This week in English we have been working on a story about the character we created last week. This character was alive during the time of the British Empire in India and we discussed and researched how Indian people’s lives changed when the British arrived so that we could empathise and write about our character’s struggles, focussing on writing in past tense and the third person after so much first person work previously.
We spent three days crafting these stories before moving onto one of our favourite things on Thursday – writing showcase! We spent Thursday preparing and then threw ourselves into writing our latest page-turners on Friday. The teachers are all so excited to publish Maple, Redwood and Oak’s work on our dedicated writing showcase displays.
In maths, we continued the topic of subtraction, beginning to look at using the column method. We carried on using our trusty dienes to organize our thoughts at the beginning of the week, but we were soon ready to leave these behind and use other representations of our mathematics. On Friday we even tried our hand at exchanging – challenging, but exciting!
In guided reading, we enjoyed reading the story of the three brothers. Our teachers were very impressed at how we were able to deduce the implicit themes and moral of the story, which was rooted in selflessness and helping others before you help yourself. Many of our children have been doing this themselves around school, showing themselves to be compassionate citizens – these instances are being written down on multi-coloured leaves which will form part of a beautiful tree in our learning street, currently a work in progress.
Mrs Smith was sad that this was the last time she’d see year 3 for a while, but we made the most of the term’s last art lesson and created some beautiful Christmas artwork – no spoilers, but you might get to see it soon! Our topic lessons are now reaching their unit’s end, so we’ve been consolidating our scientific knowledge by conducting experiments like finding the best place in the classroom to dry socks or trying to figure out how to melt an ice cube in the classroom and reach the lego that was frozen within. In R.E we’re coming to the end of our learning about Sikhism for now, but in French we have learnt all about winter season celebrations in France. We should all be on Papa Noël’s good list this year!
Next week:
English – We will be looking at writing Christmas poetry, linked to that artwork we were just telling you about.
Maths – we will continue learning about column subtraction, moving onto exchanging tens.
This week’s P.E challenge – https://www.youthsporttrust.org/sites/default/files/Feeling%20Flexible.pdf
Reminder – Morning Drop off
The morning drop off window for Year 3 is 8.25-8.35am. All classroom doors will be locked by 8.40am, and children will need to be registered at the office to ensure correct attendance is recorded.