Spring Term 2

Welcome back! I hope you had a great half term break and the children are excited to get started on our new topic about our precious planet Earth!

Collective Worship

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday marked the start of Lent so on this day, we enjoyed a very special liturgy from the Mark 10 Mission and then spent time thinking about our Lenten promises: how we can show loves to God, ourselves and others through fasting, giving and praying. If you would also like to watch the liturgy we shared together in class, please click on the video below.

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

Take a look at our collective worship table. We currently have a purple cloth on our table to signify the start of Lent. We have been discussing in our collective worship what we can do to make a difference during this special time. We have also been writing our own Lenten promises about this. We added some to our collective worship area.

World Day of Prayer

On Thursday 3rd March in school, due to World Book Day taking place on Friday, we celebrated World Day of Prayer. We held a special collective worship and said bidding prayers to give our prayer intentions to God. We especially kept Ukrainian people in our thoughts and prayers and said a special prayer written by Cafod for Ukraine at this time.

RE

We started our half term by hearing the  letter from Pope Francis titled ‘Laudato Si’. We considered the key points in the Pope’s letter and what this meant for us about climate change.

Pope Francis has written a letter addressed to every person on the planet, asking us all to protect the earth. Will you play your part to protect our common home?

We considered how we could protect God’s planet. We discussed what we could do in school and at home to help. We then came up with our pledges and ‘Our class 8 to be great pledge.’

We went outside to litter in our local school grounds. We discussed why it is important to look after God’s world by putting litter into the bin.

Called to change

This half term the children read the bible story of Zacchaeus and the Parable of the Lost Sheep, using role play they reenacted these stories. We hot seated being Zacchaeus and asked him questions about his actions, feelings and why he decided to change his behaviour.  We discussed ‘living simply’ and how Zacchaeus made these important changes.The children make links between these important bible stories and the role and the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Year 3 read the story of the Lost Son Luke 15:11-32. In this story In the story, a father has two sons, a younger and an older. The younger son asks the father for his inheritance, and the father grants his son’s request. However, the younger son is prodigal spends his fortune, eventually leaving him with no money. The younger son is forced to return home empty-handed and intends to beg his father to accept him back as a servant. To the son’s surprise, he is not scorned by his father but is welcomed back with celebration and open arms. Envious, the older son refuses to participate in the festivities. The father reminds the older son that one day he will inherit everything, and that they should still celebrate the return of the younger son because he was lost and is now found.

The children acted out this story and freezed framed as how to the younger son felt when he received the money and how the Father felt when he realised his son had left. We also acted out how the Father and son felt at the end of the story when the son returned.

English

World Book Day

We were very excited to meet a real life author called Trish Cooke. We read all about her life and work first and listened to one of her stories called, ‘Full, full, full of love.’

We learnt that Trish started inventing her own stories from an early age and enjoyed telling them to family and friends. We wrote some questions of our own that we wanted to ask Trish. We were very excited to be able to meet her virtually and find out more about her life as an author.

Year 3 and 4 loved speaking to Trish, they listened to her read one of her stories with actions and ask her questions about her life and books. The children loved the experience, asking fantastic questions!

We loved dressing up for World Book Day. Can you tell who we are? We reading different stories, making book marks and drawing our favourite book characters.

For World Book Day the children have been preparing their lovely homework about who they are as readers. We shared this with the class and found this a great opportunity to recommend even more fantastic stories to each other!

Year 3 loved playing an active Burn to learn game, called Beach Ball bonanza. The children played this game to recap their sticky knowledge about nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

Following this we discussed the features of  a diamante poem. The children then had a go at writing their own diamante poems about the Rainforest or a chosen Rainforest animal. The children edit their poems to ensure that they included adverbs to describe the verbs. The children enjoyed performing their poems to the rest of the class.

The Great Kapok Tree

Our theme of ‘Our Precious Planet’ runs throughout our English learning. We will be exploring the book ‘The Great Kapok Tree’ by Lynne Cherry. We will engage with the text through discussion and drama and the children will have the opportunity to articulate their ideas about the text using increasingly varied vocabulary.

We began our learning with listening to some of the story. The children had to make predictions about the text and then write about the character’s feelings. The children hot seated the characters first before they started their writing.

Maths

Science

As part of Science in school, Year 3 and Year 4 prepared a Science Fair for the whole school. The experiments that the children prepared at home were sensational! The children were great at explaining the science behind their work and they confidently presented their work to the others!

DT

Computing

As part of our Computing learning, we completed an online questionnaire to reflect on our use of apps and different devices. We had to consider how safe we are online on these programs and how we can do Stop! Block! Tell! to make sure we are always careful.

Year 3 enjoyed working on Mathletics during World Maths Day to get a high score and get onto the leader boards!

Geography

Music

PE

Year 3 and Year 4 held their dodge ball tournament. The children played in their houses and showed excellent resilience and teamwork as they participated. The children had to apply all their skills and make sure their aims were accurate and they have used appropriate power to be able to win the matches! Stamina was also important and being able to anticipate the opponents’ moves.

PSHE

The children had a fantastic time taking part in a den building workshop. They had to work in teams and did an incredible job giving each other advice, helping each other out and sharing resources. It has been a great team building exercise that we enjoyed together!

We had a very informative assembly about how to care for nature and our local environment. The children learnt about why is it important to plant trees in our local community and how they are essential to wildlife. We also had to identify everyday household items that we can reuse or recycle and we proudly shared our school commitment of recycling crisp packets too.

Key Stage 2 took part in a fantastic diversity assembly where we learnt  more about the pillars of Islam and other religions too. The children reflected on how we are all the same but we are all different. They enjoyed singing and taking part in a true or false quiz too.