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.

Our Hog Boxes Are Finished

The final group of Year 3s have put together all the hard work from yesterday's groups to make the finished boxes. We now have 2 deluxe hog boxes and next we need to find a good place to put them in the hedgerows around the school grounds. We can fill them with dry leaves or straw and cover with some tarpaulin to keep the weather out and sticks and twigs to help them blend in.

Arddechog Blwyddyn 3. Great teamwork to get this done.

Making Hedgehog Homes

This week we have been working on a mini topic about hedgehogs after the children became interested in the subject following hearing some stories about a poorly hedgehog. So to help the hedgehogs thrive, Year 3 have been very busy working together to build a couple of hedgehog boxes with Mr Williams. They were using hammers, pliers, clamps and sandpaper and had to work well in teams to join together the different pieces of wood. It was noisy but fun! The final group will finish off the job tomorrow and then we will find a good place to put them in the hedgerows around school. Hopefully some hedgehogs will find them and use them on their travels around the local area.

SPORTS DAY

Today, Year 3 and Year 4 have taken part in their Sports Day. As we only had 2 classes, we had the whole afternoon so added some extra races. The races were: Sprint, Bean Bag Shuttle, Obstacle Fun Race, One Lap and Relay. All the children had the choice to take part in all of the races if they wanted to.

Have a look at the videos by clicking on the star below. Apologies for the videoing skills, I was getting too excited and wanted to cheer too much. I also managed to miss the record button once or twice. it was all very busy! I'm certainly no threat to Steven Spielberg!

The Teams competed for points which will be added to the Year 5 and Year 6 points from the morning to find the Team Champion. I wonder whether it will be Owain (Yellow) Llewelyn (Red) Dafydd (Green) or Arthur (Blue)?

Learning about Recount Text

Year 3 have been learning about the key features of Recount Text using a biographical text about British Olympian, Derek Redmond. He was most famous for showing great resilience when he was injured in the back straight of the 400m at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. He was so determined to finish the race, he limped around the rest of the lap, upholding the spirit of the Olympic Games.

In order to write their own recounts about a famous sportsperson, the children have been developing their research and note making skills to gather information to use.

Music and Art

This week, whilst working with Mr Winter, Year 3 have been listening to different types of music and thinking about how it makes them feel. They have thought about making their own musical group or band and built a pop-up version of it. For homework, the children were asked to go home and ask their parents about music they liked when they were younger and then listen to it and think about how that music made them feel.

Today, they used percussion instruments to explore rhythm and beat and followed on by composing repeating percussion refrains as a group. As the weather was nice, we had plenty of space outside to do this and then each group shared with the whole class.

The weather has improved.

The welcome change in the weather since half term has been fantastic and has meant we can have our Assembly with Mrs Harrison outdoors again. Today's theme was about developing our self control, thinking about having a personal remote control and pressing pause before reacting to a difficult situation.

The children have also enjoyed learning about how to do a good relay baton changeover with Mr Winter in PE. Let's hope this warm sunny weather stays with us so we can enjoy the outdoors even more. 

Developing our research skills

The text we have been using in English over the last few weeks, 'The Upward Struggle' features Lara, a rock climber, who shows great resilience and perseverance on a challenging climb. We decided we needed to know more about rock climbing and about the equipment needed. We used our research skills to find out what the equipment was called and the purpose of it. We made notes first then we wrote about each piece of equipment and explained how it is used.

Champion Children

As part of our topic the children decided they need to know more about fitness and how our body works. We began this work by diamond ranking a set of activities by how often we did them. The most common 'top items' were using an electronic device for gaming and communication or watching TV/Netflix/online programmes or films. At the bottom, the most common was either reading or being very active, walking or playing sport.

We repeated the diamond ranking activity, but this time based on the ones that made our heart rate increase the greatest amount and we found the activities generally swapped places from most to least!

Finally, each group came up with a range of activities they felt would raise their heart rate and they tried them out to see which got their pulses racing the most.

Hopefully all of our work will help us get fitter and improve our Decathlon scores.

Drawing Portraits

Last week, we started to learn about how to draw portraits, looking at the proportions of our heads and faces. We drew in pencil indoors and also tried large chalk portraits outdoors.

Tarsia- Resilience and Perseverance

Today was our first try at some Tarsia puzzles. These take some time and perseverance to get right, especially once you get on to the triangular ones. The maths equations and answers needed to match to recreate the large triangle. We'll move on to some larger ones next time!

A Growth Mindset is definitely needed for these.

Learning about Growth Mindset

When the children were planning the things they will need to learn about to improve their scores in their decathlon for our Champion Children topic, one part really stood out. They thought they would need to know about developing their attitude and mindset. So this week we have been learning more about Growth Mindset and how we can work to get a better one. We thought of ways to change our words from Fixed Mindset ideas to Growth Mindset. We also thought about how our brain could move through different stages from Fixed to Growth.

Assembly Outdoors

We are enjoying seeing the children in other classes when we go to Assembly outdoors. Mrs Harrison and Jonathan have been leading the assemblies. It's great to get back together again!

Topic 'Champion Children'

Year 3 have decided to call their topic this term CHAMPION CHILDREN. They have explored all the things they think they will need to learn about and activities they will need to do this term so they can improve their decathlon scores at the end of term. These include learning about how our body works, our wellbeing and mindset, healthy food and drink, why exercise is good for us, about excellent sports people and what they do to succeed, about equipment, safety and all about different sports and activities. They also know they are going to need some coaching and, above all, time to practice.

New Topic for the Summer Term

We have recently launched our new topic for the summer term. As part of a whole KS2 topic based around health, wellbeing and perseverence resilience and mindset, the children began the topic by taking part in a child friendly decathlon. Over the coming term we will be learning about how to improve in the events they did by learning about how our body works, the things we need to do to keep healthy and working on improving or skills in the events. They had a lot of fun as well as starting to learn a few new skills like hula hooping and throwing a javelin. Year 3 will now work together to think about a topic title and about what they’d like to learn and some activities they could do to help them learn these skills.

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.

Lockdown Learning in school for key worker children

During the Spring Term lockdown the children in school and at home had the same or very similar work and tasks. Here are are just a few examples of some of the practical ones we did in school.

Work about 'Light' saw us making shadow puppets, measuring our own shadows at different times of the day and making a shadow clock.

We made balloon rockets, puppets and designed time machines, all linked to our work on Explorers.

In maths, we did some work on shape which needed us to work really carefully with our learning partners to build skeleton models.

All of the children, both in school and those working at home were fantastic in sharing their work and keeping up with the important stuff. i can't wait to see everyone back soon.

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.