Mrs Gibbons

Celebrating in year 3

Year 3 looked stunning on Monday as they dressed up in their best outfits for a party at school to mark their First Holy Communions. We marked the occasion with a prayer in the shade in the prayer garden and then some games in the classroom. The children were free to wear as few layers as they chose, due to the heat. We also stuck to quiet games, the children enjoying “wink murder” and “banana!” Then they tucked into a magnificent spread provided by their very generous parents. I was very relieved that they all took great care with their clothes, which I think escaped the buttercream, sugar and chocolate.

It was very exciting for the children to visit their new classroom on Thursday. They have made their own labels for the lockers which will be in year 4 instead of drawers, so there will already be a little bit of something of their own when they arrive in the classroom in September.

On Thursday the children learnt about the Ancient Egytpians: what were they? Where were they built? Why were they built? They shared their thoughts on their own miniature pyramids.

On Friday the children watched the amazing school talent show. The range of skills and talents held by the children is vast and the children thoroughly watched each other perform.

Thank you for sending in full water-bottles, hats and sun-tan cream every day.

There are just 1.5 days left of year 3 for the children and I’m very excited about remaining with them next year. We will all be ready to hit the ground running and seamlessly continue with the learning. The children are ready for a break and plenty of time to be outside, meet friends and have a break from formal learning is just what they need to give them the energy to start afresh in September. Have a great weekend.

End-of-year activities in year 3

It’s great to be doing the usual end-of-year activities. It was lovely to see children showing their adults learning in the classroom and to get the chance to chat at the end of the day. The cushions and clay can now go home. The clay is quite delicate so I’ve asked the children only to take them if they know that they are going straight home. I have plenty of newspaper to wrap them in which will offer some protection.

Sports Day was very exciting. Every child in year 3 shows fantastic sportsmanship, taking part as well as they can, taking modest pride in winning and pride in participating.

This week the children learnt about Australia, a Commonwealth country. Here are there fabulous dot paintings inspired by Aboriginal art and Australian wildlife. If you play some backing music on the computer, you could sing “Waltzing Matilda” with your child, who should be able to explain the Australian lingo to you.

Tuesday saw the “bounce session” which was enormous fun. The team-building activities were not only fun, but also a real demonstration of how working with others can help everyone achieve a common goal. The children did really well at giving each other good advice, being only encouraging and helpful. Thank you very much for all the generous contributions by you and your extended families via the sponsorship money. It all goes towards making education more enriching for your children.

Please remember to bring in your Holy Communion, or smart, outfits tomorrow for the First Holy Communion celebrations on Monday afternoon.

Have a great weekend before the last full week of year 3!

Active Learning this week

The week started off with much excitement as year 3, with year 2, relived The Great Fire of London. Master Jonathan, from History off the Page, came to school with crates of resources and activities. A well was recreated in the hall! The children were apprentices for the morning, experiencing some of the crafts they may have practised had they been alive on 2nd September 1666. The children had remembered the reasons for the fire and the circumstances well, from their year 2 learning and now – just a bit later than would otherwise have been the case – they got to learn it more deeply that only a well-resourced session, with meaningful activities and an expert like Master Jonathan can bring. The afternoon involved a “mini-dig” excavating finds from a property to establish who had lived there and explaining how the evidence showed this.

We’ve had three lots of visitors, from across the curriculum, the last few days and year 3 showed excellent listening skills and behaviour during all the sessions.

This week the children learnt about “seasonal food” which means different things to different countries. We found out which foods grow in which season in the UK, cooked with some and designed a “fruit plate” with seasonal berries. Thank you to Mrs Solakova for organising the equipment and helping us with the cooking. The children loved preparing the tarts and fruit and tidied and cleaned up well afterwards, too. There is no need to cook an evening meal this weekend – just ask your son or daughter to do it for the family!

The children have been practising races for Wednesday’s sports and look forward to seeing some of you then (weather permitting).

On Wednesday morning we walked to church for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. I hope the children passed on the message from me that they all behaved impeccably and sang beautifully during the service. It was a lovely service and the children were credits to their families.

Our theme in RHE is living with and loving others. Today we talked about being like God which means aspiring to qualities such as wisdom, kindness, mercy, compassion. (The children thought of their own words to describe God.) We thought of examples where we could very practically live these out in our daily life, such as in the dining hall or classroom. Maybe you could ask someone to sit at your table? These are the sort of actions which helps other people else feel good about themselves. We also watched a youtube version of a book called “Have you filled a bucket today” which covers similar themes. It also discusses “filling someone else’s bucket” can make you feel good. The story is available via this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EuemNAo6XE if you’d like to share it with your child.

Next week will be another busy week. At open evening on Wednesday you can come and see what the children have made recently – some things have been sent home already. Thank you for remembering reading books and diaries on Thursdays and also keeping them in book bags on other days. It’s great to see more regular reading of school books happening and – importantly – children taking ownership and recording what they have read themselves.

Have great weekend and let’s hope for some sun!

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.