learning about the solar system,  We will shall look at space travel and find out who who was the first man on the moon before, as a class, creating our own timeline of space travel.  It goes without saying that we shall be creating our own astronaut's helmet for all that travelling we shall be doing and, of course, a moon buggy to travel in.  We hope to discover a new plant and obviously that may mean even some strange aliens to help us learn about multiplication and division and there will definately be some recounts in the shape of newspaper articles and putting to good use all our persuasive tactics to encourage people to travel to our, hopefully, newly discovered planets.

Oh and on top of that .... it will be Christmas preparations !!

Enjoy the rest of the half term.

Mrs S

Jonty teaching the 5x table - a very good job!

Sharing our home learning

I think Jack won the spelling game!

Learning our spellings is fun - especially the games

The Apple Press visits!

Green shooting (or blue!)

If you look closely you can see the background the children have chosen,
but importantly what they control on the ipad

Here we go again ..

We have super excelled ourselves with written methods of subtraction this week.  But the children are keen to carry on and I have decided that we shall have a couple of more days of subtraction next week before moving onto inverse operations. 

Having turned our teacher into a toad (they children were quite kind!), this week our instructional work in English shall include learning about adverbs and adverbial phrases, specific/technical words and adding diagrams - all to make the most perfect of instructions.

The children are working in house teams to create an information text on the Ancient Olympic Games.  To produce their work they are learning to use the 'Book Creator' app on the ipads.  We shall advance to adding images this week (once we have learnt to successfully save our books, erm .... it was tricky for the adults, let alone the children, but with great growth mindset we got though it ... oh and the children didn't do too bad either!).

So just a short one this week (mostly because I have had to watch Alliona and Jay's jive from last night's Strictly over and over all morning!  Wow, food for thought for Class 3's creative dance curriculum next half term?!).

A few snaps to finish, looking forward to see all the children tomorrow (especially the girls for our weekly goss on all things Strictly!). 

Mrs S

Learning all about Book Creator

Setting up Air Play to share our work

Concentration!

Reading our research notes aloud

Mrs Hitchiner is now our expert!

First text to be added!

A magnetic field of Dragon's Den

Today Year 3s have been busy thinking about magnetic toys.  Below are some ideas for new toys or games.  Obviously these are in the children's own words (and typing) - all comments are original!!

Evie May " I had fun designing my magnetic toy.  It is a cat that attracts to a magnetic fish"

Jonty "I had fun making my toy with Ashton and this is how it worked
1. You put you robot in the middle of the magnets.
2.You press the button on the back of the robot.

3. Then the robot will start moving
4. It will walk towards one of the magnets.  It will either attract or repel"

Grace "I had fun designing my game.  It is like my Daddy's game that we made at home.  It has electric and a magnet.  It was fun and Mrs Smith said i was  very good scientist"

Bethany "I had grate fun inventing my magnetic toy  it is a can and a magnetic rod"  (Bethany typed her own and did really well!).

Mrs S will be posting tomorrow as normal !

All potted out!!

So the children have quite exhausted me with their enthusiasm for learning this week.  They challenged themselves so well in English, learning not just similes but metaphors too!!  We have had a lovely week becoming poets with the children finally planning their own poem to write on Monday next week.  Following this 'warm' piece of writing on Monday, we shall then spend the rest of next week looking at Instructions (something about turning a teacher into a toad, erm!!).

Fab work continued in Maths looking at written methods for addition (please have a look at the School's calculation policy to see the progression through the years.  This may help to help your child at home).  I have decided that we will 'hold' multiplication (as mentioned last week) and it seem only natural to move onto written methods for subtraction.

In science, Year 3 continued their investigations into magnets and magnetic fields.  We shall be culminating our learning by designing a new toy using magnets.  Can I just ask has any family toys at home that use magnets (like those old fishing games) and if you have, could class 3 borrow them on Thursday to help our investigation.  I shall promise no harm will come to any games/toys lent to us for the afternoon.

We evaluated our clay pots and the children learnt the importance of being able to say what was good and what could be improved next time.  They even learnt to give 'positive' feedback to others.  Well done everyone.

I have begun to receive some rather grand donations of gentlemen's shirts - a big thank you.  Although some look rather too 'new' to use - I hope that there have been no more incidents of stolen shirts from Dad's wardrobe!! 

Please remember that it is Harvest Festival in the Church on Monday at 2.30pm. Should you wish to donate any items we would be very grateful. I look forward to see you there.  

Mrs S

Class 3 goes potty !

Gardening Club beans served on Roast Day at school

Our partners in crime - Wednesday's paired reading with Class 5

Magnetic powers

Add caption

Finding out where the filings attract the most

Investigating about the poles