Week Ending 26/05/17

As the weather goes up and down, and we finish writing our stories using the rollercoaster method, we can all agree it has been another busy week!

This week in topic we were learning once again about bones and muscles. We have learnt that the proper term for this is the human musculoskeletal system. We learnt what a joint is and why it is important. A joint is a connection made between bones in the body which link the skeletal system up as a whole. There are different types of joints in the human body. We have a hinge joint which can be found in the fingers and toes, ball and socket joints such as hip and shoulder joints and the pivot joint which allows rotational movement.

We also learnt about bone marrow. There are two types of marrow: yellow and red marrow. Yellow marrow is responsible for creating white blood cells. These cells are vital for fighting infections and germs. The red marrow is responsible for creating red blood cells. These cells are used for transporting oxygen around the body.

While learning this, we also found out about cavities. Bone marrow is found in cavities within bones. A cavity is a an unfilled space within a mass: it is a hollowed out space. As we knew already, the bone stores minerals for use within the body. This week we learnt about two minerals: calcium and phosphorus. Calcium is important to keep bones strong and healthy. Calcium can be found in dairy products such as milk, cheese and yogurt. Phosphorus is used within the body for filtering waste, and repairing tissues and cells. Phosphorus can be found in meat, poultry and seeds and nuts.

Food sources for calcium:

Food sources for phosphorus:

In Maths this week we have been finishing our surveys for our own bar chart. Taking our interests, we have been asking all the children of ENS Onegino to complete our surveys with accuracy and with a broad range of influences.

In English we have been finishing our stories about the journey of a water molecule. We have been careful to make sure that our story goes up and down, with moments of emotion and excitement. On the moments in our stories where there has been no action, where our rollercoaster has been running straight, this is where we are using descriptive writing to make our story strong. After we finished our stories we then explained, in our own words, why the rollercoaster method works and what else we needed to make our story as good as it could be.

Finally this week, as part of our summer concert, we have been practicing our songs. If you would like to help us over the weekend (or, if you hear us singing!) here are the two songs we have been practicing (click on the titles of the song for the lyrics):

The Keeper Did A Hunting Go:

Can't Stop The Feeling:

Week Ending 19/05/17

This week we are glad the sun has finally come out! As ever

In Maths we have been once again looking at bar charts (you can say bar graph as well as this is synonymous) and data. As well as making our own tables of information to make our own bar chart, we have been looking at the different ways you can make an average. There are three ways: mean, mode and median.

The mean is where you add up the numbers collected and then divide by the number of numbers collected. For example, if we had test scores from four students and we were looking for the mean we would add them (e.g. 80 + 85 + 90 + 95 = 350) and then we would divide that number by the number of students (350/4 = 87.5).

The mode is the value that occurs the most. Again, if we had test scores from four students and two students scored 95, then the mode would be 95. But what if the other two students both scored a 90? In this instance there would be two modes. If no number is listed more than once, then there is no mode for the list.

The median is the middle value in a list of numbers. To find the median value, the numbers need to be listed in numerical order from smallest to largest. From here we can see the number in the middle as being the median.

If you are interested in learning more about presenting data, please watch this video:

To complete our bar charts we had to conduct surveys. A survey is to query one person (or many) on a particular subject or question in order to collect data for various uses. Our surveys have been about people's favourite colours, favourite animals, favourite flowers and many other areas of our interest. Once we had completed our surveys we were able to then make our own bar chart and to see the process from beginning to end. 

In Topic this week we have been looking at bones and muscles. A bone is a rigid organ which is part of a skeleton. The human skeleton is the internal framework of the human body. It performs, for us, five major functions: support, movement, protection, production of blood cells and storage of minerals. The skeleton is made up of 206 bones for adults and 300 bones for babies and infants. As we get older, some bones fuse together to become bigger bones.

We learnt that the skeleton is made up of axial bones which keep our bodies upright and provide support and appendicular bones are bones that help you move, such as the bones in your legs and arms.

But without other components of the human body, the skeleton would not be able to do much. So, atop our skeleton we have muscles. Muscles are soft tissues that are found in most animals. The main function of the muscular system is movement. Muscles are the only tissue in the human body that are able to contract. Because of this they are able to move the other parts of the human body. Muscles are attached to the bones in the human body. There are seven hundred named muscles that roughly make up half of a person's body weight.

The axial skeleton:

The appendicular skeleton:

If you would like to know more about the human skeletal system, please see the videos below:

Week Ending 12/05/17

We hope you've enjoyed the holiday. In Year Three we've hit the ground running and got on once more with another solid week (albeit, shorter than usual).

In Maths this week we have been looking at bar charts. A bar chart is a chart that represents data by rectangular bars. These bars are usually represented vertically but can be horizontal too. The point of a bar chart is to show comparisons among different categories. One axis of the bar chart shows specific categories being compared (colours, months, breeds of dogs, etc). The other axis shows a specific value (people's opinions, rainfall, dogs who bark loudest, etc). This information can be used for many different purposes. One of the reasons why we have been doing this is to show that we understand that data needs to always have a label, that our bar charts needs to have a title and we need to be consistent. We have been looking specifically at the average rainfall that has fallen in the country of Brazil annually.

With this knowledge we have been converting it into a bar chart so we can understand two important concepts: data collection and using the correct measurements for our information. We need to show what the measurements are (i.e. they are in millimetres) and to correctly convey this within the right parameters (i.e. the months that the rain fell). Here is an example of a bar chart:

Here are some examples of our work:

In English we have started to write a story, based on our knowledge of the Water Cycle. Our story is titled: The Journey of a Water Molecule. With our story, we are telling the reader about the exciting life of a single water molecule. We also want to show the reader all the different stages: sublimation, condensation, precipitation, evaporation, evapotranspiration...etc. We've looking again at the different ways we can begin a story: description, dialogue, character, action. We also looked at the "Roller Coaster" method of story telling which shows that a story must have elements of pause (when our roller coaster is on a straight track this is where our descriptive writing comes to play) and moments where we are leaping into our story and describing exciting events (where our roller coster is going up the track the story could be turning into a scary tone and when it comes down it could be an exciting tone).