Year 3

Year 3 Matisse

The pupils of Matisse Class have made an excellent start to their time in Key Stage Two, demonstrating a positive attitude towards their learning and making friends with their new classmates. Below is a glimpse into some of the learning that children have enjoyed.

Our topic ‘The Prehistoric Age’ was certainly a favourite amongst many learners. To support our learning we first became familiar the book ‘How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth,’ by Michelle Robinson. We immersed ourselves in the book, looking at how we could use interesting vocabulary choices to improve upon the text, in order to write our own set of instructions. We then enjoyed Satoshi Kitamura’s story ‘Stone Age Boy.’ We used ‘Talk for Write’ to rewrite the introduction to this picture book, again focusing on our words choices and use of figurative language. We then planned and wrote our own adventure, based on Satoshi’s story, using the skills we had been practising. To make our story as realistic as possible, we included much detail about Stone Age life, which we had learnt from our studies of historical sites such as Skara Brae. We even took on the roles of different historians and scientists to debate the purpose of Stonehenge.

Moving onto mathematics, our teacher has been very impressed with the progress that we have made in developing our number sense and calculation skills. We have worked hard to be good detectives, looking for patterns and making links as we learn to apply our number fact knowledge. Everyone had a great time on our school Maths Day. The theme was pattern building and finding. We made interesting repeating patterns, and learned how to record these patterns in an efficient manner. We also presented our times table knowledge in different ways to expose patterns to help us make links between certain times tables.

As part of our Religious Education, we have been considering though-provoking questions such as: Why make promises? Are visitors always welcome? What helps me choose well? These questions led to some interesting class discussions and personal reflections. We have also been studying different books from The Bible. So far this year, we have looked in The Book of Joshua and Book of Ruth, exploring the characters and themes and what Christians can learn from these.    

Finally, one of our P.E. activities has been gymnastics. We have learned to perform rolls and balances, not on the floor, as we did last year, but on benches. Our coach was genuinely impressed by the progress we have made. Some children progressed from lacking confidence in performing a forward roll, to being able to do so on a bench. Perseverance and resilience were key to our success.

Year 3 Cezanne

Year 3 Cezanne has made an impressive start to the new academic year by approaching new challenges with enthusiasm and a positive mindset. 

This term we have been learning all about shape poems. A shape poem is a poem that’s visual appearance matches the topic of the poem.  First we choose a topic, then collected words and made a word bank to help us.  We then used the words to create the outline of our poems. Some of us used just a single word, while others chose to use whole phrases. We explored many different types of shape poems including triangle poems, spiral poems, portrait poems and calligrams. We also discussed whether shape poetry was poetry or art and decided that it could be both.

As part of our poetry topic, we also listened to some poems by Michael Rosen. We chose our favourite ones and performed them to the whole class.

In science, we have been learning how both rocks and soil are formed. We used magnifying glasses to observe the colour and texture of different rock samples including chalk, granite and limestone and devised a fair test to compare the hardness of the rocks. We discovered that there are three main types of rock, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. We learnt that when rocks rub against each other, small pieces break off and over a long period of time, along with erosion from the wind and rain, these small pieces join together and make soil.

We had fun using our scientific skills to investigate three different types of soil and found that clay soil is made from very small particles that stick together when they are wet. Sandy soil contains particles that are bigger than clay particles. They don’t stick together as well when they are wet.

This term as a part of the whole school ‘Maths Day’, we investigated repeating patterns found in Islamic art. We used notation e.g. ABAB, ABB, BAAB to describe the unit of repeat found within the artwork. We then created our own Islamic art based on the patterns that we had identified.

To link with our poetry topic, we explored patterns found in Japanese Haiku poetry. A Haiku poem is three lines long and each line follows a pattern of syllables, 5,7,5. Here are some of our poems; we used the theme ‘Mathematics’.

Our RE topic this term asked the question ‘Who is Jesus?’ To help us find out, we read the statements from the bible that Jesus had made about himself, describing himself through symbolism. We learnt why these statements are important to Christians and how they reflect on our own day-to-day lives.

Year 3 Van Gogh

During our Religious Education lessons, we focused on Moses as Leader and what characteristics make a good leader. We looked at The Burning Bush, The 10 plagues of Egypt, The 10 commandments and even had a visit from Vicar, John Birchall, who answered any questions we had! We also visited the church and were able to discuss why having rules is important on a school trip, just as having the 10 commandments is important in Christianity. All of the stories that we looked at, allowed us to reflect on our own lives, the things we are grateful for and the importance of being part of a community.

In English, we have been looking at ‘Stone Girl Bone Girl’ by Laurence Anholt which tells the story of how Mary Anning had such a positive contribution to science with her discovery of fossils in Lyme Regis.  We are writing our own adventure stories based on discovery and have been using our knowledge of subordinate clauses to extend our sentences. Using google earth was great fun as we were able to see the cliffs that Mary would have found her fossils and allowed us to generate our own ideas to contribute in lesson.

This links in with our Science topic- rocks and soils, as we learnt about the different types of rocks and how they are formed. We became ‘Rock detectives’ by investigating and carrying out comparative tests on chalk, limestone, marble, sandstone, granite and slate. We used a rock identification key and magnifying glasses to find out what each rock could be, based on its colour, texture, hardness and permeability. We also held different types of fossils and watched a video about how Mary Anning uncovered these, which really made everything come to life!

Maths has been all about building on our knowledge of partitioning and place value and understanding the importance of how this is relevant in our day-to-day life. We have been using concretes such as dienes and fake money to help us draw pictures representing number problems, which then helped us to record number sentences. Through practising number bonds and using number lines, we have become confident in column addition and subtraction and can even solve three-digit sums.

As part of our Dance unit, we have been practising a routine based on the film Rio. This has been very enjoyable as the music and animation allows us all to have fun. This dance routine consists of seven moves including ‘Samba,’ which seemed complex at first, but after showing resilience and perseverance, we accomplished each and every move.