Category: Year 3 Blog

This week Y3 have been getting to grips with different terminology such as nouns and adjectives and have been experimenting different ways to use description in their own sentences. Some of the children have also been exploring dialogue between characters and I have been impressed with their ability to weave this into their own story writing.

We have also been reading a selection of superhero stories during story-time at the end of the school day. The children and I love to sit down at the end of a busy day to hear a humorous story. All the superhero stories we have been reading so far should come in use for our superhero story writing next week.

As part of our enquiry based curriculum the children have been exploring life over 2,500 years ago during Ancient Greece. They have thoroughly enjoyed researching about the Olympic Games and finding out about Greek pottery.

I have been really impressed with the children’s efforts during PE. We have been focussing on the purpose of a defender and an attacker and, on Wednesday of this week, we have applied these skills into a simple competitive invasion game, cone ball.

We have also looked at the Y3 key words this week in our spelling sessions. Over the next few weeks, the children will be learning different spelling patterns and word groups. I will share the key words with parents/carers at our upcoming progress evenings in October.

Finally I must say how fantastic the children’s first piece of homework was based on the Olympic Games. I was delighted to see a variety of ways they had presented their work and I really enjoyed reading and listening to the children talk about their learning.

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend, Mrs McLoughlin

Y3 have had an eventful week filled with dancing, singing, painting, writing and map reading!

On Monday the children joined the rest of the school for a special Olympic themed assembly. It was here that they first heard that their chosen value was to be excellence!

We discussed the meaning of the word excellence with ideas including ‘trying your best not always being the best’. With this in mind, the children created acrostic poems to personally explain the meaning of this value. They performed their poems and, as a class, we created a final poem.

The children also wanted to share their own personal talents and skills . We have some extremely talented people in Y3 with performances including singing, karate, horse riding, reading, gymnastics and acrobatics!

Finally the children wanted to showcase the idea of reaching and achieving your personal best. I shared a few song choices with the class and they chose the song ‘Reach!’ We practised dance moves and learnt the words ready for their performance next week!

On Tuesday the children visited Philips Park for an exciting morning of orienteering. We split into 4 groups with a map and a route to follow. They thoroughly enjoyed exploring the woods and tracks to locate different letters on posts and finished the morning on the adventure playground.

Next week the children also have a visit to Lark Hill museum in Salford to look forward to where they will get to experience first hand what it was like to live like a Victorian child.

Year 3 have had a great start to our striking and fielding unit of work in PE. They have been learning about different fielding and batting skills and have started to play some simple games of cricket. They have enjoyed working alongside Dom our cricket coach from Cricket Asylum. Dom has been really impressed with the children’s listening skills during the lessons and their enthusiasm towards the game.

In literacy we have started a new text type, information texts. The children have been reading a selection of information texts and posters to identify the structure and layout. They have also been working hard to identify the different way sentences can vary such as the way it may start or whether the sentence is a short, snappy sentence or a more detailed expanded sentence. With this in mind, the children have worked with Mrs Crowe and I to craft informative sentences and paragraphs of their own.

At the end of the week the children created a plan using headings and bullet points, based on their understanding of the Victorians. Today they started to turn their notes into full sentences, thinking about what they have learnt so far.

In maths, the children are really being challenged! They have been developing their reasoning and problem solving skills by completing a variety of number or shape/measure related problems. I have been having learning conversations with different groups of children to help them verbalise their learning and explain their working out.

Finally, we have now kick started our new geography enquiry based on Mainland Orkney. The children have brought a piece of homework home based on this area of learning, focusing on tourism on the island. In science, the children are really enjoying learning about how fossils are formed. Over the next couple of weeks, they will be experimenting with and sorting a selection of different rocks and soils.

Another exciting and enjoyable week in Y3! This half term we have been joined by a coach called Dom from cricket asylum, who work alongside Bury Cricket Club. We had our first session on Tuesday where the children enjoyed playing simple bowling and catching games.

The children always really enjoy any form of competition during our PE lessons and so far our lessons have been full of competition, collaboration and cooperative activities. Our upcoming cricket sessions over the next 6 weeks look like they are going to be exactly the same!

In maths this term, the children have started to access reasoning and problem based activities. We worked through 1 and 2 step problems in pairs and talked through each problem as a group. In general, we found out that there are sometimes different ways to get to an answer by showing different methods or calculations. Our discussions really helped the children to verbalise their learning and to hear from others how they can solve a problem they had previously struggled with.

Keep on learning your x3, x4 and x8 times tables, we are improving week by week, great work!

Over the next two weeks, we will complete our learning about Victorian societies, workhouses and schools. This week we will be using the following links in class to support our learning, so you might want to have a look at them at home too. Click here to find out about Victorian schools and the punishments that were in place. Click here to find out about the rich and poor families. Finally, click here to find out about the different jobs the children had to do.

This week, we have started to read a variety of diaries from the past. We have been discussing the way they are set out on the page, the tense they have been written in and the way the authors explain their feelings using descriptive language. The children will continue to follow the writing route map over the next few weeks to craft pieces of writing to help them write their independent diary entry from the perspective of a Victorian child. If you have any examples of diary writing at home that you would like to share then bring them into school.

We look forward to seeing you at our class assembly this week on Thursday 14th April at 9:10am, where we will showcase our learning about Victorian workhouses.