Friday 21 April 2017

Welcome back, it's summer!

Good afternoon and welcome back to the summer term. This week we have started some new topics in the creative curriculum and Science. We have embarked on a historic journey through time learning about the Anglo-Saxons. The children listened attentively about the Invaders that arrived in Britain after the Romans. With this new knowledge, they are now very excited about our trip to St. Albans Abbey new week. Hopefully this 'Big Bang' start with prompt more questions about this period of history, which we can then develop further in class.

In Science we began our topic on Forces and magnets. As classes we discussed what we understood by pushes and pulls, friction and gravity. The children were able to show their understanding through sharing examples of each force. We touched upon these contact forces but our unit is mainly about the non contact force of magnetism, which we know the children will enjoy. Only a few moments with the magnets showed this! If they fancy having some fun online learning more about magnets, why not try this BBC science game?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/7_8/magnets_springs_fs.shtml

In English we started a new unit and a text type we haven't covered yet, persuasion. The children  have had the opportunity to persuade their friends to part with a sweet, buy a house and today we looked at emotive language. The children have been sharing lots of good examples of when they have used persuasion before for extended bedtimes or one more Easter egg! They were pretty good but didn't manage to persuade the year 3 teachers to have a longer playtime!

We looked at leaflets and how the language, layout and information can help us decide if we want to visit a place or purchase something new. Why not ask your child if they can tell you what emotive language is? Or perhaps, what is a rhetorical question?

In Maths Mr Clifford's class have been looking at multiplication and Mrs Gaines and Mrs Mercer's class have been revisiting addition and subtraction. A little game that you could play is one that involves practicing number bonds.

Number bonds
Player one - 'I say 7, you say...'
Player two '3'
Player one - 'I say 14 you say...'
Player two- '6'
Player one - 'I say 26...'
Player two - '4'

It is lovely to be hearing all about the adventures the children had over Easter break. From holidays away to chilling at home with family playing board games, they clearly all had a wonderful break.

We look forward to another great term with your children. We have lots of exciting things to look forward to starting with swimming on Monday and our trip to St. Albans on Tuesday. Thank you in advance to all our parent helpers for swimming and the trip, it is appreciated.

The year 3 team