Year 3 (20-21) Blwyddyn 3

Croeso i Flwyddyn 3

Dosbarth Mrs Williams 

Welcome to the Year 3 website pages 2020-21

Look at the Year 3 page to find Newsletters, photos, videos and other useful information as the school year progresses. Please feel free to get in touch if you have ideas about what I can include.

The Day The Crayons Quit

Over the last two weeks Year 3 have been reading The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and doing a range of work linked to the book. We have thought about the different emotions of the crayons, written diaries in first person about the crayons' day out, collected data, drawn graphs and found out about how crayons are made, all the way from the oil underground to them being packaged in boxes ready to sell. We have had lots of fun and chosen our favourite crayons from the story too.

You can watch and hear the story by following the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=489micE6eHU

Easter Cards

For our Easter cards this year, we decided to do some sewing. For most of the children it certainly needed a great deal of perseverance and resilience as they learned a new skill and had to deal with the dreaded 'knots'! But by helping each other and a few rescue missions, everyone managed to sew their cross for their card.

The finished cards looked fantastic.

Hurrah! We Are All Back in School

It has been fantastic to see all of Year 3 back in school and I know how excited they all were to see each other again on Monday. It was certainly a day for catching up and they were all, unsurprisingly, very talkative.

We are already cracking on with our school work and have been learning about Mass and weighing in kilograms and grams in maths and using the story The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt as inspiration for most of our other work. 

We had fun doing a scavenger hunt around the school grounds on Tuesday and are really enjoying the fine weather we are having so far.

Look at the pictures below to see what we have been up to.

Key Stage 2 Easter Egg Competition

As you will have seen in Mrs Harrison’s letter, we are eggcited to introduce our ‘Decorate a hardboiled egg’ competition. This could involve simply decorating an egg or by going the eggstra step, making it look like a character or even yourself.

Please take a photograph of your egg and load it onto the new Purple Mash Easter Egg Competition Blog which has been set up by your class teacher. Please can your eggcellent egg photographs be loaded up by Wednesday 24^th March so that we can view the entries and choose a winner from each class.

These competitions are voluntary as we do not want to increase pressure for pupils to complete additional work at home. But hopefully we will have some pupils who are keen to participate and will have some eggstremely good fun in the process.

To check how to use the Purple Mash Blog, please look at the video below to see how to upload a picture to 2Blog in PM.

Home-based Remote Blended Learning

This year we are using Microsoft Teams, through Hwb, as the main platform for our home learning across KS2. We will still be using MyMaths, Purple Mash and Rising Stars Reading too, but the main planning and will be in Teams

Each day there is a PowerPoint/Video explaining the day’s tasks and where to find them. The children at home, as well as those in school, are all working on the same or very similar tasks.

The maths lessons are presented in video format by me and set up practical activities and written tasks. If your child doesn’t access these daily they will not be moving along in the maths work at the same time as their classmates, who are accessing this work at home or in the classroom.

I am doing a daily story time which can also be found in Teams.

All of these videos can all be watched on a mobile phone and all the work can be completed on paper or electronically.

We are also having a daily Teams video meet for 15 minutes where the children can connect with one another safely and where I can answer any questions about the work. We have had most of the class join us in the first week and would love to have everyone there next week as it is so important for the children to remain connected with one another and with myself.

Year 3 Perform....

This year we have made our Christmas performances as individual classes. We hope you enjoy ours.

Christmas in the Classroom

The Year 3 classroom is full of magic and sparkle. Christmas trees, tinsel, paper chains and Christmas cards help our classroom to be full of Christmas cheer.

Tree Decorating Assembly

Today, Year 3 added their tree decorations to the whole school tree in the hall. This year we were only able to visit the hall 2 classes at a time. Lucky for us, most of the other classes had done theirs before us so we saw the tree nearly finished.

Mrs Harrison shared a beautiful new book with us called ‘Dasher’ written by Matt Tavare.
It was a very special assembly.

Learning to play new board games

Today, Year 3 have all been learning how to play Draughts. They were quick learners and played a few games with their learning partners, getting better in each game.

​​​​​​Santa's Elves - Systematic working to find all the combinations

In our maths problem today, we had to work out all the different combinations for the suits Santa's elves were wearing. We tried to work systematically, like mathematicians and recording our results in a table.

The problem:

Mrs Claus had made 2 of the workshop elves new suits for Christmas. Each suit had matching boots, trousers, jacket and hat. One suit was all red, one was all blue.  The elves were delighted with their presents, but decided it would be fun to wear a different outfit every day for as many days as possible. So they agreed to swap around parts of their suits until they ran out of new combinations.

How many different ways did they find?

Making Christmas Cards

We've started to make our Christmas Cards today. Plenty of focus, concentrations and drawing and cutting skills were needed.

Year 3 meet Jet

Over recent years, Mrs Harrison has tried to organise a therapy dog for our pupils, but she has been unable to find someone who would commit to regular visits. Since having her new puppy, Jet, as part of her family she has decided to train him to become a therapy dog. Jet has a very calm temperament and is so far proving very easy to train. He has been visiting school to get used to being around children and has been so friendly and settled with the each group of children he has visited so far.

So on Friday it was Year 3s turn to meet Jet, outdoors in small groups. They found out about the role of therapy dogs and how they are used to support people's well being. Jet also enjoyed the treat some of the children gave him.

A busy week in Year 3

This week we began our Christmas activities by making our tree decorations for the school Christmas tree. Do do this we had to cut and measure carefully and follow detailed instructions, working with care. We have also started making paper chains for our classroom.

We have been busy collecting data using Top Trumps cards and will be learning about block and bar graphs, using the data we have collected. As part of some science work, we have been learning about how animals and plants ... and Dragons too... are adapted to their environment and to the food they eat. 

Forest School in Year 3

We have now started our first block of sessions in Forest School. Miss Gunther said the children were fantastic there. There are some photos below but for more please visit the Forest School section of the website.

 https://www.northophallschool.co.uk/forest-school/

Information Texts

Year 3 have been learning about information texts using the Talk for Writing approach The children  have learned a model text about Forest Dragons which includes the key features of non-chronological information text. You can watch them performing the text in the video below. They will be writing their own information text about their own dragons as the next part of the TfW process.

Mastery Maths - Multiplication

Knowing your times tables is a useful tool to have at your fingertips, but it needs depth of understanding to be of value in all areas of maths. Being able to explore, see, visualise and understand the times tables in many ways will help the children to make mathematical connections and apply their understanding with bigger numbers and in problem solving. After we explore a problem, we write a Maths Journal page to show our learning. Here are some examples of the practical explorations we have done and some maths journal pages.

Exploring Stop Motion Animation

This week we have been learning what ‘stop motion animation’ is and how the App works. We’ve tried some of the tools and learned about important things that will help us make a good stop motion movie about dragons later this term.

Children in Need and Joe Wicks

This week Year 3 have been working on the 5 Ways to Wellbeing - 5 to Thrive activities, lead by Joe Wicks. Each of these aspects links together to support a positive mindset and feeling good about yourself. 

Connect: Spend time with family and friends.  Enjoy doing things together and talking to each other.

Be active:  It keeps you physically healthy, and makes you feel good.

Keep learning- Be Curious: Try something new. Try a new hobby, or learn about something just because it interests you.

Take notice: Take a break to see how you feel. Relax and look around you or listen to music, take a few deep breaths.

Give: Do something for a friend or relation/adult: as well as making them feel good, it can make you feel good too! 

We finished off the week by doing the Feel Good Friday final Joe Wicks workout from 9.05am to 9.25am this morning, which was the last 20 minutes of Joe's 24 hours of PE to raise money for Children In Need. As of 9.30am he had raised £1.5 million and I'm sure that will increase through the day.

Can you spot Mrs Harrison at the back of one of the photos? She came to join us for part of the workout. Year 3 were fantastic and joined in very enthusiastically! Arddechog Blwyddyn 3!

Be Curious

As part of the 5 ways to Wellbeing, Year 3 were curious to find out about a subject that interested them. Subjects chosen included Sloths, Giraffes, Power Tools, Manchester United and many more.

Finding the Way. Using a Compass.

As a follow up to our work drawing maps of our Dragon Worlds and then learning about coordinates, Year 3 have also been learning about the points of the compass. So this week we took some compasses outside and learned how to find North, South, East and West.

Making Dragon World Maps

Building on some work we did on using coordinates on a Dragon Island map in MSTeams, we have been making our own Dragon World maps. We learned about compas points and using coordinates/grid references to find things on our maps.

#Draw with Rob

Today in Year 3 we did an online drawing lesson with author and illustrator Rob Bidulph. We had to listen and watch carefully as Rob taught us to draw one of his own book characters, Gregosaurus. The children focused and were very proud of the results. Have a look at Rob’s drawing and the Year 3 versions. Arddechog Blwyddyn 3!

Maths No Problem

Using concrete materials is a vital part of deep maths learning and so we make all of our learning as practical as possible. Just learning a ‘rule’ to complete a calculation won’t develop mastery and true understanding, so practical activities and being able to work out problems in many different ways is vitally important.

Growth Mindset

This half term we have been focusing on developing our Growth Mindset. Yesterday, we sorted a set of descriptions and discovered they described a person with a Fixed Mindset or a Growth Mindset. We thought about ourselves and which part of a Fixed Mindset we could work on to become more Growth Mindset.

We also read the book The Fantastic Elastic Brain together to find out even more about it.

If you would like to learn more, there is a whole section about it in the Parents section of the website.

https://www.northophallschool.co.uk/growth-mindset/

Exciting Dragon Egg update

Year 2 went to the Forest School today and discovered the egg had returned and was on one of our nests. They took photos and a video and came to let us know what they had found at the end of the day. How exciting!

Building Dragon Egg Nests

After our dragon egg disappeared a couple of weeks ago, we wrote to our dragon expert to ask his advice. He told us that in very wet weather, dragons have been know to build nests that are raised up from the ground and he suggested we tried that to entice them back with their egg. So this week we went down to the Forest School and built some nests, as he suggested. We hope the dragons will bring the egg back soon and use one of our nests.

Autumn Art

This week we created spirals using leaves and acorns. Environmental art in the style of Andy Goldsworthy and Tim Pugh.

New maths games

We have been learning to play some new maths games with our learning partners. These are easy to learn games which will help us with our mental maths strategies.

Perhaps Year 3 could play them at home too. Resources and rules can be found below.

Where do dragons come from?

After Year 3 had looked at some dragon eggs of different species of dragons they wanted to know more about them. Working with their learning partners was very important for these tasks and they were fantastic at working together and sharing their learning.
 

We began by getting out some atlases and used some fantastic reading skills to find the names of the countries on the map. Then we used some special awareness to work out where that was on our own world maps and made a key.

The next task was find out more about the dragon and make some data cards. By using the iPads and some very careful searching each pair found out about 4 or more different types of dragons which we had seen the eggs for.

This was the ‘best work yet’ for working cooperatively with our learning partners.

Arddechog Blwyddyn 3.

Maths - No Problem!

This week we have introduced ‘Maths - No Problem‘ in Year 3. This approach to maths teaching is used throughout KS2 and is based on the mastery approach to maths.

Teaching maths for mastery is an approach to maths teaching which stems from high performing Asian nations such as Singapore. When taught to master maths, children develop their mathematical fluency without resorting to rote learning and are able to solve non-routine maths problems without having to memorise procedures.

Problem solving is at the heart of Mathematics and should be the focus of what is taught. So maths in Northop Hall goes beyond just teaching a method.

We have started our first chapter by using Base 10 materials, part-whole diagrams and place value grids. We have discussed, made notes, written a journal and then practised in our workbooks.

Look out for more information about ‘Maths - No Problem’ soon.

Have you heard about our Dragons?

On Sunday, two dragons were spotted on the school grounds. We think one of them may be the dragon that hatched when Year 3 were in Year 1 and it has come back now it's grown up. After writing to an expert, we were asked to find more evidence and we were so surprised to find all sorts of clues to the dragons being around school, including scorch marks, claw marks, burned patches, footprints and even another egg!

We have decided to have Dragons as our topic this term now, so we can learn much more about these wonderful creatures.