Summer 1

Welcome back! I hope you had a great Easter break and I hope the children are excited to get started on our new topic about the Monarchy.

Collective Worship

Collective worship is a special time for us in Year 3. We all gather together and listen to readings from the Bible. We listen and respond to God’s word and consider how this relates to our lives. We reflect on how we can learn from the Bible and what choices we should make going forth. Together we like to pray, listen to songs and sit quietly to remember how lucky we are to be part of God’s beautiful creation!

May the month of Our Lady

Now that it is May, we especially focus on honoring Mary through prayer as this month is dedicated to her. We remember the many ways God blessed Mary and we read about Mary in Scripture during our worship together in class. We have been thinking about what we can learn from Mary and the many challenges she faced. We changed our prayer to table to blue and have been saying a prayer each day in our collective worship to Mary. We also wrote our own prayers to Mary and added these to our prayer tree to read.

Living Simply

Earth Day 2023

 

The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. Earth Day was founded to help people consider their actions and how they affect the Earth and our world. The purpose of Earth Day is to continue helping people think about how to protect and care for our Earth.

We had a special visitor for Earth Day from the Boston Spa, Wetherby & Villages Green Group. Adrian told us about the importance of Earth Day and how it is all about protecting our community, supporting the growth of nature and educating others about recycling. This links in with our most recent topic about our ‘Precious Planet’ were we have learning about the the effects of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest on our planet. We learnt that carbon dioxide is released into our Earth’s atmosphere resulting in our planet getting warmer and therefore contributing to climate change.

Year 3 are passionate about making small changes now to protect our planet and look after God’s world. We wrote a class pledge together about what we can do and continue to do to make a difference. Year 3 have already taken part in an eco project to make bat boxes, which are now in the local woods.

Earth Day is especially important for us. What happens to the Earth today determines what type of world we will have when they grow up. Conservation is very important. We discussed what we can do help protect God’s world both in school and at home. We listed some ways, such as, turning off the lights when you leave a room, using less water, turning the tap off when we brush our teeth, recycling, not using plastic bottles or bags and reducing food waste. This links in with our curriculum intent of looking after and protecting God’s world.

R.E.

Year 3 have been learning that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead on Easter Sunday. They reflected upon the Easter story and discussed what happened to Jesus and why. We discussed that Christians believe, and celebrate, that Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. The children then reflected on two stories were Jesus showed himself to his friends: The Road to Emmaus and Doubtful Thomas. We watched two videos to help us with these stories too.

The children then had some time to act out these stories. They worked in small groups and reflected on retelling the story and thinking about how the different men might have thought/ felt.

YouTube- The Road to Emmaus YouTube- Jesus Appears to Thomas

We then moved on to learning about Pentecost. The children learnt about what Pentecost is and this bible story. We used this video to help us. 

Afterwards, we discussed what the Holy Spirit is as this is a tricky concept to follow. The children learnt that the Holy Spirit is God! We used a plait to help us understand the Holy Trinity. The children enjoyed this and they were brilliant as using this to remember how The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit are all different but also one.

English

Living in Leeds Week- poetry

As part of our living in Leeds week, the children focused on their word of the week ‘diversity’. We said it, whispered it, sang it, acted it, drew it and then wrote what it means. The children then had to write this word in a sentence. We discussed the cultural and social diversity of Leeds as a city and looked at different pictures of Leeds. Using the city as inspiration the children read a poem about a city.

Listen and read ‘Last Night, I Saw the City Breathing’ Copyright: from The Moon is on the Microphone (Sherbourne, 1997), copyright © Andrew Fusek Peters 1997, used by permission of the author

The children loved reading this poem and discussed what their favourite parts were. Year 3 learnt about personification and what this means. We discussed how the author had given the city human like features. Year 3 highlighted where they could see evidence of this.

Following this, the children used an ipads to alternative words for city sleeping, eating, dancing and crying. They used these words to help them plan a poem based on a city from one they had read. The children loved coming up with their own personification. Once the children were happy with their plans they wrote their own poems and edited them. The children performed their poems to the rest of the class and took great pride in their poetry.

Our class text this half term is the Queen’s Token.

This text links perfectly with our topic about the Monarchy and learning about Henry VIII. The class have really been enjoying listening to and reading the book. They have been focusing on speech marks by identifying them and using them in sentences. Year 3 loved this clip to help them remember how to use speech marks when writing.

Year 3 wrote sentences about what the main character’s in the text were saying to one another. They had had lots of practise before writing missing inverted commas. Following on from this, Year 3 then wrote a recount about what happened in the story, they showcased everything that they had learnt about inverted commas.

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.

 

Maths

We have been lots of KIRFs practise in class and outside. This not only get our brains active but our bodies too. We love playing against one another to practise our times tables. We use the dice in class to multiply to the two numbers together. We have been challenging ourselves to be resilient and roll 3 dice to multiply. The children also loved practising their times tables by playing connect 4, hoop hop and tiggy triangles. Activities like this are the perfect way to practise some core maths skills which can be applied in all other areas of maths so we’ll keep revisiting recalling times tables facts each week to ensure we are fully secure and versatile.

Year 3 have been practising multiplying 2 digits by 1 digit by partitioning. They used practical resources such as numicon to support and known number facts to help solve the questions.

Moving on from multiplication, the children divided 2 digit numbers by 1 by using flexible partitioning. The children really enjoyed using this method to solve calculations and quickly moved onto problem solving.

Year 3 then moved onto division with remainders. They used lolly pop sticks to make shapes such as triangles, squares and pentagons. They used this divide either by 3,4 or 5 and then calculate how many were left over. Moving on from working practically, the children applied this knowledge to solve division questions with remainders and problem solve.

 

Year 3 have been revisiting recognising and finding halves, thirds and quarters of shapes and amounts, The children enjoyed various burn 2 learn games to polish up these skills.

Year 3 were actively learning how to count in fractions(halves, thirds and quarters). They had to run to the middle to pick up a card with a fraction on (e.g. 1 ½) then had to order themselves as quickly as they.  This meant they had to recognise and recall what fraction came before and after theirs. What a great way to develop fluency and problem solve at the same time!

In Maths today, Year 3 were actively learning how to count in tenths whilst recapping how to count in halves, thirds and quarters. They had to count the fractions to a certain number in a relay-style format. They also sang a song to remember how to count in tenths. Year 3 are really enjoying learning all about fractions!

Science-Animals and Humans

Year 3 revisited why humans need skeletons and the importance of having one for movement, support and for protection of their internal organs.

Following on from this, Year 3 discussed  that animals can be grouped on whether they have a skeleton or not. The children looked at xrays of  different animals and decided whether they were vertebrates or invertebrates, with their talk partners.

 

 

 

 

Art

This half term, the children will be creating cityscapes. We started our learning journey for this by finding out what a cityscape is and being able to identify the difference between them and a landscape.

The children have then been practising on some skills to build up to creating their own artwork. They have been working on scissor skills and colour washing. Throughout the process, the children are evaluating their work and skills and considering what is going well and how they can improve.

This half term, the children also have an inspirational artist. He is called Neil McBride and he is from Yorkshire too! The children created some key questions and we sent him an email to find out the answers. The children loved this experience!

Finally, the children put all of their skills together and created their final piece. We discussed how Neil McBride said that he says that it takes 60 years for him to complete a piece of artwork. This gave us wonderful inspiration and the great mindset that we can always improve on our work throughout the creative process! 

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! We also discussed the importance of not sharing any personal information about ourselves with someone that we don’t know. We revisited the message of always talking to a trusted adult if something worries us whilst using the internet. Year 3 used book creator to share these important messages.

 

History-The Monarchy

This half term we will be learning about the Monarchy to be able to discuss and answer our key question.

How has the power of the monarchy changed over time?

We discussed what the class had learnt from Key Stage 1. The children could name some significant individuals such as Grace Darling, Christopher Columbus, Guy Fawkes, Captain Cook and Samuel Pepys. The class also mentioned some significant events in time such as The Great Fire of London 1666 and The Great Plague 1665. We then looked at these on the timeline and discussed where the Tudor period started. We could see that the Tudor period started in 1485 and ended in 1603.We discussed the differences in the time periods. The children made their own time lines including some of the sticky knowledge from KS1. The children then estimated on their timelines where significant events in the Tudor period happened.

Year 3 then learnt all about who Henry VIII was and the reasons for his marriages. The children read information about him and applied their skimming and scanning skills to be able to answer questions about him. Following on from this, Year 3 learnt about the English Reformation as to why Henry VIII set up the Church of England and the impact of this today.

Find out more about Henry VIII and the reasons for his marriages

Year 3 also enjoyed drawing portraits of Henry VIII.

Temple Newsam School Trip

Year 3 visited Temple Newsam to learn more about the Tudor period. They took a trip back in time to this time period to find out who originally owned the house. The magnificent house used to belong to Henry VIII, though he actually never visited Temple Newsam!

Year 3 really enjoyed dressing up as rich Tudor ladies and gentlemen. They found out about Tudor clothing and the many layers they would have worn. The class even learnt a Tudor dance and performed it to music, in one of the many grand rooms!

Finally, Year 3 handled and looked at lots of artefacts. They played a game where they had to say what the item was for and one main up reason what the artefact was used for. The rest of the class had to guess which one was the fact. Year 3 had such a wonderful day at Temple Newsam and further enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the Tudor period and its famous Monarchs!

French

This half term, the children have been learning about the vocabulary for different modes of transport. The children were given their new vocabulary and then had to use a French dictionary to translate the new words. They did a brilliant job learning this new skill!

After they did this, the children have been playing some games to really remember this new vocabulary and to practise their pronunciation. They enjoyed playing this a lot and gained lots of confidence with this new vocabulary. 

The children have then applied their new learning by saying simple sentences in French. They learnt to say ‘it is a …’. After learning to say the sentences out loud, the children then translated the sentences and wrote their own too. Well done Year 3!

Music

In Music this half term, the children have been learning some notes on the recorders. We are right at the beginning of our learning journey so we learn a new note then play a repeating pattern using this. The children love playing the recorders and each week we are improving with blowing our instrument carefully to make beautiful sounds!

To complete our learning journey this half term, the children have been applying their developing skills with the recorders to create their own compositons. The children have to complete a graphic score to show whether the notes are ‘ta’ ‘ti-ti’ or ‘too’ notes. 

PE

In PE, the children will be developing their speed, agility and quickness. They will work on their reaction times and how they react to others in relay races. Our focus will be on improving running and jumping techniques as well as our aim and throws. The children have been working hard on improving their aim and throwing skills. We practised improving our ability to react to the defenders.

Year 3 worked on running at speed and competed in relay teams. The children worked on their running technique and they also had to apply what they have been learning on efficient turns.

 

PSHE

Stranger Danger

Year 3 revisited learning about the importance of keeping themselves safe by not talking to strangers. We said that a stranger can be anyone that we don’t know and that strangers don’t always look mean or say unkind words. We discussed that we should never tell a stranger our name, age, address, what school we attend or any other personal information about ourselves. We discussed that we should always talk to a trusted adult if a stranger approaches us and asks us this.

 

Our families-We are all the same but all different

In PSHE we will explored talking about different families. We explored the similarities and differences in families but what unites us is love. Love for one another and love for our families. We linked this to God’s word about showing love for one another. We finished our Pshe lesson with giving thanks for our families and saying a prayer. .

British Values

We recapped our knowledge and expanded our understanding about British Values. The children revisited the acronym Dr Tim to help them remember all the values and we also discussed scenarios and came up with many examples on how these British Values are being followed in our school. 

Coronation Celebration

We had a nice day on the Friday before the coronation we listened to news round, which told us all about the King’s Coronation The children then designed a new crown for the King to remember this special occasion and we also shared a lovely snack in the class!