In maths this week we have finished our work on money, by solving multi-step word problems. The children have shown real perseverance understanding and representing the problems with bar models. We have now started working on time, beginning with telling the time on analogue and digital clocks. Please keep practising this skill at home!

Our work on diaries has continued this week, through using our focus features of past tense and descriptive writing in a piece about a happy memory. We then went on to think about how our class diary example might have looked in a plan. We are ready to plan and write our own entries next week.

In computing we have used the programme iMovie to edit our short film clips we filmed before Easter. The children used the program brilliantly, they successfully cut, transitioned and added text and music to their pieces.

In History this week, the children have ordered eras of British history chronologically from prehistoric Britain, up to present day.

The class are really enjoying swimming sessions and everyone will be working really hard this week to earn the fun session in our final session of the half term!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett

In English this week the children finished redrafting their letters to the people who they think make Britain great and these have been put in the post. We will wait to see what responses we receive. We have also begun a looking at a diary entry, written by Lucy one of the characters from ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ our guided reading text. We have thought about the features needed to write a good diary entry and begun exploring two of these. We have looked at examples, practised using description and applied past tense verbs. The children will be writing their diary entries from the point of view of an evacuee, so this week the children have learned a little about evacuation and why children were evacuated during world war two. They found this fascinating, and hard to believe that so many young children had to leave their families. If you have any family stories regarding evacuation, and wouldn't mind sharing these with our class, I'm sure the rest of the class would love to hear them.

In maths we have continued our work on money looking at renaming in subtraction. The children have really persevered using column method to support this, whilst thinking carefully about the pounds and pence. Some children have used number lines and bar models to help support finding change. Any real life examples of recieving change that you come across would be really beneficial to share with your children at this time.

In Geography, we have explored physical maps of the UK, and the class then created their own physical maps using different materials. The maps showed coastline, mountains, rivers and lowland areas.

Spelling Shed has now been fully updated with new lists for the children to explore. Times Table Rockstars has been very well received by the children so please keep encouraging them to practise this too.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett

What a wonderful start to the summer term we have had. The children have come back refreshed, eager to learn and full of stories about their Easter adventures.

We have continued our work in maths on money, looking at addition and subtraction. Children are using coins to support their calculations and we are revisiting column methods and renaming which we taught at the beginning of the year. Please keep talking to your children about money and involving them where possible in using it in real life contexts.

In English this week we are revisiting the features of letters, by writing a letter to someone who we thing makes Britain great, and asking them what they think makes Britain great. We looked at the homework the children brought in to inspire us and looked again at the skills of first person and present tense, to support their letter writing.

We have begun to look at the techniques of chalk pastels in art, as we are beginning to look at the illustrations of Christian Birmingham, who has illustrated our new guided reading text The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Christian Birmingham works with chalk pastels and pencils and we will be looking closely at his techniques, and other artists who have used them over the next few weeks.

In Geography, we have continued developing map skills by locating landmarks of Britain on a map. The children used iPads to study satelite maps, then plotted the points onto their own maps. We discussed the difference between physical features and human features, and the children then colour coded the landmarks on their maps to indicate which was which!

Have a wonderful bank holiday weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett

What a lovely last week of term we have had. We are really proud of children persevering through tiredness and Easter excitement this week, as we know this break is a well-needed rest for all.

In English this week the children looked at how to use commas correctly, and were challenged to use these in their final set of instructions of how to mummify a pear. Unfortunatly, the pear we had mummified in the class hadn't gone particularly well, but the children made some interesting suggestions on why the pear had not been preserved.

In Maths this week the children have continued their work on money and adding. This got particularly tricky when the numbers needed renaming. The children are getting much better at remembering one of the most important parts of adding money; checking the place of the decimal point!

Through our art in recent weeks the children have designed an Egyptian Death Mask, the children have then made these out of clay and painted them. The children will be bringing these home so ask them about their designs and why they chose what they did. Our Easter service was lovely and the children sang beautifully. They also all looked amazing in their Easter bonnets as they arrived! 

Have an amazing Easter break everyone, we hope you get lots of rest and have lots of fun.

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett.

P.S. - Below is the Easter task set for the children to start off their new topic...

Easter Task

After Easter, our new topic will be ‘What makes Britain Great?’

Over the Easter holidays, interview three members of your family (preferably of different ages). Ask them the question, “What makes Britain Great?” to find out their opinions.

You can be creative in how you record their responses!

This week we have begun to explore new areas in Maths, Science and English. In Maths we have begun to look at money, how we add it together and how we write it as £ and p. Ask your children in shops to use real money to buy bits, ask them to try add together coins and maybe challenge them to work out the change.

In English we have looked at adverbs this week, linked to instructions. The children have practised writing adverbs into two pieces of writing, both inspired by animated videos with an Ancient Egyptian theme.

We are now 'geologists' in science, looking at rocks. This week we took a closer look at rocks in our school and begun to think if we thought they were sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic or anthropic (human made). We will be working on this until after Easter.

The children had a wonderful time at Trinity High School on Wednesday morning where they were spilt into three teams, each of which tried a different sport, either football, hockey or handball. The staff commented on the good sportsmanship from the class during the tournament. Well done class 3!

In history, the children have learned about every day life in Ancient Egypt and how it is different to how we live today. There are also more similarities than we would have expected! The class also worked in pairs to order events of the Egyptian civilisation into chronological order (a phrase that is also used in instruction writing in English).

In our art the children used clay this week to make the Egyptian Death Mask they have been designing. The children had to think carefully about how to bring their features to life in clay, but once they got going we had a multitude of creative approaches!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett

This week we have continued working hard in our maths, by exploring problems linked to length. The children have used bar models to represent a range of addition and subtraction problems, and they have used column method to support working these out where necessary. On Wednesday we set the first battle on Times Table Rock Stars for the children, it was great to see their enthusiasm and competitiveness, the battle finishes at 3.00pm on Monday, we look forward to seeing who wins their battles.

In English the children have edited and redrafted their missing page from an Egyptian Cinderella. It has been wonderful to see the children’s efforts in writing similes and descriptive phrases, whilst thinking carefully about their sentence types.

In computing the children have begun to plan what they would like to film for their ‘we are presenters’ film. They children have planned their job roles, shots and timings. Next week we will be filming.

To finish the week, we celebrated Mothering Sunday with our Friday service and activities in school. The children performed their song “We will love you” wonderfully and everyone enjoyed creating the crafts in the classroom too. We wish everyone a happy Mothering Sunday, and hope lots of parents and grandparents have a well earned rest this weekend!

Have a great weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett.

What an amazing start to the week we had. A visit from the wonderful Professor McGinty had everyone in fits of laughter, as he took us back in time all the way to Ancient Egypt. He bought artefacts, stories, pictures and videos to tell us all about his amazing travels with his sidekick ‘Doctor Whoot’. The children learnt all about an interesting addition to the bread they ate (cow poo) and why it happened, how buildings were made, about the scarab beetle and much more. Thank you Professor McGinty for sharing your adventures!

In English the children are helping us write a missing page from the book ‘The Egyptian Cinderella’, a book we have been reading in Guided Reading. We found the picture, but the words are still missing. Rhodopsis, the main character in the book, is taken from Greece to Egypt and the children are going to write the missing page from when Rhodopsis first sees Egypt. The children have thought about how to describe the image and then planned the page. They then wrote a descriptive paragraph using all the features they have learned in the last few weeks.

In maths we have begun looking at length, converting centimetres to metres, and metres to centimetres, and then metres to kilometres! The children have been working hard on understanding there are a 100cm in 1m, and 1000m in 1km.

In R.E. we have thought about how Jesus is represented, as he is never described in the Gospels, and the first known artwork was created 150 years after his ascension. We looked at famous historical artwork about The Holy Week thinking about why they chose to represent Jesus as they have and how they represent the Bible.

In music, the children have been learning to play a range of pieces on the glockenspiel. This involves reading some music too, and learnig the difference between a minim and a crochet.

Have a great weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett.

What an amazing British Science Week we have had in year 3! The theme this year is 'journeys' and we have tried to weave this theme through most of our activities this week.

On Monday we were visited by the scientists from the University of Birmingham, who have been working alongside our school this year. They spoke to us about university and specifically about DNA (chemist Lucy's field of expertise). Ruth, Jon and Lucy worked alongside three of the year4 science leaders in helping us extract DNA from a banana. Ask your children what kitchen ingredients were needed for this. The children really enjoyed mashing the bananas in particular. We then looked at the extracted DNA under a microscope to see what we could see.

On Tuesday the year 4 science leaders visited us again, this time to support us in creating seaweed jelly with calcium solution and alginates. The children created the two solution needed, then dropped the alginate into the calcium to create a solid (jelly). The children loved feeling it and exploring different shapes and sizes they could create.

• Looking at banana DNA under the microscope
• Feeling the jelly created.
• Sieving the jelly from the calcium solution.
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On Wednesday 6 children from the class visited the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, it was an absolutely brilliantly busy day. From sitting in a Red Arrow to watching 'The best experiment of all time... ever' (with loads of fire) the children were never bored. They were amazingly behaved, and we were really proud of them.

The rest of the class explored hover boards, they each made their own individual ones using the CDs and bottle tops kindly donated by the parents and carers from the school. The children went on to investigate these, for example if they could carry extra weight, and if they worked in water. Then Mrs Fryer kindly let us borrow her schools hover board, so the children could see one in action, with some of the children and staff having a go also. Thank you to Mrs Fryer and Mrs Staples for their support on the afternoon!

For those who could attend, thank you for your support on Wednesday evening and attending our science at home event. It was great to see the children exploring science alongside their families.

On Thursday and Friday, Year 3 learned about one of Britain's most famous and influential engineers, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Be sure to ask them about any Brunel facts over the weekend! We researched his life and work on Thursday, and wrote sentences about him using conjunctions that we had practised with previously. Then on Friday, we learned more about Brunel's SS Great Britain, which led to the class designing a boat for themselves. We then built the boats from tin foil, dowell and craft straws and tested them too. They all floated, but some carried more weight than others before they sank. We put this down to the size and shape of the hulls.

We finished the week with another brilliant swimming session. We are all proud to see so many children making loads of progress in the water!

Have a great weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett

Thank you to everyone who attended parents evening this week, it was a pleasure to discuss your children with you and how hard they are working in school.

This week we have come to an end on our work with ‘further multiplication and division’ in our maths and the children have found it really challenging and have continued to amaze us with their perseverance.

In English we continued our work on similes and have looked at sentence types, including simple, compound and complex sentences, what makes these and how to write them. The children applied what they had learned by writing part of a story where they had found a lost tomb, including the different sentence types as well as some of the descriptive features we have practised recently too.

We had a wonderful World Book Day on Thursday! The costumes were very impressive and it was great fun for everyone to guess the nursery rhymes others had come dressed as. As well as doing lots of reading, the class had a go at creating an e-book using the book creator app on the ipads. They could retell the story of their nursery rhyme character they were dressed as, or create a new story featuring the same character. The featured photos, sounds and pictures to make the books really interesting for the reader!

In science the children carried out their class chosen enquiry on ‘is it true, the darker the object (opaque, transparent or translucent) the darker the shadow?.’ The children chose their objects after classifying a range, decided on distances of the light source and the object to ensure a fair test. Ask your children what their findings were.

Please can you have a hunt for any old CDs you don’t need, ready for British Science Week next week? Each child needs one for one of activities, so all donations would be appreciated.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett

Welcome back! What lovely weather it has been to return on, let’s hope it lasts! It sounds like lots of you have had wonderful half term adventures and the children have come back ready to learn.

In maths we have delved straight back into multiplication and division, looking at renaming for division and using bar models to support problem solving. The children have really persevered with this tricky concept this week, and we will continue to practise this skill.

In our English work we have begun exploring narratives with historical settings, we have unpicked the features and begun work on two of focus features descriptive phrases and similes. The class generated some descriptive vocabulary for the desert, and have then written their own descriptive paragraphs to describe what the desert is like. 

We have begun exploring shadows in science. The children thought through their knowledge and the went on to question: “Is it true, that the darker (opaque, translucent, transparent) the object, the darker the shadow?” The children bought their ideas together to decide on their investigation. We will carry this out next week.

In Art we have focussed on blending water colour paints to create a wash, which the children used to make a sunset. They have then used poster paint to add silhouettes of Ancient Egypt, such as pyramids.

Thank you to those who have brought in lots of wonderful Egyptian topic homework already; the children have enjoyed talking about their projects and showing off their hard work!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett