Welcome to Year 3

Academic Year 2019/2020

Welcome back to school! I hope you’ve all had a fantastic summer holiday and you’re ready for a fantastic year in Year 3.  Keep a look out on this page at our learning journey and all the many exciting things we do.

Autumn Term 1

Year 3 have settled really quickly in to Year 3. They quickly established what they wanted as their class golden rules to ensure that Year 3 is happy, safe learning environment where everyone treats one another with respect.

School councillors have been elected. Well done to all the candidates who came to the front of the class to make their speeches. The children enjoyed casting their votes in the ballot boxes. Year 3 learnt about what a democracy is and why this is important.

 

Collective Worship

In Year 3, we have collective worship monitors who help prepare the collective worship table in class. They choose carefully what items they want to have on our table from our collective worship box and discuss what colour cloth they should cover the table and why with support from Mrs Harris. For example one child chose a candle to symbolise that Jesus is the light of the world and one child chose a tree to symbolise that we grow in God’s love.  We always begin our worships with relaxing music, turning the lights off, lighting the candles and the collective worship monitors lead the Morning prayer. We then think about what our collective worship statement of the week is for example, ‘I can say one thing good about myself.’ After we listen to the Word of the Lord  sometimes by listening to a story or parable from the bible. We spend some time reflecting on the Word for a couple of minutes and we have our own time to talk to God. We think about how we can live out the word throughout the day.

R.E. – The Christian Family

We began our first topic in R.E. by reflected on what it means to be part of a family and part of God’s family. We talked about ways we live our lives as a Christian and how we help our families. We considered our own unique gifts and talents and thought about how we can show our gratitude and give thanks to God.

Year 3 moved on to thinking about what happens when we are baptised. We the discussed as a class questions we wanted to to ask Canon Nunan about Baptism in preparation for our visit to St.Joseph’s Church. The children had lots of fantastic questions that we added to our R.E. working wall. Such as;

‘Can anyone get baptised?’

‘Do you have to be a baby to get bapitised?’

‘Why do babies wear white?’

‘Why does the priest pour water over the baby’s head?’

‘Why is it called Holy Water?’

‘What happens during Baptism?’

‘How do you make Holy water?’

‘Is the water special?’

‘What happens when you are baptised?’

Year 3 then visited St.Joseph’s to find out what happens when you are baptised. Canon Nunan showed us the baptismal font where the Baptism takes place. He told us all about Holy Water and that it is blessed by God. Children from Year 3 then got into role as the parents and god parents of ‘Lillie’ and Canon Nunan showed us what happens when someone is baptised. He told us all about that we become part of God’s family and receive the gift’s of the Holy Spirit. He poured the holy water onto ‘Lillie’s head to symbolise life and to show that the baby is living in the life of Jesus. He also anointed the baby with the oil of chrism that had been blessed by Bishop Marcus to symbolise the gift’s and guidance from the Holy Spirit. Canon also lit the baptismal candle from the Easter candle in church to remind us that Jesus is the light of the world and that the light of Jesus’ love was with the baby.

 

English – Stone Age Boy

We are using the book Stone Age Boy to link with our History theme on the Stone Age as a focus for our writing. We began by looking at the front cover and discussing with our talk partners what we thought it was about and asked questions. We read some of the book and made predictions about what we thought would happen. Following this we reenacted the story in small groups once we had read the whole story.  

The children got into the role as Stone Age boy and imagined what they would ask him if they were to meet him. We really enjoyed doing this! We wrote our questions making sure we were using the correct punctuation.

 

Maths

Year 3 are really enjoying their maths learning and developing their independence. They are using lots of different maths resources to think about place value and how numbers can be represented using them.

Burn 2 Learn

Year 3 got their hearts beating faster as they competed against one another in teams to make as many different 3 digit numbers as they could using numicon. They had to sprint to collect the numicon pieces before arranging them to make the numbers. Phew! sweaty but lots of fun!

 

 

Rocks and Soils

We began our topic by thinking about what we know about Rocks and Soils and what we want to know. The children had to think of a question that they could investigate themselves, this was very tricky! They came up with some great questions such as;

‘Are all rocks the same?

‘Where do rocks come from?’

‘What is soil made from?’

‘What colour is granite’

Then we explored our school grounds to look for different rocks and to discuss if they were man-made or natural.

We thought about whether all rocks are the same.Year 3 looked at a variety of different rocks. Using sorting hoops they classified and grouped them together deciding how to do this for themselves.

Following this Year 3 continued to investigate how various rocks differ from one another by investigating their permeability. We discussed the key vocabulary permeable and impermeable/non permeable.

The Stone Age

Year 3 launched their launched their topic on the Stone Age with a fun filled, fact packed workshop all about the Stone Age. The children were transported back in time to think about this time period in History. They had to make a timeline of different historical periods and place when the Stone Age was.

 

Year 3 absolutely loved being an archaeologist for the day. They discovered mysterious objects as they conducted their own archaeological excavations and uncovered ‘hidden’ artefacts, some of which were 4,000 years old! Using a trowel, brush and magnifying glass, Year 3 worked in pairs to dig dig up, clean and study artefacts before placing them on a time Line.

Year 3 then found out more facts about life in the Stone Age as they handled a range of real and replica tools made of natural materials such as bone, antler, flint, wood, animal skin, plants, clay and bronze. They had an amazing day!

 

Art-Stone Age clay pots

We began by using the ipads to research Stone Age clay pots as inspiration for making our own. We sketched our favourite designs before deciding one one we wanted to make.

 

P.E.-Dance taster session

Year 3 really enjoyed their visit from Katie a professional dancer.They loved exploring making different shapes with their bodies and using their imaginations to do this. They had to decide whether to move slowly or quickly whilst all the time concentrating on moving all parts of their bodies. Hopefully we will see some of Year 3 at the Wetherby dance festival shortly showing off their dance moves!

 

 

 

Music-Scales

Year 3 really enjoyed using the chime bars to practise scales. They discussed the word pitch and what this means. They explored using the chime bars to do this.

Have a listen to us practising!

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MFL-French

This year we are learning French we began with learning how to say what the weather is like. Year 3 enjoyed acting this out too whilst saying the key words.