A wonderful day

Good morning.
This week in English we have continued to look at persuasive writing. We are now at the innovation stage of our writing where we are creating a leaflet to persuade people that Crabtree would make an excellent weekend attraction. Why not ask your child what activities they said you could do during the weekend? In Cedar we had laser tag, Jacuzzis, flight simulation and pitch and putt. In Rowan we had a wedding venue, dazzling dance studios and glitter tattoo parlour! We will be writing our leaflets next week and hoping the children incorporate all the grammar skills we have taught them. These include - rhetorical questions, personal pronouns, bossy verbs, alliteration, exaggeration and emotive words. Maybe your child could tell you what they remember about these specific skills for persuasive writing?


In Maths Mr Clifford's set has been working on consolidating written methods for multiplication and division. The children have really enjoyed some investigative approaches too. In Mrs Mercer's and Mrs Gaines' set we have been looking at addition and subtraction and techniques to apply to our work to help us spot patterns and use what we know. For example if we know that 7 + 8 = 15, we also can also workout that 27 + 8 = 35. We have moved onto more efficient written methods now which the children have enjoyed and been tackling some word problems. Our next unit will be to revisit multiplication and division so please keep working on the times tables as it really helps the childrens' fluency.


If you would like to support your child in their maths fluency this game called hit the button is highly recommended.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button




In science we are enjoying the practical side to testing magnets and this week the children devised their own question to investigate. Some questions include-
1. Are small magnets as powerful as big magnets?
2. How far does the magnetic field extend?
3. Are horse shoe magnets as effective as bar magnets?


Please continue to support your child with their reading and recording this in their reading records. It is beneficial that they are encouraged to read a variety of different authors and a mix of fiction and non fiction.


Last Tuesday, the 25th April, year 3 had a wonderful day at St.Albans Abbey. We had the opportunity to dress up as Anglo Saxons; learnt about how they invade after the Romans and enjoyed learning about the food they ate. Please see below for some lovely photos of the children so you can see what activities we did.

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

Happy Easter holidays!

The last week of term has been very busy. It was lovely to meet many of you at the parent consultations and talk about your children's progress.

We haven't set an official homework this holiday but we have set some Easter challenges. Some examples include-

• climb your favourite tree,

• make an Easter bonnet,

• play a family game and

• practise reciting some of your tables.

If your children are at a loose end and fancy trying some of the challenges, it would be lovely to see some photos or pictures they have done.

We hope you and your families have a well, deserved Easter holiday. We look forward to seeing you all in the summer term.

HAPPY EASTER FROM THE YEAR THREE TEAM

Spring has sprung!

Spring has sprung today and the children have enjoyed the excitement of Red Nose Day in some sunshine. Thank you for all the efforts today with non school uniform and dressing up to support this wonderful charity event, the children looked brilliant.

Over the last fortnight we have started a new English unit. We are now looking at Adventure as our text type and how to write an exciting story. The children are becoming aware of what features they need to include and have enjoyed our stimulus text called 'The Tunnel'. Why not ask your child what the storyline is and why it is considered an adventure? Within the unit we are also looking at aspects of grammar that would improve our writing. In particular we have learnt about expanded noun phrases, powerful verbs, inverted commas and varying our openers. Why not ask your children if they can expand the noun - tunnel, forest or tree? Hopefully, you will be impressed with their response!

In Maths in Mrs Gaines and Mrs Mercer's set we have been looking at multiplication and division. We have practised our tables, spotted patterns between tables, applied our knowledge to larger numbers and started to write a formal calculation for division. The children have enjoyed the challenges it can bring but we are pleased to say, they have risen to them. You can support your child at home by playing fun games and practising the tables, using a quick fire approach. There are also numerous apps and games online that help with this.
We can recommendHit the button tables practise.
In Mr Clifford's set they have been looking at Statistics which includes reading and interpretating graphs and tables. 

In Design and Technology we have started designing photo frames and we will be starting to make them next week. We will be using wood and new tools, so the children will be facing some new and exciting challenges.

As always we are appreciative of your continued support to help home and school links. Please continue to hear your children read regularly, asking questions as they read to ensure they are undersatnding the text. Please practice times tables whenever conveient and a fantastic opportunity to practise money is when at the shops.

Word problem- Susan buys 6 sweets at 4p each. She has a fifty pence piece. How much change should she get back?

Next week is parent consultations, Monday and Tuesday, so please look in your child's school bag for a consultation slip informing you what time your appointment is. We look forward to seeing you all then.

Enjoy some Spring sunshine this week
The year 3 team

Busy but fun days

Last week year 3 wowed the school with a confident assembly performance. Every line was audible and remembered unprompted and the singing and dancing was brilliant. Well done year 3. In addition to a fabulous assembly, we also had the excitement of book day. During the day the children wrote their own story, unaided, which they all then submitted into a writing competition. We will hopefully have a chance to share some of these stories in class but there was no opportunity this week.

Assessment week has been very busy.  The whole year group rose to the occasion and everyone tried their hardest. The children have had Maths tests in every area (place value, geometry, measurement,  fractions, statistics and the four rules of number)  to check their understanding. We also assessed them in three different reading comprehensions - fiction, non fiction and poetry. The children took it all in their stride and are now looking forward to a more relaxed day on Monday, in the form of Science day!

Homework
In preparation for this and to have a break from English and Maths, we have sent home a science homework. The idea is that the children make a colourful spinner and then make observations whilst spinning it. All the resources have been provided for the children and put inside their science book. We hope you have fun creating it and we look forward to seeing the results.
We have also set their weekly spellings and would like them to continue writing in their reading records as often as they can.

Help at home
Further support you could give your child at home is to continue practicing the times tables with them, especially Mrs Mercer's and Mrs Gaines' group as we are moving onto the unit of multiplication and division next week. First we will be looking at the 3, 4  and 8 times table. There are lots of fun websites and apps that help children to learn the tables at speed and being tested on an IPAD or computer doesn't always seem like work!

In Science we have just started our topic of plants so if you are a keen gardener you could talk to your children about why you plant certain seeds or bulbs at different times of year.

In English we are moving onto the genre of Adventure stories, if you wanted to practice orally rehearsing stories, that could be fun together.

For example ... On a quiet, deserted island the young boy called Pete, spied an adventure map in a bottle. Without hesitation he pulled it out and saw.....