Mrs Gibbons

This week in year 3….

… has been full of variety and creativity.

On Monday the children sculpted Tutankhamun’s death mask from clay

On Thursday the children painted the tiles, using brilliant blues and golds like in Ancient Egypt.

The finished results look stunning; and are mounted, ready for you all to view on Open Evening.

Learning can be a sedentary affair, increasingly so the older children get. You need to be still when concentrating hard on equivalent fractions, for example. It’s also important, and fun, to break this up with movement. The class likes to dance to i-moves tracks in-between other sessions. This week we’ve all enjoyed dancing to “Count on Me” and “Celebrate”

On Thursday and Friday, year 3, like the whole school, was treated to fantastic interactive learning to help understand Judaism. After a couple of years’ absence, Ruth returned and helped year 3 understand all about the synagogue – what it looks like, contains, what Jewish people do there. The children were able to wear Jewish clothes, explore Torahs (artefacts), learn about Hebrew letters and even eat and drink some traditional Jewish cookies and grape juice. The children created their stained-glass windows, remembering that they must not contain images of God or people. Today, Vincent and Pauric shared what they had learnt with the whole school, presenting their knowledge in confident, expert ways. Year 3 listened beautifully to the contributions by other classes today, too.

Pollination was an important theme this week. In Science we learnt what flowers are for. And on Friday Dr Lyal came in to talk about minibeasts, which is what he spent his career studying. To be specific, he spent his career at The Natural History Museum collecting, categorising and naming weevil beetles.

These are some of the pieces of equipment Dr Lyal uses to collect insects, which has taken him to all sort of exciting places like the jungle in Belize, Indonesia and…. Hertforshire…

Yesterday, he went on safari in his own back garden and collected some minibeasts to show us and talk about. Amongst the huge amount of knowledge shared, the children learnt about the number of legs minibeasts have, the names for different types of minibeasts, why minibeasts are certain colours; and much more.

We talked about the fascination and wonder of nature. There is always something new to learn, question, discover and rediscover. Professions working with animals, plants and other aspects of nature are open to anyone who is interested and commits to understanding the world around us, both by working hard at Science and also in taking any opportunity to explore and understand at home – for instance by doing a bug hunt at home. A magnifying glass or plastic tub with magnifier at one end is a cheap way to explore local minibeasts more easily.

The children have drawn and written a card to say thank you to Dr Lyal which I will post.

The homework is on Google Classroom. Please also remember the RE homework on the Quicklinks.

I hope to see you at the school fair tomorrow. Have a lovely weekend.

As hot as Egypt…

This week we’re having temperatures to understand what it would have been like in Ancient Egypt. The children enjoyed drawing their plans for the Egyptian death masks they will make. While they did that, they also examined some beautiful replica artefacts – a winged scarab, ushawbti figure which the Egyptians believed would do the work for the deceased in the afterlife and an eye of horus. The children handled them very carefully and were fascinated by the Egyptian beliefs – for example, that the scarab beetle pushed the sun across the sky.

In RHE, the children are learning about living with each other and this week they were working in groups to consider actions which make you feel cared for by others.

I hope you were as proud of the children this morning as I was. They learnt the many words to a complicated song very well, performed the actions clearly and performed everything with the enthusiasm. They did have pictures they’d carefully drawn – of parts of the song, or to show their feelings for their own Dad or God the Father – but we forgot to show them this morning. Here is a photo of them all holding all the drawings.

The class is loving reading and writing rhyming couplets about children who get up to dastardly deeds and come to sticky ends. We’ll finish them next week and start a new book. The learning about fractions has moved into the area of equivalence which is quite tricky but the children listened and reasoned really well in our first session of this.

Well done for coming to school with suntan cream and for those children with caps. Please keep remembering the water. Have a great weekend.

It’s time for rhyme…

Year 3 has a whole new collection of topics for this last half-term. We are reading tales with warnings or morals and will be focusing on “Jim – A Cautionary Tale”. Written in rhyming couplets, it is a great opportunity to experiment with rhyme, rhythm and metre.

In English, we are also focusing on becoming absolutely clear on the definitions of word classes, and to be able to talk about grammatical features confidently. This means knowing the difference between an adjective and adverb, for example; and between a noun and a proper noun, amongst other things. We’re doing lots of practise in “early morning work” to embed this knowledge. Here’s a link to this learning if you’d like to do some recapping at home.

We’ve started learning about the Ancient Egyptians, with much enthusiasm and interest shown by the children. The only issue is going to be how to cover enough of the topic to do it justice and to listen to all the contributions and ideas of the children. Here is our collaborative timeline; and below is the children’s initial list of thoughtful questions.

We started outdoor athletics activities this week; and the children energetically jumped and ran across the field in different ways. I’ll post photos over the coming weeks.

Homework is on the Google drive. The spellings are tricky this week. We will have another session exploring ways to remember them and practise them again on Monday. I look forward to seeing all the children’s reading books on Thursday. Their reading has progressed well so far this year. Let’s make the most of day of every week left of this academic year. At the same time, the weather surely will stay nice and warm for lots of fun outside and the traditional, exciting end-of-term activities we’re all delighted to see back. I also look forward to seeing lots you at next Friday’s Father’s Day assembly. Our class song is one which reflects on God, the Father as well as Dads. The children have made a good start learning the words. Please keep practising over the weekend. Have a good few days off.

Sew good….

The children completed sewing their cushions today and they look fantastic! Just as importantly, the children showed amazing perseverance and teamwork in completing them. Today we talked about how well they did when things didn’t go well, when they had had problems and what they did to overcome them. Everyone did this with this sewing projects and the next time the children encounter setbacks or disappointments they should remember the tenacity and determination they used in their sewing and channel that energy into the new problem. The children could all name the skills they have learnt and improved. The cushions will come home after they’ve been displayed in the classroom.

The red, white and blue clothes looked stunning today. Here they all are, in red, white and blue in front of their red, white and blue display. Every child has a painting in the montage.

We’ve still been learning about light and dark in Science and this week explored how fabrics can be transparent, translucent and opaque – it’s only opaque materials which make shadows by blocking the light completely. The children worked out that the properly cut out all light and make good shadows they would need to use two fabrics together – just like lined curtains do. These photos show the children carrying out an investigation to see how light only travels in straight lines. They needed to line up the holes in the card exactly so see the light shining through. If card was in front of the light a shadow was created because the card is opaque.

We’ve continued to learn about North and South America in Geography and debugging in Computing. Next half-term there will be new topics in each subject – a new book in English and a new topic of fractions in Maths. It’s been a busy half-term and the children never cease to impress me with their marvellous co-operation, love of learning and enthusiasm for everything at the school. Wishing you all a safe, happy – and warm! – half-term holiday and I look forward to seeing everyone on ten days – on Tuesday 7th June.

A week of variety

It’s been great to see the children enjoying themselves in the sunshine outside this week, at last. We’ve had other welcome changes from routine and exciting events. Hot on the tails of the new listening post was the delivery of seven brightly-coloured beanbag cushions so the children can now sit in comfort as they giggle to Roald Dahl stories.

In another new project, after experimenting with stitches, the children planned their designs for their little pillows. They had great ideas, from Star Wars, to football, to playing cards.

On Wednesday we joined in the National Numeracy live stream doing a times table number roll and helped set a new world record for the number of participants. This is what we joined and watched – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhaAYFHE724 It was amazing to be part of something nationwide and we have learnt a new rhyme for times-tables.

The R E homework looks fantastic on the wall – every piece is different; and the children are enjoying appreciating each other’s and sharing how they chose to present their understanding. We have now started the new topic of Resolution and I’ll post the new home learning over the next few days

We started the new “Resolution” topic with role-play about a situation involving choices and consequences, which the children threw themselves into.

Our new book is “Flotsam”, a fascinating story about a boy’s adventures at the seaside. It’s being a springboard for fronted adverbials, powerful verbs and expanded noun phrases, which the children will weave into stories next week. The children are being adventurous in their use of language and we are also focusing on thoroughly understanding and using the basics of English – nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, the core building blocks.

Next week we will be celebrating the Jubilee and we’re all looking forward to seeing the costumes people choose to wear on Friday.

Have a great weekend!

Lovely Listening in Year 3

Year 3 has been very excited this week as they have all used the new listening post for the first time. I’ll will include some photos next week! This was bought with the proceeds from the cake sale, so many thanks for your generosity. This means that at the daily guided reading sessions a group of six children can listen to a good-quality text together. Currently we have a CD collection of Roald Dahl animal stories, of which “Esiotrot” is one of the current guided reading texts. The children have suggested which other stories they would like to. MORE Roald Dahl stories were suggested and they certainly are good-quality, creative texts which extend children’s vocabulary, imagination and make them laugh! David Walliams was also a popular suggestion.

The children are engrossed in the current “Light and Dark” Science topic and use the topic vocabulary confidently. We are still debating how the moon isn’t a source of light itself, but reflects the light from the sun. We have different resources, such as access to the excellent “Explorify” website which Miss Bannams, the Science lead, told us about, to explore important questions like this in a variety of ways. This week the children made their own “light reflectors” and investigated which was the most reflective material to make a safe coat for night-time use.

The children completed their versions of a mystery story day. The task of writing a mystery story was challenging and the class has used the opportunity to experiment with language, such as expanded “noun sound” phrases – eg the squeaking of the metal hinges. They have incorporated similes, long sentences to build suspense, short sentences for dramatic effect and dialogue in their writing this week. Year 3 spend their writing sessions focusing well with presentation in their books really improving. The excellent level of effort they are showing always leads to progress and they should feel proud of how their writing is improving, like I do.

We started our sewing task this week, re-aquainting ourselves with the pleasures and pain of threading needles. Again, focus and team-work was seen round the classroom. If you do have any pieces of lightweight fabric to use in this projects (as per the mail), I would be very grateful to receive it.

Thank you for the RE homework this week. The range of ideas and presentation are fantastic. If you finish yours over the weekend, please do send it on on Monday. Also, if your child has the “Bingo” homework grid, please email or send it in for housepoints (as per the other email). Well done on those children who completed the MyMaths homework. The spellings and MyMaths for this week are both on Google classroom.

Wishing you all a very restful weekend.

Starting the month of May…

We started May with the beautiful Crowning of Mary. Year 3 drew very careful pictures of the saints for our contribution “Mary, Queen of All Saints”. We talked about saints important to us, such St Adrians and St Albans of course, British and Irish patron saints, St Nicholas and St Francis. Several children in the class reminded us they are named for saints, too.

We celebrated class worship in the hall at the altar of Mary. They children sang Ave Maria, with the harmony very nicely.

The flowers and plants the children brought in looked beautiful and really made it feel like spring could be here. We will continue to mark the month of May with activities.

Last week, year 3 completed the daily mile like other children did. Here they are enjoying the feel-good effect of exercise and exertion.

We are continuing to explore the feelings and events of The Pentecost. The children were thinking and writing about what the disciples would have felt after the Holy Spirit passed over them. They are developing a clearer understanding of how to answer the big question “What’s the use of energy?”

Last week we explored what the experiences of Resurrection and Ascension may have been like for Jesus’ followers by “hot-seating. ” A disciple kindly came to visit us and we asked him and her questions about their emotions and reactions at the events. Here is one of the followers answering questions.

We saw a few pieces of RE homework today, where the children have thought deeply about the subject and used the symbols of the dove and the flame to illustrate their work. Well done and we look forward to seeing more next week.

The children are improving, daily, to say the time correctly. The challenge this week was to say the same time in different ways – eg 11.43am, 11.43 in the morning, 17 minutes to twelve in the morning, 17 minutes before 12 am. An interesting question discussed was – Is twelve o’clock at night am or pm?

We all continue to be intrigued by the mysterious illustrations in “The Mysteries of Harris Burdock”, experimenting with different words and phrases to write alternative titles and captions for chosen pictures.

It’s great to see the children, coatless, racing around on the field. Let’s hope this sunny weather continues. Have a lovely weekend.

Stepping back in time….

.. with a shout ! Year 3 – or Raven Tribe – marched enthusiastically into Celtic Harmony this morning. They had to shout their name to make sure they travelled safely back to the prehistoric times as they passed through the gates. And what a world of Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages awaited us! The setting is beautiful and peaceful, with artefacts galore and scenes and buildings recreated as they would have been in prehistoric times; and everything explained in detail and with good humour by our educator guide for the day, Fei.

Events which took place over nearly 100, 000 years were put into context by creating a timeline with objects. We then went into the woods and watched Fei do some flint knapping and then the children made their own “soap arrows”. They were also very excited to see Fei showing us a long and a shorter spear as well as a stone axe. Fei was very impressed by the class’s knowledge that obsidian is the sharpest stone known. The class’s understanding and knowledge of the period generally was impressive.

The children then helped Fei rebuild part a wattle fence which had come down. He was able to jump up and down on the fences built by Raven Tribe so their weaving must be good!

Lunch was outdoors and everyone ate heartily. After lunch the children became completely engrossed in making clay coil pots, which will be dry enough to take home on Friday or Monday. We were also treated to different (replica) prehistoric pots with their different features explained well by Fei.

Lastly, the children learnt about prehistoric farming and the hugely significant change from hunter-gathering to farming methods of getting food. They used stone querns to grind grain and then mixed flour with water to make Neolithic-style bread. There was definitely no danger of putting on weight from bread in the New Stone Age. The effort and time needed to make the flour are huge and the resulting amount of flour tiny. The children’s opinions are below, but this was my favourite part of the day, because of the amazing team-work and co-operation the children showed. The relatively small space was a hive of activity with every child happy engaged in the tasks, problem-solving, communicating and completely focused on carrying out what had been asked.

After these four highly enjoyable activities, we came back to the twenty-first century and walked back down the lane – just slightly slower than the first time- back to the coach and then school. I think everyone will be sleeping well tonight. Possibly including the fantastic, committed Mums who came to help. Thank you so much as without your commitment, learning like this wouldn’t be possible. The children were a credit to the school. It is really marvellous to be back to learning in as many different ways as possible.

When back at school, we reflected on what we had seen and done that day; and specifically what we enjoyed most. Maeve – “I liked the dough balls best. I liked making them and squashing them. They felt really squishy. ” Several other children agreed with this. Austin liked the weaving which “used all your strength”. Like many other children, Aiden enjoyed making the clay pots best of all. Jack B said, “Doing the pattern was really good.” Gabriel couldn’t choose one thing because he loved all the activities. Darragh said “It was really fun when you went in the roundhouse”. We agreed that what made the activities special was the fact that we did them in authentic locations. The roundhouse were the clay took place had a (small, raised and enclosed) fire so you really got an idea of what it was like to live stone-age style. Mrs Porter knew we’d returned from the trip because she could smell the smoky smell coming from the classroom! Some children, like Aidan, would’ve liked a go at other activities we saw evidence of, like the den-building.

We all enjoyed meeting Gerald, who is the resident pheasant, not a wild cockrel as originally thought. He is really very striking.

A great day was had by all; and everyone is looking forward to more enrichment days like this!

St George’s Day

Today Year 3 learnt and recorded their learning about St George, as Friday was very busy with the Science workshop and Earth Day. We decided that St George must be very significant because so many countries have him as a patron saint, due to his huge courage in refusing to renounce his Christian faith when in the Roman army. That was the “real” St George. We also learnt about the story of St George and the dragon and considered the theory that dragons are not real and, instead the George represents good and the dragon evil with, of course good winning.

The children taught each other all about the different aspects of the stories of St George. They were put into groups and each group learnt about the same part of the story – eg the “real ” St George, or which countries have St George as a patron saint. They then returned to their normal tables and shared what they had learnt with the rest of the table. They class are very good at sharing learning by talking with each other.

Welcome back, Year 3!

The summer term has got off to a great start, with new topics and active learning today. The children are clearly interested in the world around them, making a good start to our Geography topic about Europe. We all also started learning about Pentecost – with a theme of Energy – and the RE home learning is on the website. The new books are being distributed and enjoyed. Even more arrived during the Easter holidays – thank you so much again for your generosity. These new books form the class library, from where the children can choose freely. The reading books are matched to year group expectations. It’s fantastic that we now have many more Copper and Topaz books to choose from so the children are able to broaden and deepen their reading skills. Please remember to return these books promptly so that as many children as possible can benefit from them. Thank you. Spelling homework is on Google classroom and the test of these words will be next Wednesday. And don’t forget about Times Tables Rockstars – an incredibly effective way to learn those essential times table facts off by heart.

Today was all about Science. We kicked off the new “Light and Dark” topic with a workshop from STEMPoint, who run educational sessions on Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths topics. The class talked about sources of light, the revolution of the earth around the sun, how we need light to see and that the absence of light is darkness.

Several Mums were very generous with their time and came to help at the workshops. Thank you so much as without your help we couldn’t provide enrichment opportunities like this.

Some of the photos aren’t worth showing as some activities were done in the dark! E

This tent lets in light and so it’s easy to find something in there…..

With the cover, the tent is in darkness and sight isn’t possible. You need to use your sense of touch to find something….

Everyone make a kaleidoscope and did a variety of “hands-on activities.”

The children experienced the complete absence of light in the tent

In another dark tent, the children used different sources of light to see the different effects they could make

The periscopes, to see things from a different perspective, were very popular.

These look very dramatic! They were fibre-optics in amazing fluorescent colours

The children experimented with shadow puppets. The could also see how the size of 3D shapes changed according to the distance of the light. The shadows haven’t come out very clearly in the photos.

As it is Earth Day, we learnt about the “greenhouse effect”, how it is essential for human life on the planet but also how the temperature has risen too much. We did a class investigation today – the photo is below. The cling-film on one jar represents the earth’s atmosphere. We took the temperatures of the air in the jars and put them in a warm place and took the temperature regularly. The children’s prediction was correct in that the temperature in the jar with the cling- film rose more and stayed high, compared to the other one.

“Earth” with an atmosphere and without an atmosphere

We watched a video about the greenhouse effect and sequenced pictures and captions to show understanding. The children also wrote something they’d learnt on post-its. Their engagement and understanding was excellent and they have a good knowledge of the steps we all need to take to try and halt/reverse the overheating resulting from the greenhouse effect – using cars and appliances less figured highly.

It’s been a great first week back. Have a lovely weekend, before more exciting learning next week.