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):