Wow – we cannot believe we have already reached half term, and what a half term it has been! This week was the perfect way to end Spring 1, as it has been children’s mental health week. We have been learning about growth and how we can grow as a person and together, as well as how we can reach our goals. As part of LGBT+ month, we have also spent this week celebrating our diverse community and learning about different types of family. Today, Year 3 wore green to form part of the rainbow in the school’s photo to celebrate family diversity, which was a fantastic celebration.
In maths, we finished our unit on multiplication by looking at the 9x tables and thinking about how we can use what we know in the other times tables to help us to problem solve trickier times tables questions. The worksheets can be found here: Maths Worksheets Spr1 W6 if you would like to have another go. We have also been singing times table songs to help us to remember them, which can be found below:
- 3 x table song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzVyBQ5uTbo
- 8 x table song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dllKdAx8A4I
We have had an RE focus in English this week and have been looking at Jesus’ miracles in the bible. We thought about how we would feel if we had experienced a miracle ourselves and used empathy to try to experience how the blind man who was healed might have felt. We learnt about what is needed in a letter, and we wrote a letter as the blind man to our family, explaining the miracle and how it had changed our life.
In STEM, we learnt about how to use buzzers in a series circuit, and we then created our own buzzer games, just like Operation. We had great fun experimenting with how to structure a game and what was needed to make it fun, although we made a lot of noise doing it!
This week was our last week of forest school and, to celebrate our learning, we made bread, cooked it over the forest school fire and drank hot chocolate, which was so much fun!
This term in Physical Education we focused on cognitive skills indoors and tennis skills outdoors. You can practice these by logging into your REAL PE at home class account https://real.jasmineactive.com/login and trying out the Unit 2 challenges.
As mentioned in the previous few blogs, this term, year 3 have started to undertake spelling lessons. The teachers all trained in the Sounds Write approach last term and the year 3 children have enjoyed learning all about how letters are symbols of sounds. Here is a link to Mr Drane’s curriculum presentation explaining a bit more about Sounds Write from the beginning of the year. He talks all about reading and the Sounds Write approach for the first few minutes. Here you can watch a video modelling pronunciation of letter sounds (as opposed to letter names). The week after half term, we will be focusing on the spelling <s> and the sound /l/. Below, you can see a list of example words to practice spelling with these sounds:
After half term:
In English, we will be looking at performance poetry and how to perform poetry effectively.
In maths, we will start looking at division, focusing on reasoning about division and learning about the inverse of equations.
In guided reading, we will be continuing with A series of Unfortunate Events. We will be reading Chapter 8 and asking the following questions.
• How is Klaus feeling as Count Olaf walks in? Use extracts from the text to justify your answer.
• How would you describe Count Olaf’s personality? Use extracts from the text to justify your answer.
• What do you think happened to Sunny? Explain your answer.
If you would like something to do with your children over half term, please find an eco-bingo here: Half term ECO bingo. This contains 16 challenges for young Eco-Warriors to complete with their families during their half-term holidays. Activities include litter-picking, bug-hotel building and responsible recycling.
We hope you have a wonderful and restful half term.
Best wishes,
Year 3 Team