Week Ending 20/01/17

This week in Year Three we have been storming into our work! Running forward and learning new things and challenging ourselves. If we were Romans we would say: Carpe Diem (Seize the day) and our teachers would say Docendo discimus (By teaching we learn).

And so it is with the Romans that we begin this report of the week. We finished our studying of Romulus and Remus: the myth creation of how Rome was founded. From here we started to learn about the real founding of Rome. Looking at a map of Italy we discussed why it was that Rome was built where it was. We learned about the Tiber river and how this provided sustenance (fish) and clean drinking water as well as being used for transporting goods. We also saw that Rome is geographically situated in the middle of the peninsula making it an ideal spot for trade and for what the Romans later loved to do - conquer! In this, being by the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Romans were able to venture forth into what is now Africa, Monaco and Spain. We discussed why the Romans built their city on seven hills, giving them strategical dominance over any one who would be invading them.

We also discussed Greco-Roman architecture. This is architecture of the Roman world which followed the principles and disciplines of the Greeks. We looked at aqueducts and columns which can be found in different areas of the world (something we will look at later).

If you would like to look at a brief history of the founding of Rome, please see this video (the commentator is trying to be funny - ignore that):

As part of our Topic work we have made a display showing the evolution of Rome while incorporating the story of Romulus and Remus in our own words:

This week during morning stretch we have been focusing on teamwork. We have been assigned to move just one person from our team to get from one island to another but with the caveat that we must only use our hands! Through this we have been discussing many different ideas and trying to solve, together, the big task that we've been set. While we haven't been able to (as yet) crack this we are determined to do so!

In English we have been learning about apostrophes. We have been writing down examples of apostrophes that we have found in our guided reading books and have then explained why the apostrophe has been used. We discovered that there are two common ways that apostrophes are used: contractions and possessives. Contraction apostrophes are when two words are joined together, such as: can not becomes can't; it is becomes it's and will not becomes won't (a tricky one). Possessive apostrophes are used most commonly when we are talking of someone's possession where we add an apostrophe and an s. These are some examples: a rugby ball belonging to Mr Ieuan becomes Mr Ieuan's ball, a purple doll belonging to Sara becomes Sara's purple doll. One exception to this rule is when someone's name ends in a s which means if Mr Chris has a book it becomes Mr Chris' book.

In Maths we have been extending our learning and application of the stand up multiplication method. Again we would be happy to show what we have learned in Maths.