Year Three 2019/20

Welcome to the Year 3 page for this year! On here you will find out about all the fantastic things we have been doing inside and outside of the classroom. I will update it regularly with a range of information and pictures from our days in Year 3 so look out for changes and enjoy learning with us!

Times Tables song links...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCxvNtrcDIs   (count in 2s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh8YmvJuJ8A (count in 5s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LjzvbTw8E4 (count in 3s)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/supermovers/ks1-maths-the-5-times-table/zhbm47h (5 times tables)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/supermovers/ks2-maths-the-3-times-table/z6sw382 (3 times tables)

Autumn 1

Below is our context for learning for this half term which explains what we will be doing in school until October. If you want to do extra practise at home, then that would be very helpful and the children will be able to share their ideas with the class. 

As we are looking to answer the question 'Who first lived in Britain?' we have been collecting our ideas and putting our archaeologist hats on. We have learnt that the Stone Age was in prehistoric times, so there were no books or photographs for us to learn about this time. Therefore, we must look at clues that have been left behind! We looked at many different artefacts and discussed what they may have been and what they were used for.

We also learned what BC and AD are and used this to order a timeline from the beginning of the Stone Age to the end of the Iron Age.

Our Science topic this half term is all about light and shadow. We started looking at an artist called William Turner who was known as 'The Painter of Light' and we described some of his fantastic work. We looked at one of his paintings that we thought was very beautiful and talked about how Turner had used his art work to show the reflection of light. 

We recreated this piece of work but didn't use paint like Turner, instead we created a collage by overlapping and layering different materials. The children chose reflective materials to show the reflection of light on the water. 

During our whole class reading sessions, we have looked at an informative text all about the Stonehenge, which links with our history work. We learnt that although it was built thousands of years ago, it was very carefully planned out. They planned it so that the sunset and sunrise could be seen through the stones from Mid Summer to Mid Winter. 

After looking at many facts and pictures of the Stonehenge, we looked at what techniques we could use to recreate it. The children used their pencils at first to practise the technique of shading as they felt how they could change the lightness and darkness of the colour by how they held their pencil. They then used oil pastels to show the setting of the sun through this technique of shading.

As we have learnt before, the Stone Age was in the prehistoric times so archaeologists are still finding and studying clues about what happened all those years ago. One discovery that has been made quite recently are the cave paintings. These cave paintings are often of animals, humans and hand prints and are thought to tell a story. We looked at many different pictures of the caves that have been found and decided to paint our own!

In the Stone Age they didn't have fancy paintbrushes, so would have painted with anything that they had available to them. In Year 3, we decided that something that everyone had available to them was our fingers, so we got a little bit messy!

We have been fantastic scientists this half term and carried out many investigations to find out more about light and shadow. The children have been using scientific vocabulary to describe opaque, translucent and transparent materials and how they form different shadows. 

They also measured the sizes of shadows to see how they changed. We found out and made a conclusion that the further away the light source, the smaller the shadow.

After spending the majority of the half term looking at the Stone Age, we spent the last day learning about the Iron Age. We found out that there started to be lots of fighting and one of the main groups of fighters were the Celts. We became Celtic warriors and learned how they fought, what they wore and how they protected themselves.

We created our own Iron Age shields and came up with a chant to try and scare our enemies away. Have a look at the pictures and the video below to see how vicious we are!

Autumn 2

Below is our context for learning for this half term which explains what we will be doing in school until Christmas. If you want to do extra practise at home, then that would be very helpful and the children will be able to share their ideas with the class. 

As part of our science topic, we will be looking closely at the properties of rocks around the world. During our first lesson, we observed them and grouped them simply. The children were amazed at how many different types of rocks there are.

We have been working really hard in our science lessons learning all about how rocks are formed. There are 3 types of rock; igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic and they are all made in different ways so have varying properties. We used different types of chocolate to make our own sedimentary rocks and when we revealed them we were very pleased to find the layers that this type of rock should contain. 

In Year 3, we love learning French and learning all the different vocabulary. We were very fortunate this half term because we had a visit from a French lady called Mrs Paris! She told us a french story about different colours mixing and we made our own French books to show what we had learnt. 

We have been using the ipads to find volcanoes on a world map. We have been using our geography skills to locate them in different countries. The children discussed how most of them were in The Ring of Fire and we looked into why this was.

After a long process of learning about them, designing them and making them, we finally erupted our volcanoes! The children did brilliantly at creating a very realistic volcano as they were all different shapes and sizes, just as they are in the natural world. Have a little look at the pictures below of the finished pieces and how well they erupted.

In Year 3, the children have a very important job of acting out the Nativity and I am sure that everyone lucky enough to watch will agree that they did a fantastic job! 

I was so incredibly proud of every single one of them as they were very professional, have a look at how they played different characters in their fancy costumes.

After working so hard, the children enjoyed an enormously deserved Christmas party. They danced, play games and they even had a very special visitor!

Well done for an amazing first term Year 3 and I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Spring 1

Have a little look at our context for learning to see what we will be learning about this half term.

As we have been looking at the geography of Greece, we have discussed the similarities and the differences between their culture and ours. One thing we talked about was their diet as England is famous for comforting, warm foods like roast dinners, fish and chips and cups of tea. Where as Greece is famous for salads, olives and fish because of the location and hot weather.

We planned and made one of the most famous dishes, a Greek salad. We combined ingredients such as cucumber, olives, tomatoes, lemon juice and feta cheese whilst making sure we were using a safe chopping technique. A lot of the children were surprisingly happy with how much they liked their salad and the majority of the class gave it a thumbs up.

Spring 2

Look below at our context for learning to see what the children will be learning this half term.

We are looking at forces and magnets in science and the children have shown great scientific work as they planned and carried out an investigation to find out what material causes the most friction. We recorded our results in a table, discussed our findings and wrote up a conclusion. 

For World Book Week, we focused on the book 'Supertato' and the children wrote brilliant stories from the Evil Pea's Perspective. We also recreated some of the scenes in the original story as we decorated fruits and vegetables.

Summer 1

I hope you are all keeping well at this time. Thank you for all of those that are completing work at home, I love reading the children's ideas. Below are some documents outlining what we would be learning during this half term if were in school.