Autumn Term 2 2022

Welcome back! I hope you all had a restful half term. Keep a look out on this page to see what we have been learning about. This half term Year 3 have a prehistoric theme following on from the Stone Age. We will travel back in time to learn more about the Bronze Age through to the Iron Age.

Collective Worship

This week we have continued with our virtue of ‘Prayer’. Together as a class, we thought about who we could pray for. We introduced Pope Francis’s 5 Finger Prayer. In each of our collective worships, the children have been given time to have a quiet prayer for their own intentions using the 5 Finger Prayer to help them to pray for others.

Year 3 held a collective worship in class for Remembrance day. They reflected on what it means, why the poppy is a symbol and why we held a 2 minute silence as a mark of respect. The children made their own poppies and wrote prayers. We decorated our prayer table with these and the children shared their prayers in our collective worship.

In both our RE lessons and worship, we have learnt that we are now in the time of Advent. Each week we light a new candle and reflect on this special time of year.

First candle of Advent.

RE- Mary, our Mother

We began our learning journey by making links to previous learning in Key Stage 1 on the topic ‘Mary our Mother’. We looked at different pictures of the Annunciation (we weren’t told this). We had to look at the picture clues and decide what we thought was happening. We drew on our previous learning and sticky knowledge. We then had say everything we knew about the pictures and make a list of key words about it.

Following this, we continued our new learning journey by reading the story of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) and discussed how Mary must have felt when the Angel Gabriel told her she was going to have a special baby. In pairs and small groups, we role-played this scene and gave reasons as to why we Mary agreed to have Baby Jesus. We also discussed what we can learn as Christians from Mary’s actions. We used our working wall in RE to support us with our learning. We discussed how hard it must have been for Mary,as a young girl, to make such a brave decision to follow God’s wishes, but she had faith and trust in God to ultimately guide her. Just as Mary put her faith and trust in God we discussed how we can put our faith and trust in God to guide us when we are faced with worries or problems. We wrote about Mary’s thought and feelings.

Following this, the children then reflected on a very special prayer, ‘The Hail Mary. The children learnt all about this prayer and reflected on what the prayer meant. The children then wrote their own version of The Hail Mary.

Next, we moved on to looking at the symbols of Advent. The children learnt all about the Advent wreath and how every part had a special meaning. The children learnt about what the different candles meant and how the advent was in a circle to show God’s neverending love! The children wrote some fantastic instructions for creating an Advent wreath and were able to describe the symbols brilliantly.

English

The Iron Man by Ted Hughes

This half term we are using the text, ‘The Iron Man‘ by Ted Hughes which is already proving very popular with Year 3!

We began by looking at the cover of the text and predicting what they think will happen. We discussed that predictions are guesses at what will happen later in the text and we discussed about using evidence from the pictures to support our predictions. We have since moved on to reading part of the text and exploring the language. The children drew what they had read making sure that they referred to the text for all of the details. The pictures the children drew were all similar; we talked about how the author used descriptive language which gave us a clear picture in our minds. This has begun the next step of our learning journeys where the children are learning about expanded noun phrases. 

The children are thoroughly engrossed in the story. We began by identifying expanded noun phrase and similes in the text and discussing how we knew this. We worked with a talk partner to highlight them in the text.

His great iron head, shaped like a dustbin but as big as a bedroom, slowly turned to the right, slowly turned to the left. His iron ears turned, this way, that way. He was hearing the sea. His eyes, like headlamps, glowed white, then red, then infrared, searching the sea.

Year 3 are building up to writing a wanted poster about The Iron Man. To scaffold this, Year 3 worked in pairs to read and highlight everything they thought was good about a wanted poster for the big bad wolf. The children picked out the expanded noun phrases and similes to describe The Big Bad wolf not just on the outside but inside too. They also found other words used to name the wolf such as beast and creature. As a class, they highlighted all the worthy words and we added them to out working wall. The children also removed a sentence and added it to a different part of the text where it was better suited. We discussed the meaning of worthy words such as menacing, cunning and witnesses and how they could be used. The children also agreed that the WAGOLL (what a good one looks like) wanted poster included what The Big Bad wolf had done wrong and what to do if you saw him. Year 3 said they would need to include this on their wanted posters when they come to write them.

Following this Year 3 watched some modelled writing of the wanted poster for The Iron Man. The children listened to ensure that all the top tips were met and one that they noticed was just how many times I kept reading the work to check it made sense. The children then wrote their own wanted poster for the Iron Man. They made sure that they included similes and expanded noun phrases to describe the giant.

Reading

In Year 3, the children take home a non-fiction and a fiction book from the school reading book scheme to read. We also encourage the children to read for pleasure to become lifelong readers. We visited the school library to explore many different genres and the children chose a pleasure book to take home.

We have also been using our library to listen to our class reader, The Iron Man. The children enjoyed coming in and sitting together to delve into a good book!

Maths

We practise our Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs) daily in Year 3. A fun way that we keep our skills of mental maths bubbling is by working on our timestables. The children worked on 3x’s, 4x’s, 6x’s and 8x’s tables which they need to recall quickly. We practise our KIRFS at the back of our maths books and play different games to rehearse them.  We are always trying to build our fluency recalling these.

One of Year 3’s favourite ways to learn their times tables is to dance and sing along to BBC supermovers.

Spaghetti Maths

At St Joseph’s, we want children to love maths and we continuously look for ways to engage the children further in maths through fun, active and creative ways in class. Spaghetti Maths has been able to offer further opportunities for children to develop positive attitudes towards maths, build their confidence and encourage them to become inquisitive mathematicians. Year 3, had the opportunity to have a Spaghetti maths worshop. They practised the skills of adding and subtracting numbers mentally to solve problems. They worked as a team to solve the proeblems, some of them were quite tricky but the children showed great resilence and perseverance.

We have been busy working on comparing and ordering numbers! We have been using the greater than less than sign to compare numbers. The children have really developed their confidence using this and also applied it problem solving.

Science

Year 3 have continued with learning about rocks and soils. The children investigated how rocks differ from one another by testing their permeability. We revisited the meaning of the key words permeable and non permeable and linked this back to learning about materials in KS1. The children worked in small groups to do this. They used ipads to time how long it tool for water to soak into the rocks. The children worked scientifically to observe and classify the permeablilty of the rocks, whilst ensuring they made sure their tests were fair. We discussed as a class how to ensure fair testing. The children concluded that some rocks were non permeable like slate and marble. We discussed the uses for these non permeable rocks. The children observed that the soft, flaky rocks were permeable such as sandstone.

Magnets and Forces

This half term in Science we will began by thinking about questions we want to find the answers to. We added these questions to our Science working wall.

Some of these questions were:

What is a force?

How does a magnet work?

What are magnets used for?

What sticks to a magnet?

How are magnets made?

Year 3 then completed a word search of scientific vocabulary related to the topic. They used the ipads to find the meaning of words they were unsure of and then wrote them in a sentence.

Year 3 enjoyed investigating what happens what to ends or poles of a magnet are put near one another. They made predictions first before carrying this out.

DT

This half term, the children have a cooking project. The children have a strong focus on food hygiene. We began this by reading and answering questions all about this. The children learnt about food poisoning, cross contamination and ways to avoid this. Below is just a snapshot of the reading the children did for this learning. 

The children were then given the challenge of spotting dangers around a kitchen and giving advice for how have a hygienic kitchen and store food safely to minimise the chances of causing food poisoning. The children were brilliant!

After the children have proved that they were ready to cook hygienically in the kitchen, we began the challenge of cooking!  The children prepared Bronze Age cookies. We began by learning about g and ml for measuring ingredients. We then looked at the cookie recipe together and learnt about the ingredients and the natural sweeteners. The children linked back to their Year 2 learning where they told me how they learnt all about making their own butter!

After the cooking, the children evaluated their food hygiene. They rated themselves out of 5 for how  clean ithey were n the kitchen and gave their reasoning for this. The Year 3 team are impressed with the children’s fantastic food hygiene understanding!

Live Simply Project – Bat boxes

Building Bat boxes for our local community.

The Year 3 children spent a day working with Mrs Philips to build bat boxes for our local community.  As this was part of a Live Simply project, the wood was being recycled from old pallets to give it a second life. The children worked in pairs to construct the bat boxes. This involved hammering in pin nails, drilling holes and using the drill to add in the screws. Throughout the day, the children displayed fantastic teamwork; many were trying out these skills for the first time and they thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to be hands on using professional tools.

The result was amazing; our children had successfully built bat boxes, which would allow our furry friends to hang out in a fantastic shelter! A huge thank you to Mrs Philips who patiently guided us through our DIY experience.

Computing

At the beginning of each lesson, Year 3 discuss how they can be safe whilst using technology and the internet. This is also taught explicitly throughout the half term. Today, we talked about what we use the internet for and what we should and shouldn’t do online. The children had the chance to discuss this in partners, then in groups and then we had a whole class discussion. Year 3 had all the right answers so we talked about how we can put this into practice in real life situations. We remembered our motto to help us stay safe on the internet which is STOP, BLOCK and TELL!

Internet safety plays an important part in our Computing curriculum. This term, Year 3 discussed how keeping personal information secure is truly important and how we can tackle cyberbullying to keep ourselves safe online. 

We had a go at using Scratch Jr to code our own presentations. The children had to choose a theme with a suitable background and sprites. The children coded scratch to make their sprite move from side to side.

The children had to consider a lot of different options: using fun sprites and moving them, adding extra images and creating smooth conversations, adding sounds and using the ‘if’, ‘then’ coding blocks to create events. The children enjoyed using scratch and then showed their presentations to the rest of the class. We then uploaded our work to showbie.

History 

Changes in Britain The Bronze Age-The Iron Age

In History this half term, the children have continued exploring and finding out all about prehistoric life. Year 3 read about Stonehenge and answered questions about the text. Following this, we watched some video clips about Stonehenge and discussed how difficult it must have been to build. We found found out that Stonehenge took hundreds of years to build and even though it was built in Salisbury, UK we found out some of the stones came from Wales!

The children role played building Stonehenge before planning and writing a diary about a day in the life of one of the workers.

The children ensured they wrote facts about Stonehenge in their diaries to write an accurate historical account of it. Once Year 3 had written their diaries they used their purple polishing pens to edit and improve them. Year 3 have been working hard on the skills of editing to deepen their understanding of punctuation.

French

This half term, we are beginning by applying our learning about number to tell the time to the hour. We began by revising our numbers up to 20 using games such bingo and Burn2Learn games.

The children then applied this using clocks to tell the time to the hour. We used the phrase ‘Il est _____ heures’. The children gained more and more confidence with this. We then went outside to play some, ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?‘ which was a suggestion made by one of the Y3 pupils! However, of course, every part of the game was in French! This really helped the children to develop their confidence in reading the time to the hour in Franch!

After this, the next stage of our learning journey was to learn the colours in French. We built on the children’s prior knowledge in Year 2. We then build upon what the children had learnt and learnt new colours to develop their vocabulary. To consolidate their knowledge, the children enjoyed playing some games!

Music

This half term, the children began by developing their musical vocabulary. They then worked in small groups to compose their own music as a group. They performed as a group and appraised on another on the music that they had performed!

Following this, the children began to develop their knowledge of following music. Using the chime bars, the children followed the notes on the board to play familiar Christmas songs! The children then had time to practise their songs so that they could ensure that theiy were at the correct tempo. The children loved playing the chime bars and it really helped that the songs were familiar to them so they used their musical hears to hear when the notes were right or wrong!

PE

During our outdoor PE lessons, we have been working in teams to work on our passing, dribbling and shooting skills. We had to complete various tasks and work on our power and accuracy as we moved around.

We have been practising overhead passes, chest passes and passing with bouncing the ball first. We enjoyed working in small teams to do this. We had to ensure we chose the correct pass aimed accurately to our partners.

PSHE

In PSHE, we will explore the topic of identity, society and equality with links to our British Value of individual liberty. At the beginning of the half term, we will discuss what is important to us to maintain our physical health and wellbeing. We will also learn about how a growth mindset can help us embrace further learning challenges and how we can build our resilience further.

We have learnt about various scenarios where we had to make good choices. Whether this was about being kind and generous with our friends, or knowing what good and bad touch are, the children could explain their reactions and had to consider the feeling of others. They all had to explore different points of view to help them with their reasoning.

Dentist Visit

The children had a workshop where they learnt about how to take care of their teeth and why it is important for our physical health and wellbeing. The children asked Mr Auld many questions and got handy tips to help them look after their teeth.

Visit from the Mayor of Wetherby

On Monday 7th November, we had a visit from the Mayor of Wetherby, Neil, who came to talk to us in school about his role as Mayor, how he became the Mayor and the important things he does to support the town of Wetherby through the town council. Mayor Neil talked to us about he became the Mayor and told the children that he was elected and appointed Mayor during the pandemic which meant he was brought in as Mayor over zoom, and his wife had to place his chains on him, instead of having this done during a ceremony with the council. The Mayor talked to us about democracy and inclusion in the local community. He shared that he is passionate about making a difference and shared that he knows that the children at St Joseph’s are also passionate about making a difference too. The children asked lots of thoughtful questions and were extremely interested. Some questions they asked were:

• What do you like best about your role?
• What does your role involve?
• How much do you get paid for this very important job?

The children were shocked to learn that being a Mayor is a voluntary role meaning he doesn’t get paid anything for this very important role. In fact, the Mayor also has another job that he gets paid for where he works hard to keep children safe. The Mayor shared that he most enjoys going out in the community, especially visiting schools because he believes children are the future of our community. The Mayor shared that because of covid, he wasn’t able to carry out his work in the local community so his term has been extended for one year, which is very rare. The Mayor shared how pleased he was that he was able to do this and that his term will end shortly after the Coronation of the King, something that he is really looking forward to.

Our school councillors then had an opportunity to speak to him further, ask him any questions they had and even try on his Mayor chain. This visit supported our learning about the British Values, about democracy as the Mayor is voted for and elected, about Individual Liberty – having the freedom of choice and how the Mayor can support this in our town and so much more! It was an exciting morning to welcome such an important member of our local community into our school. Thank you to our Mayor of Wetherby for visiting St Joseph’s! We look forward to welcoming you back to our school in the future.

Anti Bullying Week 2022: Reach Out

This week in school it has been Anti-Bullying week. We kick started the week with odd socks day to emphasise our school saying of “We are all the same but we are all different”. We also had an Anti-Bullying assembly where we introduced the theme for this year which is “Reach out“. We explored what bullying is using STOP: Several Times on Purpose and emphasised the importance of telling others STOP: Start Telling Other People. We looked at different bullying scenarios both in person and online and explored what was happening and what could be done about it. We also explored Protected Characteristics, learning what they are and that it means that it is against the law to discriminate against any of them.

Water Safety workshop

The children joined a live presentation on Water Safety delivered by Yorkshire Water.