Week Ending 17/03/17

Another busy week of learning and hard work in Year Three!

In Topic this week we have been learning more and examining what we already know about gravity. We have discovered that gravity is a force which surrounds not only our planet earth but other planets too. It pushes everything in and is the reason why the earth is spherical. We know now that gravity does not push down but merely towards earth (or other planets). We have learnt that when we are in motion this is counteracting against gravity and that gravity always wins. This is why we have life and why we don't float away into space. Gravity also affects the way how our earth moves around the sun.

If you would like to learn some more about gravity, please see this video below:

We also looked at the early life of Isaac Newton. We discovered that Mr Newton was inspired by the work of Rene Descartes and Galileo Galilei. Mr Newton made only a few friends, but one of those was his teacher Isaac Barrow who helped Mr Newton attend Trinity College in Cambridge. If you would like to learn more about Mr Newton, please follow this LINK. And please follow this LINK if you would like to try an experiment to find the centre of gravity using a common broom!

In Maths we have been yet again learning about fractions. We have been learning about mixed fractions. This is when we mix fractions with whole numbers. A whole number is a number without fractions or a decimal part. So, 1 is a whole number as is 2, 3, 4...etc. So, a mixed fraction is when a whole number is followed by a fraction. 7 1/4 is an example of a mixed fraction. We have a whole number (7) followed by a fraction (one quarter, or, one over four).

To understand more fully about equivalent fractions we have drawn our own Fraction Wall!

If you would like to try a game to match fractions, please follow this LINK.

This week in English we have been looking again at letters and have started writing a letter to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to ask them either why we shouldn't go back to the moon or why we should.

We have been looking at the first moon landing in July 20th 1969 to get ourselves inspired for our letters:

While there have been numerous unmanned landings since 1976, the last time a manned voyage to the moon was completed on December 19th 1972 when the crew of Apollo 17 returned back to earth. We are curious why this is and that in nearly forty-five years man has not touched foot back on the moon!

We started writing our letter by planning them, writing reasons for and against to go back to the moon. This way we could sketch our ideas down before we started the task of writing a formal letter. We then followed the conventions of a formal letter that we began learning last week. This is done so that we are taken seriously by NASA and that our purpose is both clear and insightful. We are looking forward to reading our finished letters and sending them to NASA with hopes that they will reply!

If you would like to see forthcoming NASA landings and launches, please look at this CALENDAR for dates and times. The website also has an IMAGE of the day.