Hello,

We hope that you all had a good week last week and that you are enjoying the weekend so far.

On Friday this week, the Year 4 children of St. Peter’s Catholic School organised a whole school fundraiser day for guide dogs of the blind. Each child gave a 50p donation to the charity and wore a bright head piece or decoration on their heads. Well done to all of the Year 4 children who gave an excellent presentation about guide dogs for the blind during a whole school assembly, at the beginning of the day.

This week, Year Three have started their new topic on The Romans. Already, we have seen some excellent home learning projects which have clearly reflected the creativity and imagination of the children – for example, some children have created Roman shields and drawings and brought them into school for show and tell, to share their learning with their peers. We look forward to seeing more of these fabulous projects next week. In English, we have started to learn about Roman diaries and have been reading the text, Illiona of Mytillini: Diary of a Greek slave who was captured and sold in Rome. The children have been able to discuss the emotions of different characters and use picture clues and descriptions from the book to support their inferences about how each person would have felt. Next week, we look forward to continuing our learning on fronted adverbials and how sentences openers can add extra detail about where, when, or how much something happens within a sentence.

In Maths, we have been continuing to learn about measure in the context of weight (g and Kg). In particular, the children were given a series of scales problems whereby a set of traditional scales were balanced and the children had to use information about the weight of one item to calculate what the weights of two others sets of items must have been. As the week progressed, Year Three were also given open-ended problems to solve (how many combinations of objects can you weigh to reach a total weight of X grams, etc). We were impressed by the children’s use of collaboration when working together to reason and explain their opinions when problem solving throughout these challenges. Well done Year Three! Next week, we look forward to learning about the addition and subtraction of measurements, in more depth.

Just a quick reminder to let you all know that the Reading Passport challenge for Spring term is almost complete! All passports shall be collected on Wednesday 20th March 2019, ready for the class raffle draws on Friday 22nd March 2019. Good luck everyone!

We wish you all a relaxing and peaceful weekend,

Miss Honeywell, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Sumba.

Hello,

We hope that you have all been enjoying the weekend so far.

This week, the children took part in World Book day. All of the children dressed up as their favourite story book characters and we were amazed by the effort and care that had been taken by children and parents to make the costumes. Well done Year Three!

In English, we have been working collaboratively to create a Rainforest poem through shared writing. Using ‘explain, change, create’, each class was able to identify the poetic features from a poem before making adjustments to it and finally recreating their very own verses. The children had a strong selection of similes, alliteration, expanded noun phrases and verbs within their sentences, which helped to make their poems very entertaining to the reader! At the end of the week, both classes also attended the St. Peter’s poetry competition – we would like to congratulate the Y3 participants who each gave an excellent performance of their chosen poem.

In Maths, we have continued our learning on measure. In particular, we have focused upon the skill of reading scales and understanding how a scale is made of equal intervals. Through the context of grams (g) and kilograms (kg), Year Three have been able to read a set of scales and record the weights of different items. We were impressed by the commitment that had been demonstrated by the children, especially across a set of tricky reasoning problems whereby the children had to express their opinion and prove their answers were correct by using mathematical facts. Next week, we look forward to introducing the children to missing number problems in order to balance items that are weighed on a set of traditional scales.

We look forward to seeing you all next week,

Miss Honeywell, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Sumba

Hello,

We hope that you have all had a good week and that you are enjoying the weekend so far.

This week, St. Peters welcomed the children back to school for the beginning of the second spring term. In English, the children have been exploring Rainforest poetry. On Monday, the children were given a ‘mysterious bag of words’ from which to make predictions about the genre, purpose and audience of their next writing outcome: a night time Rainforest poem! As the week progressed, the children were given adjective and verb cards and took part in a ‘shades of meaning’ activity in order to develop their vocabulary banks and to discuss/compare the intensity of particular word choices. The children particularly enjoyed justifying their own choices when deciding how to order their language cards. At the end of the week, Year Three worked in table groups to order the sentences from a WAGOLL poem (What A Good One Looks Like) in order to make a cohesive poetic verse. We were impressed by the children’s annotations of poetic language including alliteration and similes, as well as their explanations for the effect these poetic devices have upon a reader or audience. Well done Year Three!

In Maths, we have been learning about measurements. At the start of the week, we introduced this unit by showing the children a riddle: “You are as wide as you are tall”. The children had a fantastic time taking part in a variety of investigative activities, to explore mm, cm and metres to prove or disprove this hypothesis. Furthermore, Year Three were then able to create their own tests such as ‘Your hand span is half the length between your elbow and fingers’, etc. In particular, the children have used bar models, their knowledge of fractions (e.g. half of a metre is 50cm, 1/10 of a cm is 1mm) as well as measuring equipment when solving a variety of measurement problems. As the week progressed, children were also given challenges including open-ended combination problems and the opportunity to measure with a ‘broken ruler’ to start counting out lengths from a number other than zero. We were delighted to see the children’s use of collaboration and commitment across these tasks.

We hope that you all enjoy the rest of your weekend and look forward to seeing you all at parents evening next week.

Kind regards,

Miss Honeywell, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Sumba

The Challenge: Your challenge today was to make a boat that was strong enough to float on water and hold a heavy weight! You will be choosing which materials to use and designing a boat that can hold as many marbles/weights on board as possible, without sinking…

Adapt your boat design as you go to see if your boat can float and win the ‘heaviest weight’ challenge!

We had a lot of fun designing, making and testing out the boats that we made in response to the challenge posed.  Here are some of the pictures from the day.

Here are another 2 Rainforest projects from the children in Year 3!

On Monday 4th and 11th February 2019, Year 3 visited Staunton Country Park to further enrich their topic curriculum and experience a taste of a tropical Rainforest. The children created a class Rainforest (picture below), discussed the effects of deforestation, explored the plants in the Rainforest and even got to  see and hold some Rainforest creatures! They were very brave indeed! The children all impressed the group leader with their knowledge of the Rainforest and they had all had a lovely day out of class.  Thank you to all the parents who were able to come along and help out.

The children were very excited to not only enjoy the recent snow fall but also to meet an author this week. On Friday afternoon, they got the chance to listen to the Author – Grant Koper – read them a story in the hall with the children from KS1.  They found the book – The day Granny’s knickers blew away – hilariously funny.  Some children purchased their own copy.  His website is www.grantkoper.com should you wish to find out more about this author with your children or purchase any further publications.

We have been looking at equivalent fractions this week in Maths.  We started by looking at equivalent fractions for thirds and fifths.  The children enjoyed creating a fraction wall to help to do this.

In Literacy the children started to write their non-chronological report.  Some of the introductions that the children wrote where very impressive. See below:

“Did you know that the Rainforest is home to an extremely rare Dragon found by a famous hunter Dr John in 2018? You will probably find it in the emergent layer eating fruits and birds. There were 500 but now there are only 200 left because hunters want the diamonds on their bodies.  The name Dragon means ‘fast’ in Greek.’  Noah

“Have you ever seen any such thing as a feathered, scaly, fast Green Griffin? You will usually find it searching for food or nesting in a whole at the bottom of a tree trunk where it is safest from the predators who can’t reach them.  It was first discovered by explorer Dawson who claimed to have seen one picking berries in 1948. But unfortunately, there are only 400 left in the world because of deforestation. It has to stop!” Ava

Topic news – we’ve seen some lovely home learning projects coming into school as well as factfiles all about the Rainforest. Here is an example of a project made by Sophia and her family:

Happy weekend from all of the Year Three team.

This week we have started our Fraction unit in Maths.  We have been investigating fractions on a number line and recognising that tenths arise when you divide a whole number by 10 equal parts.  The children have risen to the challenge and have made a good start.  Can the children look for fractions in their every day home lives and environments?

In Literacy, we have been developing our authors tone of voice by pretending to be a documentary film maker like David Attenborough to describe the rainforest in a factual way.  The children have been using the conjunctions when, because, although and if to write complex sentences.

This week the Year 3 children celebrated Mass with the Year 4 children.  We thank all who were able to attend.

We would like to invite you to drop in to see the children’s work from the Rainforest topic again.  The children really enjoyed sharing their Stone Age work and I know that this topic will be no different.  Date to be confirmed next week.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you all bright and early on Monday.

Year 3

Happy New Year to you all from the Year 3 team.  We hope you all had a happy and restful Christmas break!

The children certainly have come back to school keen to begin their next learning journeys.  This term is all about the Rainforests.  We be using this topic in our Literacy and Maths work throughout the term.  Again, we will be inviting parents, carers and family members to come and look through the topic work from the term.

In Literacy, we have been learning about note taking and exploring non – chronological books with the children.  The children have been learning lots of new rainforest facts throughout the week.

In our Maths lesson, we have been consolidating our understanding of the times tables and division facts. We have been thinking about how 4 x 5 can help us to solve 4 x 50.

Spellings have been sent out this week and so we look forward to seeing what the children do next Friday.

Team Three

We are into the final week of school before the Christmas Festivities begin.  The children have not slowed down in their work rate at school though and they were excited to be writing their Scary Stories based on the story ‘the Gorgle.’ We have been very impressed so far.

In Maths we have been learning about right angles and today we were writing Christmas-style words on our pages and then looking for right angles.

Thank you to all the parents who came to have a look at the children’s Topic learning from this half term.  It is wonderful to be able to share the hard work of the children and we know that they were very proud too.  We will be holding another informal evening in the Spring term to share the learning from next term.

Not long to go now! Keep up the hard work.

Team Three