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

What a wonderful end of half term week we have had! On Monday we spent the day being civil engineers. Mr Stabler spent the day with us, explaining what a civil engineer is, and then setting us our own engineering challenge. The children had to design and build a new bridge over the canal to the new sports hall (also to be designed and built). Mr Stabler has very kindly had plans made for the children to do their planning on, and the children came up with a range of wonderful and unique ideas. The children built their designs using k’nex, cocktail sticks and wine gums. Please take a look at the photos below to see some of the day.

• Mr Stabler showing us some of his previous designs.
• Exploring the strongest shapes in design.
• Drawing the new bridge for the canal
• A new sports hall design
• Building a sports hall
• Building bridges
• Building bridges.
• This bridge held 28 books before falling
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On Wednesday morning we finally made it to Trinity High School for a morning of handball, football and hockey. The children were spilt into four teams, and went round to each of the different sports led brilliantly by the children at the school. It was great to see the children listening, engaging and having fun with a range of sports.

In Maths, the children have began learning to divide two digit numbers. At first we looked at numbers which could be partitioned into tens and ones, then divided. Then we moved onto numbers which needed to be regrouped to be divided equally. This sounds challenging, and it was! Fortunately, the children really kept a growth mindset and kept going with the tricky new method. We will practise this more after half term.

In English, we finished newspaper writing this week by editing and redrafting our newspaper articles about a discovery of mummies in Egypt. There looks to be lots of budding journalists in Year 3!

Ancient Egypt topic homework has gone out this week, and we hope you all enjoy getting stuck into the different projects.

Spelling Shed words have been set for over half term. Apologies for the teething issues with Spelling Shed, hopefully these have now been ironed out and the children will be able to start stacking up points (as well as making lots of progress with their spellings!).

We hope you have a fun and safe half term everyone!

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett

This week we have really stretched the class’ maths brains by beginning to introduce them to column method for multiplication. The children have really concentrated on all the steps required to complete this and have enjoyed the challenge of multiplying 2 digits by 1 digit.

In English the children have really become journalists this week, they have researched their article and interviewed a range of archeologists and professors from Luxor, Egypt where an exciting discovery of two mummies have been found. The class are the first to break this story, so ask them about all the breaking news!

We have also continued our work on the Dyson Design box where the children have made their first prototype of their design. There are some really interesting ideas from the class, but making them from cardboard proved so much more difficult than they thought. We are looking forward to reviewing these next week.

Swimming is going swimmingly on Friday afternoons, with fantastic efforts across the whole class. Regardless of groups, all children are trying jumping into the pool now at different depths and have all improved so much in such a short amount of time.

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett.

What a chilly week it has been. We’ve been keeping warm by working hard all week. We have continued work on Dyson design box, beginning to design and sketch our own engineering projects. Next week will begin to build our prototypes.

In English we have continued work on newspapers. We have focused on the key skill of writing in past tense, and then looked at the features used in our example newspaper article and how this might have been planned.

In Maths we have finished our unit on multiplication and division by looking at a range of problems. Children have been challenged to think systematically and use bar models to support their working out. We have now begun our next unit ‘further multiplication and division’ where we will be challenging children with larger numbers and teaching them a range of written methods to solve the calculations.

Throughout the half term, the children have been practising greetings and phrases about themselves in French lessons. Most recently, the class have learned to say where they live and describe the type of place it is. Please test them on what they can remember by asking, ‘Ou habites tu?’.

To finish the week, we said goodbye to Mr Field as he has come to the end of his teaching practice with us, and we wish him all the very best with his teacher training!

Please can you ensure that children have their jogging bottoms in school for PE, the weather is getting colder and we want to ensure the children stay as warm as possible.

Also, the day for the handball and football event at Trinity High School has been rearranged for Wednesday 13th February, please can children have trainers with them on the day.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett

Another very busy week in Year 3...

We have begun learning through our new topic of the Ancient Egyptians! This will feed into much of the learning over the next few weeks and the children already seem very interested in this ancient civilisation. Topic homework sheets will be sent home next week with new project ideas linked to the topic. We look forward to seeing many exciting projects come into school to be shared, although we do not wish any homework to become onerous or stressful (for children and parents!). Consequently, non of the homework projects are compulsary, but we do encourage all children to have a go, and we appreciate all of the support and time that parents give to help.

English - The children have begun studying newspaper articles, and identify the features within them. We have focussed this week on writing headlines where the children have had to create their own headlines and subheading to existing news stories. The headlines had to be short, snappy and eye catching! We will continue to build up the features over the next week.

Maths - This week in Maths, we have continued with multiplication and division but towards the end of the week focussed more on problem solving with these calculations. The children have impressed us all with their understanding of the problems and their range of methods to solve them. Next week, we look to continue this further by using bar modelling as a way of problem solving!

Art - As part of our new topic, the class have started learning about how the Ancient Egyptians used to write. We studied some heiroglyphics, then the children had a go at writing their name in a Ancient Egyptian cartouche. This was to build on sketching skills using pencils, looking at shading and shapes within the pictures.

Geography - To build on the mapping skills we have practised so far this year, the children looked at a variety of maps of Egypt, then created a physical map of their own showing the Nile, the Nile flood plain, deserts, mountainous areas and seas. The class used a range of materials to show these different features, such as wool, tissue paper, paint and sand!

Swimming - Our swimming has been coming on brilliantly, with many children showing more and more confidence in the water. Some have began swimming underwater, and others have enjoyed jumping in the deeper parts of the pool. Everyone seems to be having a great time at the sessions and learning a lot!

Our PE visit to Trinity High School this week was unfortunately cancelled due to the cold weather on Wednesday, but will be rescheduled for Friday morning next week, meaning the children will need to bring trainers for PE as well as swimming kits. They will still be able to use their PE kits and the school tracksuits for the visit. 

Have a great weekend,

Mr Bennett, Mrs Horton and Mr Field

It's the second week back after Christmas and Year 3 are now in full swing! There has been a lot of challenging learning this week, and the children have responded brilliantly. 

In English, the children have planned and began writing a story. Using 'The Rainbow Bear' by Michael Morpurgo as inspiration, they have thought about the features of a narrative, planned their beginning, middle and ending, then started writing the story.

In Maths, we have learned about the 8 times tables and how they relate to the four times tables, then moved onto learning about division. This was a challenging concept, but the children worked hard with whiteboards and resources to share the numbers to understand what happens when we are dividing a number equally.

This week in Science, the children were learning about day and night and how this is created by the Earth rotating on it's axis. We focussed on polar areas of the Earth, and why they have very long days and very long nights at certain times in the year. This linked to our Geography learning this week, which was about how humans have affected the Arctic through Climate Change. The children shared ideas on how to stop climate and created posters highlight the issues and educate other people.

Finally, swimming this week was fantastic! Everybody really enjoyed their first lesson in the pool and all put in so much effort. It is amazing to see confidence levels growing even just after one lesson!

This week, I have set new spellings on Spelling Shed and will set tables on Times Table Rockstars to keep those skills continually being visited. Thank you so much once again for support the children with reading and maths homework this week, there has been lots of lots of teampoints given out as a result!

Have a great weekend,

Mr Bennett, Mrs Horton and Mr Field

Welcome back to the Spring term. It is lovely to see all the children, they have had lots to tell us about their holidays!

We are starting the Spring Term on a mini topic based on the book ‘The Rainbow Bear’ by Michael Morpurgo. The children began the week by exploring their own dreams, both the ones they have at night and the ones they have for the future.

The children then really impressed us with their knowledge on Artic animals. Seeing only the images the children were able to name most of them and come up with some really interesting facts. The children then asked questions about what they would like to know, before we revealed what the animals were and some information on them.

We then went on to read the full story and thought about The Rainbow Bear’s dreams and feelings throughout. The children have story mapped the story, ready to do some more work on the story next week.

In art we have looked at water colour images of artic animals and have begun to think about how we can recreate the images of the animals we looked at. The children began to sketch their animals thinking about the lines, shapes and shaded areas. Next week the children will be exploring water colours to use.

As part of our science this term we have The James Dyson Design Box, where we will be learning about design engineers, and testing our own design engineer skills. This week we thought about what a design engineer looked like and might do, before revealing the answer. The children thought carefully about the inventions and design engineers we know about. One we definitely knew was Thomas Edison!

In maths we have begun multiplication and division, particularly focussing on the 3s and 4s. We have used cubes to represent the times tables, drawn arrays and chanted the tables to help the children's understanding. Please keep practising these tables at home. In Geography, we compared two different climate zones; the rainforest and the arctic. The children used their knowledge from the previous term, as well as research skills to compare the differences of these two places in the world.

We had our first swimming session this week and it went brilliantly! The children all really enjoyed their first time in the pool and we look forward to beginning group lessons next week. 

On Wednesday 23rd January the class will be attending a handball and football tournament at Trinity High School. Please can you ensure all children are in school on time as we will need to leave at 9:15am and we will be back for lunch. We will provide the children with the school tracksuits to ensure they are warm whilst there. Any questions please come and see us.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs Horton and Mr Bennett