It has come to our attention that Amazon today cancelled the subscription of books and audio stories for children and students of all ages as long as schools are closed, children everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories, including titles across six different languages, that will help them continue dreaming, learning, and just being kids.

All stories are free to stream on your desktop, laptop, phone or tablet using the following link

https://stories.audible.com/start-listen.

Below is all of the learning we would like to be completed next week. As well as all of this, be creative, go outside in the garden and be active, but most importantly stay safe and enjoy spending quality time with your family. 

We miss you already Happy Hippos and Lovely Lions. 

Miss Shaw, Mrs Pike and Mrs Atkins. 

Reading comprehension
Please see below the non- fiction report on the Romans. Answer the questions at the bottom of the sheet. Challenge- can you think of your own questions to ask about the text?
In addition, please continue to read 20-30 minutes daily. Try and read a range of texts too.

The Romans Middle Ability QAs

Writing activity
Below is a link to a picture of the mad hatter. As we have been creating character descriptions about Boudicca this week please can you apply those skills to write a character description about the Mad Hatter. Remember to include- fronted adverbials, similes and descriptive language. http://www.pobble365.com/the-mad-hatter

Spelling
This week your spelling is to spell the phoneme ‘k’ spelt with a ‘ch’. For example-
anchor, ache, choir, echo, school. Can you think of any others? Pick strategies from your strategy sheet.
Extra -To consolidate our learning on homophones, have a play on the following website…
http://homophonemachine.allaboutlearningpress.com/
The Homophone Machine gets kids excited about homophones.
See how many homophones you can include in a sentence or paragraph.

Maths
Below is a link to a fun addition game. Think systematically to be effective. If you are finding this tricky- change the numbers to 1-6 and try and reach 50. If you would like a challenge add two extra boxes and try and reach 1000!
https://nrich.maths.org/1130
Now can you create your own addition game.
Remember that sumdog and times tables rockstars have also been updated with activities.

Science
Our next science topic is growing. See below for a link to start a discussion about what plants need to grow. If you are able to, this would be a great opportunity to get some seeds and start growing your own flowers, herbs, vegetables. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/z9f87hv

Topic
Following on from our school trip last week, please see the following link for some art and history fun linked to The Romans.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/history/handsonhistory/romans_mosaic.pdf

ONLINE READING

We have subscribed to an online resource of school reading books. We would encourage you to log on and read daily. The resource also has questions about the books for you to answer.

https://connectcollins.co.uk

Below is a link to a PDF which you can click on to open. It explains in detail how to log on and access over 250 online books for free.

ONLINE READING COLLINS CONNECT

What a week!

In Maths this week we have been continuing with learning and using the grid method.

In English this week we have finished writing, editing and best of all, publishing our Roman Slave Diaries. They look authentically Roman, written on their ‘ancient’ scrolls!

In Topic this week we have learnt about Boudicca and how we don’t really know exactly what she looked like as there are no surviving portraits of her from her lifetime. The images we see today are based on old written reports of her and these vary based on the writers opinion of her. The children produced some lovely pictures of their own based on what we know and think of her personally.

It was lovely to see so many of you at Parents’ Evening on Tuesday and Wednesday and to have the opportunity to share with you how your children are doing and how they can be supported at home to maintain their progress. We appreciate all of your support, thank you.

This was followed on Thursday by a trip to Fishbourne Roman Palace. Thank you to all the adult helpers – we couldn’t run valuable trips like this without you and you did a wonderful job. It was a brilliant (and mostly dry!) day, jam-packed with wonder and awe. We hope that your child was able to come home and tell you an array of interesting facts or stories from throughout the day.

This week ended on a high with our school Poetry Competition Finals, featuring three of our lovely Year 3s. They were spectacular and we are incredibly proud of them. Well done, William, Lucy and Lola – the effort you have put in to practicing clearly paid off!

This weekend, please try and log in to SumDog, in addition to spelling and vocabulary homework. A couple of competitions have been set up for the children to practice their tables and recently learnt skills. We will be monitoring the use of SumDog as there is the possibility that, with high enough numbers, we could enter a County Contest. Please remember that even without live contests, competitions and assessments, SumDog is still very beneficial as it learns what your child needs to practice and puts those opportunities in place.

We wish you a restful weekend after a busy week and look forward to seeing you on Monday…

Team 3.

Where did January go!?

This penultimate week of the first half of the Spring term has flown by too. We’ve been busy publishing our very impressive ‘Great Kapok Tree’ inspired writing. Here is some writing by Lola, which we think you’ll agree is fabulous!

Nearby, a Timber Tumbler had been watching and listening to the other animals and decided that he also wanted to tell the man that he did not want it to be cut down. So, with his young padding softly behind him, the large winged cat flew powerfully onto the forest floor and silently approached the sleeping man.

“Hey, Senhor!” the Timber Tumbler cried desperately, “please don’t cut down the great Kapok tree, it’s where I give birth and it provides safety and shelter for my newborn tumbs. Without this majestic tree, my babies will be easy targets for predators and eventually our species will become extinct!”

This week in Maths has been all about problem solving using various strategies for adding and subtracting. Everyone’s becoming increasingly resilient at dealing with a little ‘brain pain’, well done!

We finished off this week with STEM day. The children were required to design, build, test, adapt and evaluate rafts to carry some stranded children down the Amazon River to the safety of Manaus. We thought about what makes a ‘good’ raft and how we could achieve strength, sturdiness and buoyancy using a piece of tin foil. The children came up with vessels of all shapes and sizes with varying weight and thicknesses and some then had an opportunity to share what they had done during assembly. Ultimately we realised that the best rafts – those which carried the most passengers – were often just one layer thick and had a very large base or surface area.

Just another little reminder that our in-class poetry recital is this coming Thursday (13th), the last day of the half term.

We hope you’ve managed to stay warm and dry this blustery weekend!

Team 3.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Thank you to all of you who came along to the Mass on Tuesday, it was lovely to see so many of you.

This week, Year 3 have continued to be inspired by The Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry, imitating her writing to involve our own creatures with our own very important messages about why the sleeping man should not cut down the trees. Our Geography lesson on Deforestation helped us to come up with really valuable contributions.

In Maths we’ve been thinking about all the strategies we know that can help us to solve and prove tricky problems. We’ve realised that there isn’t a right or wrong way; many problems have multiple possible strategies to use to help us find the same solution. We’ve realised that it’s about what works best for us and what is efficient.

In Science, we’ve enjoyed looking at the bones in our bodies and learning about our vital organs, which our skeletons protect.

In RE, we’ve continued to look at the story of Samuel and how he was called to follow God. We’ve thought about how we can follow His call and what good deeds we can do, such as donating to a food bank or showing love to our friends and family.

We’re seeing lots of wonderful (not compulsory!) homework coming in about the Rain Forest which just goes to show how engaged in the topic the children are. It’s great to see!

Have a peaceful weekend,

Team 3.

What a chilly week!

This week we have been looking at the story of Samuel in RE. We’ve had thoughtful conversations about what made him such a loyal servant to God which have helped us with our work.

In Maths, subtraction has been going well. So much so, that many of the children have progressed from using the expanded column method to a standard column method – the one which most adults are most familiar with. This link is helpful for guidance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GazztzsIuY

In English we have finished writing and publishing our non-chronological reports on our fictional creatures in groups. The results are fabulous – so good they could have come straight out of a non-fiction book on the Rainforest!

We’re hearing that many of the children are doing well with learning and performing their poems. We will be holding our in class finals on Thursday 13th February – so if you’re using costumes or props, that’s the day to bring them in.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Team Three.

This week in English, we have continued learning about everything we need to include to write a fantastic non-chronological report on our fictional rainforest animals. We used what we have learnt this week in Topic about the different layers of the rainforest to help us.

In maths we have continued problem solving, trying to find different ways to solve tricky ‘missing box’ problems. The focus has not been on finding the correct answer but not giving up trying to find it and being creative and logical in our thinking.

In RE this week we looked at the Wise Men’s journey to meet Jesus and thought deeply about how easy or difficult the different aspects were and whether or not there was a reward for what they did.

Today we explored Scratch using Hour of Code, a way of tutoring children through a coding project. You can practice at home by visiting www.hourofcode.com/uk/learn. By clicking on ‘Activities’ you will find all sorts of fun projects to try out.

Thanks again for the plants 🙂 With the heat from the radiators and the perspiration of the plants, our classrooms are transforming into humid ecosystems, evident by the condensation on the windows!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Team 3

We hope you all had a lovely and restful two weeks off for Christmas, it may seem like a distant memory now! Thank you all so much for our lovely presents, we really appreciate your generosity.

We have jumped straight back in to learning this week focusing on our new topic the rainforest!

Already in geography we have used an atlas to identify the rainforests around the world and investigated the equator and the effect it has. We then compared the rainfall and temperature in Britain to the rainforest in Brazil using bar graphs and interpreting data. We looked at the water cycle and completed a science experiment where we created our own cloud (it has been a very busy first week back!).

In English this week we created our own new species of animal discovered in the rainforest. We will document and explain this new species habitat, diet and appearance in David Attenborough style.

In maths we have focused on fractions of amounts using bar models to equally spilt the amounts. We have problem solved what could be in the missing boxes.

Thank you to everyone who has given us a house plant to water and look after over the next few weeks, we appreciate it, please keep them coming.

Have a wonderful weekend

The Year Three team

This week in English we have begun a new learning journey based on the book, ‘The King Who Banned The Dark’ by Emily Haworth-Booth. This is the story of a selfish King who was afraid of the dark. So far in the story we have learnt that he wants to install a permanent, artificial light over the Kingdom so that it will always be light. The children generated some fabulous arguments opposing the King’s idea and on Thursday we debated in groups.

In RE we have begun our Advent learning. This week we looked at the Annunciation (where Mary was told by the Angel Gabriel that she was expecting a baby) and the Visitation of Mary (where she visited her cousin, Elizabeth).

In Maths we have started our unit on time. This is a notoriously difficult skill to master and children’s ability to tell the time varies greatly dependent on whether they own a watch, tell the time at home etc. Any support that you can give at home will be greatly appreciated!

Today we celebrated STEM day by creating movable shadow puppets that we can use to act out the story, ‘The Owl Who was Afraid of the Dark’, by Jill Tomlinson. The children began by cutting out the owl templates to learn how movable shadow puppets work, carefully cutting out the pieces and punching holes for the split pins. Once that was mastered, each group set to work designing and creating their own different characters and props for each part of the story. Keep visiting our blog for updates – this project isn’t over yet!

It has been great to see so many of the children using both SumDog and TT Rockstars – keep up the good work! The winners of this week’s SumDog competition were…….LIONS! There is now a time assessment running. Other homework for the week includes the main class spellings  and the  phonics group spellings. Vocabulary homework for all children is here and as mentioned at Parents’ Evening, can be used to practice writing at home if this is a target. For anyone having difficulty with their TT Rockstars login, we have been told that using the school’s postcode (PO7 7BP) enables you to find St Peter’s and log in successfully. If you’re still having trouble, ask your child to see their teacher at break time.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend, Team 3.