Week Ending 16/12/16

The penultimate week of this school term and Year Three have undoubtedly been as busy as ever!

We decided that this week as we have been busy with rehearsals (acting, singing and dancing!) and fine-tuning our performances (we have moved on leaps and bounds) we made this week an arts week! 

We started the week with painting a winter scene. We wanted the moon to be dominant in the centre of our paintings and the trees to be silhouettes in the light night sky. We were inspired by the time of year and the early winter weather conditions we are experiencing. We were very happy with our work as we experimented with tints and shades, tone and shape.

If you want to create a winter scene over the weekend, please read this for advice.

 

 

Mid-week we decided to focus on William Morris who was one of the proponents of the Arts and Craft movement. We decided on William Morris as his prints were mostly of flowers and plants which ties in with our main term topic of plants. We were moved by the repetition and the rich colours that he used with his prints.

If you find yourself in London over the Christmas period, Mr Chris can highly recommend The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. Here is a good video showing the restored gallery:

Finally, we have been devoted to our show (which we will be performing for you next Tuesday 20/12/16 and Wednesday 21/12/16) practicing our lines, rehearsing over and over, learning our songs inside and out and for some of us complicated dance routines too! Any time you can spend with us over the weekend listening to us deliver our lines and helping us with our song lyrics would be really appreciated!

Homework for Week Ending 16/12/16

Here is the homework for this week. You can print these photos off and use them accordingly (please right click and save the image. From here you can then print):

(to practise the 5 times table)

(to write what you have learned about plants this term)

(to practise the spellings for this week)

Homework for Week Ending 02/12/16

Here is this week's homework:

This week we have been learning about the different ways in which plant seeds can be dispersed. They are….

1. Wind

2. Water

3. Animals

4. Explosion

Your challenge is to choose one or more of these methods of seed dispersal and create an information poster explaining what happens. You should use a balance of writing and pictures. Your poster should be colourful and informative.

Here is our spellings for this week (if your child loses the copy that was given to them on Friday, please right click and save the image. From here you can then print):

Week Ending 02/12/16

Three weeks left to Christmas and we are certainly in the Christmas mood! We have been starting to make decorations during play, listening to carols and standards and have been rehearsing harder than ever our Christmas play!

That doesn't mean we haven't had time to stop from all our work in class this week!

Continuing our Topic of Plants we have been looking at the life cycles of plants. We have learnt that plants start as a seed before moving on to the germination stage where the stem starts to come out from the seed making it's journey to above soil in search of sunlight (warmth) and roots start to form to make our plant stable. From here our plant is starting its journey to being mature from where it can reproduce from either seeds or spores. This is done by the act of dispersal.

We have learnt that there are five ways that seeds and spores have of dispersing: wind/gravity, animals eating and excreting the seeds, animals transferring it by contact, ballistic dispersal and water. We have been really interested in the journey of plants from mere seeds to become some of our favourite plants!

Here is a video of ballistic dispersal:

Here is a video of the life cycle of a sunflower:

In English we have started to learn about the importance and correct usage of speech marks ("") and in doing so also the concept and usage of parentheses. Speech marks are very important to show a reader when someone (or a character) starts talking and when that someone (or character) stops talking. The layout is very important as we understand that when we write we are continually building pictures for a reader to see so that our writing must be clear, specific and correct. Here is an example of speech marks in use:

"What have you been doing this week?" asked Mr Ieuan.
Mr Chris said, "I have been thinking about what videos I can use on the blog, Mr Ieuan."

Here is a song explaining how speech marks work:

As previously stated, we are rehearsing our Christmas play with gusto and diligence. Today we will be bringing home our songs to practise. Any help (just as with our lines) would be wonderful so we can all sound professional.

To help you, here are two videos for two traditional songs we will be rehearsing (please look at our sheets for any verse admissions as we will NOT be singing all the verses):

"Silent Night"

"Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant"

 

Homework for Week Ending 25/11/16

This week's homework is to learn as many of the three times table as possible. Your child has been given a laminated times table card to practise and learn from. Please look after this as this will be used for weekly homework.

Here is our spellings for this week (if your child loses the copy that was given to them on Friday, please right click and save the image. From here you can then print):

Week Ending 25/11/16

A month away from Christmas and we're working as hard as ever!

This week in Maths we have been looking at multiplication and using the Box Method. This method has helped us tackle and solve what at first seemed difficult mathematical equations. We can be given any (seemingly) difficult two and three digit number and feel confident that we will work out the answer. The method involves breaking down equations into manageable bite-sized chunks that we can then use our skills of addition to solve the answer. We are continuing to do two and three digit multiplication equations so that we can feel confident to try out four digit numbers! Here is an example of how the Box Method works:

If you would like to learn more about the Box Method of multiplication, please watch this video:

We would also like to start practicing our times tables at home so that we can challenge more difficult equations and become more proficient with less challenging equations (which would ultimately help us with those seemingly difficult equations). Any help with our 1, 2, 3, and 4 times tables would be greatly appreciated.

In English this week we took some time to look at poetry. Our task was to write a three stanza poem (not to be confused with a tercet poem such as a haiku). We used music as a cue for our poetry writing (we used a similar method when we used Philip Glass's opening track to his score for the film Mishima as a cue to draw a picture). For our poetry exercise we listened to Erik Satie's Gnossienne No. 1 as our inspiration for our poetry. This piece of music gave us a range of ideas which resulted in poetry about a ballerina dancing for an audience to being with our friends on the beach. From being alone in a house while a wolf was outside our door to being in the wild plains of Africa. Some of our favourite lines were:

The night was long and the light was little

and 

Every seat was taken!

Here is the music that we used:

In Topic we have been looking at plant reproduction. We have used diagrams and visual methods for our writing where we have focused on pollination of flowers and how pollen moves from one plant to the next. Here is a video of pollination in action with a bee pollinating several flowers:

And here is a video explaining the parts of a plant involved in pollination:

In final news we are still very busy practicing for our exciting Christmas play. Any time you could spend with us this weekend helping us to learn our lines would be greatly appreciated!

Homework for Week Ending 18/11/16

Year 3 Homework.

This week’s challenge is to find out some information about one of the following plants…….

• The Rat Eating Pitcher Plant.
• The Venus Fly Trap.
• The Redwood Tree.
• The Daffodil

Or any other plant of your choice.

You can use the internet or your own information books to find information. Please write or type your sentences in your own words. You can present the information as simply or as creatively as you wish.

Spellings for this week (if your child loses the copy that was given to them on Friday, please right click and save image. From here you can then print):

Week Ending 18/11/16

It may come as no surprise...we've had another busy week in Year Three!

In Maths we tackled the tricky task of doubling up. We showed our working out so that we can learn how to solve more challenging mathematical problems by demonstrating how a complex idea could be reduced and solved. So, if we were asked to Double 74 we did the following:

70 + 70 = 140
4+4 = 8
140 + 8 = 148

Double 74 = 148

If you have time, this is a fun Maths game to play!

In English we have been learning how to recount stories and applying our knowledge of time connectives. We also learnt and used the Five Ws, which teaches us that we must give a factual answer to our recounts and that we must have researched our story. The story that we chose to report on was that of Felix Baumgartner's incredible jump to earth from the stratosphere on 14th October 2012. This is Felix's jump:

We also learnt how Felix's friend Joe Kittinger inspired, motivated and helped Felix beat his previous record of a 31km jump to Felix's new record of 39km. Joe's record was held for nearly fifty-two years but he was happy when Felix set a new record. This is Joe's jump:

Through archival footage and using our new investigating techniques of the Five Ws, we have collated evidence by making a plan where we used simple sentences before then writing full and developed sentences where we retold the story from our voice. 

If you would like to read more about Joe, please follow this link: 

National Geographic Article on Joe Kittinger 

If you would like to read more about Felix, please follow this link:

BBC Article on Felix Baumgartner

And finally, in Topic we have been looking at what plants need to survive and grow. We have learnt that just like us plants need water and nutrients (food) to survive. Water and nutrients are taken up from the soil through the roots. We have a lot more to learn about plants and how they have survived through the ages, but we feel very confident about the parts of the plant.

We are also still rehearsing for our Christmas around the world play. As always, any help with our lines would be greatly appreciated.

Week Ending 11/11/16

Yet again in Year Three we have had a busy week! Even though we have just been on holiday that hasn't stopped us from diving straight into our school work.

In Maths we started to round up numbers, looking at the divisions of tens, hundreds and thousands. We have come to understand that everyone needs a method that can be agreed upon, so we used the common method that means if we have the number 5 then we must round up to 10, similarly 50 to 100 and 500 to 1000. If you would like to look further into this, please follow the link below:

https://www.mathsisfun.com/rounding-numbers.html

In English we looked at time connectives to make our work more interesting. We took an example of some writing which started each sentence with the word He. Deciding that this writing needed to be improved we began to use time connectives to make the work more interesting and to give the writing more tone and colour. If you are interested in discovering more about time connectives, please follow the link below:

http://www.theschoolrun.com/what-are-time-connectives

We underlined the time connectives in our work to demonstrate both that we understood and as a reminder of what they are and how to use them:

We also looked at the differences between their, there and they're. We began to draw some pictures that can help us understand the keys differences between these homophones. Here are some pictures that may help you (including one from us):

In topic we have been learning about the different parts that make up a plant. We have learnt that plants are very clever and that they are able to create their food and support themselves mostly by the sun and by water.

Here is some of our work on this new and exciting project:

We also discovered that while plants may look inactive they are anything but! Have a look at this time-lapsed video to see evidence that plants are always busy:

We have also begun our Christmas concert preparations. Anytime you can spend with us at home preparing we would love!

So indeed, as you can see our first week back has been very, very busy!

Now, we have to run off as it is our assembly this week and we will be in front of our peers reading an extract (or two) from our dinosaur project books!

Week Ending 28/10/16

The last week of this term and Year Three have not stopped!

Our work this week has been divided between not one but two projects! As well as continuing our dinosaur project books we have been examining different ways to show and explain Halloween. We've used art and storytelling to really try to understand our fascination with the scary, spooky and unknown.

We wrote our stories that are now on our board by writing one sentence and then passing it to another member of our class who then wrote another sentence until we finally had a fully fledged scary story!

If you would like to spend time writing with your child this holiday week this is a good resource: 5 Writing Games Your Kids Will Love.

We were also drawn to understand more about bats and how they fly. We found out that because bats do not receive enough calcium and can not process it as well as other animals. We also know, through our extensive work on dinosaurs, that this is called an adaptation. If you would like to know more about how bats fly please have a look at this video: How Do Bats Fly?

In other news we have finished our dinosaur project books! We have come on leaps and bounds since we made the transition from Year Two to juniors in Year Three and this is in particular evidence by these books. We have been examining the dinosaurs mentioned in the previous blog posts as well as the primitive creature the dreaded Megalodon. Because of this creature and the Griffin Fly we have had to make sure that our project books have the subtitle: And Other Prehistoric Creatures. 

We've been using our maths skills for comparing different dinosaurs's heights and lengths, art for our dynamic book covers, science for both the biology of dinosaurs and the natural sciences of the world that the dinosaurs inhabited and english which we have been using constantly to give our own voice to explain dinosaurs to the wider world who will read our books. Here are some of our covers:

Mr Ieuan and Mr Chris wish you a happy week off!

Week Ending 21/10/16

On the penultimate week of our first term we have been, as ever, very busy in Year Three!

In English we have been learning about the differences and uses of verbs and adverbs. A verb is a doing or action word. An adverb is a word that describes that verb. Example:
Jack ate his breakfast quickly. With this new tool we are now writing sentences that pack a punch!

In Maths we continued to learn about shape values and properties where we extended our knowledge about vertices, edges and faces of shapes.

In Topic we have been continuing our learning about dinosaurs. Moving on from the Mosasaur we have been learning about the Spinosaurus one of the most fearsome and dangerous of the dinosaurs. We are starting to see ourselves now as amateur palaeontologists!

In the second half of this week and during the course of our last week of term we have undertaken a project which we will encapsulate our skills in English, Topic, Maths, Art and Geography. We are writing a book based on our knowledge and continuing study on dinosaurs and creatures who existed before them.

We have started by looking at three creatures for our project: the Griffinfly, Pelagornis and the Paraceratherium. We have been utilising our knowledge of maths comparing the sizes of these dinosaurs with the largest dinosaur that had ever existed: the Aregntinosaurus. We also made a plan which we can then expand upon while creating our books.

For our project we are learning new ways of researching and using our gained knowledge to make the book as close to a real book as possible. This involves fact checking, conjugating our ideas into clear, legible text and focusing on high presentation. We are going through specific books, using digitised archival sources and high quality videos to understand fully our chosen subject. We are really excited about this project and the new facts we are learning.

Week Ending 14/10/16*

We’ve been very busy in Year Three recently!

During music week we studied the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach. We found out about his early life and his tutorship under Vivaldi. Through this and listening to his music we created some imaginative art work. In assembly we presented our research inspired by Bach and our art work by the music of Philip Glass.

In Topic we have been studying a creature which lived between sixty-five and ninety-nine million years ago! This creature is called the Mosasaur. In doing so we have learnt about adaptations, habitat, evolutionary processes and the food chain.

In Maths we have been continuing to learn about properties of shapes and shape vocabulary.

In English we have been learning about poetry. We took the opportunity to learn and recite a poem in class assembly. The poem we learnt was Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg.


*Due to technical reasons this post comprises two weeks of work.

Experimentanium Museum Visit

On Wednesday we visited the Experinmentanium Museum on Leningradsky Prospekt.

There we were able to discover new ways of learning about science through interactive play and through innovative and experimental exhibits.

We travelled through each of the following rooms: acoustics; optics; magnetism; electricity; water; puzzles and mechanics.

We particularly enjoyed the maze of mirrors which we entered and though we saw many different ways of exiting when only there was one! We also enjoyed the bubble room where we were able to create a bubble shield which, for a moment, we were inside! If you would like to learn more about bubbles please follow this link:
http://www.kidsdiscover.com/teacherresources/bubbles-for-kids/

Week Ending 30/09/16 in Year Three

This week in Year Three we have been learning some new words, some new methods of calculations and new ways to make our stories jump from the page like a gazelle (this is a simile).

In Maths we have been using a method of stand up addition and subtraction that has enabled us to perform calculations with both five digit numbers and decimals! 

In English we have been learning what adjectives are, making an “adjective bank” where we can use our adjectives to make our sentences more friendly and more exciting for our readers and we have been learning what a simile and a metaphor is. From here we will move towards using these skills in our creative writing.

In our Topic lessons we have been developing our ability to use tone in our sketches. The children have completed a tonal chart and are now applying their skills to a more complex sketch.

With all these new skills we're looking forward to using them more and developing our abilities.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/index.php/pdf/articles/80.differencesmetaphorssimiles.pdf

Morning Routine

Every day in Year Three, after breakfast, we like to start the day off with our morning routine. This begins by moving into the hall for our morning stretch. We start gently, making sure that we warm up our wrists, our fingers, our ankles and toes before we start with some more dynamic stretches, exercising our core and elongating our spines. We like to end these sessions with a minute’s meditation to remind ourselves why we are here today and what we can bring to the day to make it great.

We then go back into class to hear a chapter or two from our class book. This week we have started The B.F.G by Roald Dahl. 

We then we move into pairs and using our skills of self-assessment and independence we pick our morning challenge for that day. We have a chart on the wall where we can track what we have done and begin with something new for the week. We can choose from: the word game Boogle where we have to make as many words as possible from jumbled letters; the Tube Challenge where we are given two stations from the London Underground network and we have to first find them and then describe how we get from one station to the next; the Maths Game where with wooden tiles we solve problems, Chess; the History Challenge where we place dates in history in sequential order and the Globe Challenge where we are given countries to find.

Once we have done these morning challenges and have tidied up we go back on to the carpet to practise our phonics. Phonics gives us the ability to recognise words and sounds so that we may increase our vocabulary and progress with our reading so we may move to more challenging and longer books.

The morning routines in Year Three are important for your child’s learning and are a great stabiliser for the school day ahead.