Spring Term 1 2022

Happy New Year! I hope you had a happy and holy Christmas holiday. Our theme for this half term is ‘The Rainforest.’ Keep checking our class web page to see all the exciting things we get up to this half term!

Collective Worship

In Year 3, we have collective worship monitors who help prepare the collective worship table in class.

R.E.-Jesus the teacher

The new RE topic is called ‘Jesus the teacher’. In this topic, the children will learn that Jesus was a teacher who came to show us how to live. They will explore Jesus’ early life and learn about his presentation in the Temple. The children will know that Jesus used parables in his teaching and reflect on the meaning of the Parable of the Sower and Unforgiving Servant.  We began this topic by retelling the story of the Presentation of Jesus in the temple. We imagined how the characters in this bible story must have felt and then reflected on what this means for us.

English-The Tin Forest by Helen Ward

This half term, linking to our topic The Rainforest, we have used ‘The Tin Forest’ as a stimulus for our guided reading and writing. We started off by looking at the front cover of the book and discussing what we thought could happen by making inferences from the pictures. The children loved making these predictions and commented on why they thought there was one colourful flower amongst the tIn forest.

“There was once a wide, windswept place, near nowhere and close to forgotten that was filled with all the things that no one wanted.”

So begins the tale of the Tin Forest where an old man lives who tidies the rubbish and dreams of a better place. With faith, ingenuity and hard work, he transforms a junkyard into a wondrous, tropical rainforest. The children loved reading this story and enjoyed looking at and finding expanded noun phrases in the text. The children then had a go at writing their own expanded noun phrases about the rainforest. We then improved our writing by including adverbs and prepositions to say where something is.

Following on from this, the children planned and wrote a letter inviting imaging they were the old man inviting his friend to come and visit them in the rainforest. We made sure we included in our writing all the skills we had been practising writing. These included expanded noun phrases, adverbs and prepositions. Finally we edited and improved our letters to ensure they were the very best that they could be. We worked with a talk partner to help check our writing too.

Maths

This half term Year three’s Key Instant Recall facts are; To know by heart 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 x tables facts and the corresponding division facts. We have been practising these both in the classroom and outside through fun, active Burn 2 Learn games. Year 3 love playing these games which deepen their knowledge and understanding of recalling time tables facts.

Following this we have be writing and calculating two digit numbers times one digit numbers, using mental methods and progressing onto using the column method to multiply. Being able to recall multiplication facts quickly has deepened our understanding of this. Multiplying using the column method is tricky we we persevere and show resilience when faced with a challenge. We use the resources in the classroom to support us. We began by multiplying without carrying a tens and then progressed onto carrying the tens over. We have also been using the bar model to solve division questions. This has supported us to gain a further understanding of the whole and equal parts. We used linked our understanding of multiplication and division to be able to check our answers.

Science-Light

​We began our topic by discussing where light comes from and that there are natural sources of light and man made sources of light.  We made the classroom as dark as possible and discussed where the light source was coming from (the sun) and what it would be like if we didn’t have natural light sources.

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 would it be like if there was no light?

• How are shadows made?

• How far away is the sun?

• Does everything make a shadow?

• How hot is the sun?

• How are light bulbs made?

Year 3 absolutely loved investigating how shadows are formed. They used the torches to explore making different shadows. As part of our Working Scientifically objective ‘Pattern Seeking’ the children investigated patterns in the way that the size of shadows change. Do you know how to make a shadow smaller or larger? Year 3 had some much fun making shadows move. Some children even had a go at narrating their own shadow shows.

 Take a look at out working wall. We found out that shadows are formed when the source of light is blocked.

Following this, the children set up their own experiment to investigate how the size of shadows alters. They had to choose their own equipment to measure the shadows, what they were going to use to measure the distance of the source of light from the object and finally which object they were going to use to block the light. This was quite tricky to set up and the children had to ensure they measure accurately to make it a fair test. Some children measure the shadow of different objects and we discussed as a class why this would not be fair. Before measuring the width of the shadows the children predicted the size of drawing on the knowledge they had retained from the previous lesson. 

Geography-The Rainforests

Year 3 began by their topic by thinking about questions that they want to find out the rain forests. We added these questions to our working wall and wall refer back to them during our learning journey, this half term.

Some of these questions were:

What is the largest rain forest?

Where are the rain forests?

What animals live in the rain forest?

Is the Amazon the largest rain forest?

How many predators live there?

What is the rarest creature?

 

We then used the topic books to read around the subject and find out new facts that we didn’t know before. We also wrote down new key vocabulary that we have had learnt too, such as climate, deforestation and logger.

The children then the used atlases  to find out where about in the world the rain forests are located. They also had to name and write down the world’s continents, oceans and tropics.

Take a look at our learning journey and working wall so far.

They also looked at the climate of The Amazon and used and applied their maths skills answer questions about it. They also drew bar graphs to represent the amount of precipitation on average the Amazon gets each month

The children learnt all about the different layers of the rain forest, the types of animals that live there, what life is like for the people who live in the rain forest and importantly the dangers that the rain forests encounter through deforestation for the production of palm oil. A shocking and saddening statistic is that every minute the size of 20 football pitches of forest are being cut down!

DT-Sewing

Plan

Before we begin to make a soft toy flower, Year 3 have been working on practising different stitches. They initially began with practicing a running stitch using binca. We watched a video first too gain a better understanding how to do it. It was quite tricky at first but we showed great resilience and patience to persevere.

Next, we practised how to to sew a back stitch. This proved even trickier but we showed great determination and resilience. We discussed when we would use a running stitch and back stitch.

 

 

Computing

Online Safety

We revisited the very important tips to stay safe whilst using the internet. The key message that we took was that if we are unsure of anything on the internet we should ‘STOP, BLOCK AND TELL!’ We discussed in depth what this means.

Here were the key top tips we learned for staying safe online:

• Keep your personal information safe and private (don’t share it with anyone).

• People online are not always who they say they are(don’t become friends with someone online that you haven’t met before in real life and never meet up with anyone you speak to online).

• Ask before you share– think carefully about the photos you post on the internet. You need to have permission before you post photos of other people online.

• Think carefully about the words you use on the internet.

• If you see something you feel uncomfortable with, STOP, BLOCK AND TELL! 

• Always speak to a trusted adult.

 

MFL-French

Music

We have been practising using our bodies to make body percussion, we followed a simple rhythm of tapping our knees, clapping our hands and the clicking our fingers. Once we felt confident doing this in time together we changed the tempo and went a little quicker. After this the pattern we had to follow got a little trickier. We had to listen very carefully and be resilient not to give up. The children really enjoyed creating a song using their bodies as percussion and performed to the rest of the class.

 

Year 3 used the table as a drum. They followed playing a rhythm by saying the rhythm first and then playing it. We listened to different beats and then put them altogether as a class. We practised being a conductor and introducing groups to play their rhythms. We practised asking the groups to play louder or quieter and then asking them to stop by using hand signals, just like a conductor would do. We had lots of fun doing this.

 

 

 

P.E.

In PE, the children will be developing their skills in playing ball games. They will be exploring the different rules in sports like hockey, football, tennis or basketball. They will also learn about the importance of timing and being able to read game situations correctly.

We started our PE learning by working on our skills with footballs. The children had to work on their aim as they were passing between themselves and their accuracy in timing their kicks. They had some very precise shots and worked well as small teams!

PSHE 

In PSHE, we will explore the topic of how we can keep safe and we will learn about British Values. At the beginning of term, we will focus on The children will be learning about valuing the similarities and difference between themselves and others.

We learnt about the British Value of showing respect and tolerance. The children were very knowledgeable and could think of various examples from their own lives when they show respect and why it is important to be tolerant in our lives and treat everyone like we would like to be treated.

Our next focus was individual liberty from our British Values. Our class discussion focused on how we can be proud of who we are and how we can express ourselves. . We also revisited our statement of we are all the same but we are all different. 

We further explored our British Values and learnt more about how we live in a democracy and how this shows through the elections and voting. We read about what MPs do and how they are elected and we also had the opportunity to express one topic that we felt important which we then shared with the class.

We carried on our learning about consent and personal space. The children worked in groups to discuss various scenarios where consent would be required. They could also mention online or offline scenarios of their own too. We also reflected on how to make sure everyone’s personal space is respected.

On Safer Internet Day, we learnt more about why this day is important and we discussed what personal space is offline and online, as well as what consent is and when we should give our consent. The children worked in groups and could reflect on various scenarios very well. We had a detailed discussion where the children had to reason and present their opinions to the class.

To learn about what manipulation can look like offline and online, we explored different ways videos, photographs or voice recordings could be edited. The children learnt about what memes are and this learning linked well to our online safety prior knowledge. The children could also confidently talk about what peer pressure is and how they should behave in different scenarios.

During Well-being Week, we had a lot of discussion with children about what mental health is and what supports our well-being day-to-day. We all investigated the 5 ways of well-being and made plans and set goals to achieve to make us feel great! We had a think about how to connect with others, how to give to others, how to keep learning, how to be active and how to take notice of our surroundings and be mindful throughout the day. The children also designed their own posters about mental health and how that can affect us in both a positive and negative way. We learnt ways to keep us positive to help with our mental health.