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!

 

We have also been learning to mentally add and subtract 1, 10 and 100 to 2 and 3 digit numbers.  We are building our fluency in being able to recall these facts quickly. This can be tricky to recall these key instant facts quickly but we are enjoying practicing.

Year 3 have been working on understanding part-whole models and bar models as a different way to add and subtract numbers. We have also been working on using and applying these skills to solve problems.

Science

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.

Meanwood Valley Farm

Year 3 had a fantastic trip to Meanwood Valley Farm where we learnt all about different types of rocks such as granite, slate, sandstone, limestone and coal. We did lots of fun experiments to test the properties of these rocks to see how hard they were and whether they are acidic by dropping vinegar onto them. We also made our own soil, tested soil to see what it is made from and made our own wormeries!

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!

 

DT-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.

 

We then sketched a final design explaining why we chose this design.

Year 3 had great fun making their own Stone age clay pots. They used the technique of coiling. Coiled pots are constructed by gradually stacking and joining coils of clay (rolls of clay) one on top of the other. The coils can be left visible or can be smoothed away depending on your desired aesthetic end result. The children tried really hard to join the coils well whilst making the pots. This was to avoid them cracking or separating as they dried. They used a small amount of water to smooth and seal the edges.

Computing-Typing skills

Year 3 have been using powerpoint to type pangrams. Pangrams are words or sentences containing every letter of the alphabet at least once; the best known English example being A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog . They’ve been working hard to improve their typing skills and build their confidence using the keyboard. They’ve really enjoying their computing lessons and experimented with inserting images by using the snipping tool to accompany their pangrams.

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.

 

 

 

Autumn Term 2

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

In Year 3, we have collective worship monitors who help prepare the collective worship table in class. They dressed the table with the purple cloth to symbolise that it is the start of advent.

R.E. – Mary, Our Mother

We began 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 we role-played this scene and gave reasons as to why we Mary agreed to have Baby Jesus. Take a look at Year 3 being Mary and the Angel Gabriel.

In pairs 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 R.E 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.

‘ I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.’ Philippians 4:13.

 

Cafod Workshop- Understanding how to look after God’s world

Today we had a special visit from Bronagh from Cafod. She spoke to us as a class about net zero and how we can be a Zero Hero. We talked all about climate change and the devastating effects that it has on our world. We thought about how we can make simple changes to ensure that we keep the balance and achieve ‘net zero’.

 

We linked this to how we ‘Live Simply’. We considered how we could walk instead of getting the car for short journeys, reduce our plastic use, recycle and plant trees to look after God’s world. Our class planet protectors are ensuring that lights are switched off when we do not need them on and check that paper is being put in the recycling bin.

 

We learnt about Pope Francis calling on us to act now to make a change before it’s too late.

English – The Iron Man

In English we are using the narrative story The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, as inspiration to write.  We began by reading the story in guided reading and discussing what had happened as well as making predictions. 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.

Year 3 then enjoyed going on a treasure hunt around school to locate and find a variety of expanded noun phrases and similes. They had to sort them with their talk partners and give reasons for their choices.

 

Following this Year 3 then listened to the description of the Iron Man again and had a go at drawing him. They then wrote their own similes and noun phrases around their pictures to describe him. Following this Year 3 wrote a full character description of the Iron Man using lots of expanded phrases and similes.

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.

Following this Year 3 then began to look at the features of newspapers. In our book area we have lots of First News newspapers so we began by looking at them and discussing what we could see. We then read a newspaper article in our whole class guided reading session and began to highlight the features of it.

Whilst reading the newspaper report Year 3 picked out some unfamiliar words that can often be used in them. They used the Ipads to what they meant and alternative words that could replace them. We added these words to our working wall. The children enjoyed working with a partner to do this.

We identified that newspaper reports contain direct and reported speech. We continued reading Iron Man and practiced adding in speech marks for dialogue between two characters.

Year 3 then began to plan and draft the beginning of their newspaper report. They had to decide which character from Iron Man they wanted the newspaper article to be about, what happened to them, when and where the events happened and finally why. ‘The 5 ws.’

Following this Year 3 then planned and draft the main body of their newspaper article. They considered which character they would interview and role played doing this. Year 3 absolutely loved doing this! They then wrote what the character said using speech marks, which they had previously practiced the week before. 

Following this, Year 3 planned what the main character reported had happened to them. We added some modeled writing to our working wall. They really enjoyed doing this and are getting excited to write their final full newspaper!

 

Maths-Multiplication and Division

We’ve been learning about multiplication this week. We practised recalling 3x’s table facts and used these to recall the 6x’s table facts. Similarly, we practised recalling 4x’s table facts and used these to recall 8x’s table facts. The children have enjoyed lots of different Burn2Learn games, singing songs, dancing and tennis times tables to recall these facts confidently and fluently.

 

Year 3 have been discussing alternative words for multiplying  and recognising this as being repeated addition.

 

We have been solving times table problems. Year 3 have a times table key ring attached to their pencil cases which they use to be resourceful and independent learners.

Year 3 have recalling and using multiplication facts for the 3, 4 and 8 times tables. Following this we have be writing and calculating two digit numbers times one digit numbers, using mental methods and shortly will be progressing onto using the column method to multiply. Year 3 have also been dividing two digit numbers by a one digit number, practising and learning our timetables has really helped us solve these tricky calculations! We did this by grouping arrays to help us divide.

We’ve also been stretching our brains to solve some very tricky multiplication and division problems too. The children are fantastic at choosing their own resources like numicon, counters or hundred grid squares to help support them with their learning

 

Science

Animals and Humans

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 the largest bone in the human body?

Where is the smallest bone in the human body?

Why do we need bones?

Does every living thing have bones?

How many bones we have?

What are bones made out of?

 

St. Joseph’s Science Week

 

The theme for science week this year is Our Diverse Planet. To launch this week we had a whole school class assembly about ‘biodiversity’ and what this means . We learnt that biodiversity comes from two words. Bio which is short for biology (living things) and diversity (variety). Biodiversity means the mixture of all life on earth.
It includes all the species, habitats and ecosystems (including humans) which exist on our planet. This theme encourages us to think the variety of life on our planet

This has linked brilliantly to kick start our learning journey this half term with learning about the diversity of humans and  animals we have on the planet. It links with learning new scientific vocabulary and knowledge about the human skeleton too.

Skeletons workshop

During our Science Week, Hands on Science visited and delivered  a fact packed  workshop for Year 3! The workshop linked in brilliantly to the questions the children had first thought about at the start of the topic. The children found out how many bones are in the human body, what the smallest and largest bones are in the human body and learnt about what bones are made from. Year 3 acted out what it would like if we didn’t have any bones in your body. One child said,

If we didn’t have any bones in our bodies we would just be like a big puddle of skin on the floor!

The children had to then create their moving skeleton and think about how the different bones in the human body fitted together. We discussed as a class who might  need to know the names of bones as part of their job and how they work. We also looked at different x-rays and discussed what they see.

St. Joseph’s Science Fair

Wow! What a fun packed week it has been in school. To finish the week Year 3 and 5 were set a home work challenge to design and make their own Science game or experiment  that other classes could play too. We had such a range of stalls in school for the Science Fair, including balloon cars, games to explore your sense of smell, touch and taste, quizzes and even a lemon clock! It was a very busy morning and all the children loved being able to wear their homemade lab coats too! Check the photos of us in action! A big thank you to Miss Waite and all the children who took part in Year 5 too for making it a great success. Also, a huge thank you to the children and parents of St.Josephs. They raised over £110 from the Science Fair to buy new science equipment for our school.

Working Scientifically

Year 3 had a brilliant time working scientifically to investigate;

How does the skull circumference of a girl compare with that of a boy?

They choose how to investigate this and selected their equipment to measure the circumference.

Art- Cave paintings

Linking to our History topic, in Art this half term year 3 will be creating their own cave painting. To begin with Year 3 used the computers to find images of cave paintings that they liked and would use as a source of inspiration. They used the snipping tool to cut, paste and then print their images. Following this Year 3 discussed why they had chosen their cave paintings and wrote about what they liked about them, how they replicate the image and the story they thought it told about life in prehistoric times.

Take a look at our learning journey so far.

Computing- Coding

 

MFL-French

 

 

 

 

 

Music

So far in music Year 3 have been building up to playing and preforming their very own song. They initially listened to the tune of a song and then put together their own lyrics with the support from the music teacher and Mrs Boyes. They also had to think about playing their instrument skillfully and in tune too. This meant performing  with an awareness of others. Lots of skills being reinforced and developed each week.  We experimented with playing the chime bars and various percussion.

Have a listen to our performance!

 

 

P.E- Tennis skills

in PE with Mr Cooper, the children have been practising throwing the tennis ball to a partner and gently hitting it back to them. They thought about their aim, power and and the accuracy of the controlled volley. The children really enjoyed doing this. Afterwards, the lesson progressed onto using and applying these skills in a game. At the end of the lesson, the children reflected on the skills they had used and how they could improve them.

P.S.H.E- Physical Health and Well being

What helps me choose?

To be healthy, nutritious food is needed to provide energy for the body. A variety of food is needed in the diet because different foods contain different substances that are needed to keep you healthy.  An average meal should be made up of one-third carbohydrates and one-third fruit and vegetables, with the remaining one-third split between dairy, protein and a little bit of fat. Year 3 discussed what affects their daily food choices and thought about how many portions of fruit and vegetables they had eaten.

We then played a Burn 2 learn game where the children sorted the food into the different food types. This linked in perfectly with our science topic of exploring that  humans need the right types and amount of nutrition.

Looking after our bodies-Health and Hygiene

Year 3 have also been revisiting how to keep themselves healthy, and one really important thing to be very aware of and improve further is basic hygiene including hand washing to ensure that germs don’t spread. We revised how to wash hands properly and practised this. We discussed that you need to thoroughly rub the soapy, warm  water into your hands whilst singing ‘happy birthday’ twice. Some children were shocked they had to do this for that length of time!  We discussed why. We also talked about the importance of catching the germs in tissues from coughs and sneezes, getting the tissue immediately into the bin and then washing hands again.

 

History

Changes in Britain- The Bronze Age and The Iron Age

In History this half term, the children have continued exploring and finding out all about prehistoric life. Year 3 tested their knowledge and understanding of this time period bu ordering significant prehistoric events onto a timeline. We discussed the word chronological order and added this word to our working wall. The children enjoyed a Burn2learn activity where they had to find the hidden artefacts around school and then place them onto the timeline. We discussed what BC and AD meant on the timelines.

 

Have a look at some of our timelines. We also had to estimate the date of some of the time intervals and add these to the time line. Finally, we used the IPADS to research a significant event from the prehistoric time period and added this to the time line. There was lots of maths skills involved in this lesson!

 

Year 3 looked at why the time period The Bronze Age is called the Bronze Age and how bronze was made. We discussed how technology was now changing after the Stone Age.

Geography links

Following this Year 3 identified the countries in Europe were Bronze was made. We used the atlas to locate these countries. We discussed how to use the contents page of the atlas to find the most appropriate map to use. We also discussed what a key is on a map and its purpose. We found different keys in the atlas’ and practised being able to read and understand them. Year 3 then used a blank map of Europe to locate the countries in Europe where bronze was made. We also created our keys to add to our maps. We really enjoyed using the atlas’ and spoke about when they are used and who might need to use them as part of their profession.