Ansdell Primary School

We have been very busy in Y3 learning about The Stone Age. We have learnt a lot about how life changed from the beginning to the end of the Stone Age period. We have also written fantastic discussions about whether or not we think it would be fun to live in Stone Age times! 

In maths we have used concrete resources to support our understanding of addition and subtraction and applied it to a range of reasoning and problem solving questions.

This half term we have started Military School with Wayne and Brian. We are really enjoying all of our team work activities and are showing super levels of confidence and respect. We are looking forward to our 'Passing Out' parade on Wednesday 4th December.

Finally, a big thank you for all of the fabulous 'Explorer' projects that have come into school since half term! We have really enjoyed showing these off and listening to everything our classmates have found out.

Here are a selection of pictures showing collaborative learning when researching our explorer Jacques Cousteau and our fabulous cave paintings. 

A very warm welcome to Year 3. The children have settled back into school life extremely well and are showing wonderful enthusiasm; impressing all of their teachers! Are new class name is 'Cousteau Class' and we have already started to learn about the life and work of the wonderful explorer Jacques Cousteau. 

In our topic work this half term we are delving into Britain since the Stone Age. We will also explore rocks and soils and look forward to a fantastic Archaeology workshop on Thursday 19th September. (Please click here for a copy of the letter.)

In English we are reading 'Stig of the Dump', 'Stone Age Boy' and 'Ice Monster' is our class novel.

The focus for maths is place value and will include numbers to 1000; comparing and ordering and finding 1, 10, 100 more and less.

General information regarding Year 3 including homework and PE will be given at our meet the teacher session on Wednesday 18th. We look forward to seeing you then.

Friday 21st June

It has been a fun week in school, we had a Skype call with David Rothschild who was telling us all about his work with manta rays; and we made the most of the sunshine, finishing off our athletics topic, by learning how to 'sling' throw.  We have started our new history topic; 'The Romans' and have learned the reasons why Claudius wanted to invade Britain and about we found out about Boudica.  We acted out the story, you can see some of the pictures below. 

Friday 7th June

We have had a great three days in school, completing our information texts all about Seed Dispersal and  problems linked to 3- D shapes.  We also reached 3000 class Dojo points so we have had a very enjoyable Friday afternoon making lots of wonderful things out of junk. 

Friday 24th March

We have had a lovely week at school.  We all enjoyed our fabulous Sport's Day and especially eating our picnics with our families out on the field.  Following our visit from Suki Woodhouse, we began our own pieces of plastic pollution artwork.

Friday 3rd March

We finally finished the end of our story, it was very sad but we feel we have learnt a lot from it.  We were very lucky to have a local artist Suki Woodhouse, come in to speak to us about how she takes the plastic she collects from the beaches and how she turns it into art work.  We are looking forward to having a go ourselves int he next couple of weeks. 

Friday 26th March

We have had a fantastic first week back to start our summer term, from writing settings to throwing javelins at one another! We have started to explore how to identify emotions within ourselves and others and have completed all of our work looking at Pentecost and how it is celebrated by Christians. 

Please ensure your child has both indoor and outdoor PE kits in school on a Tuesday and a Friday. Thank you. 

Friday 8th March

Another busy week at school; we have started our new class text, 'This Morning I Met a Whale' and we have been looking very carefully at the vocabulary and how the writer creates images in our minds. Our circus themed costumes for our teddy bears have been made out of cloth and now we have had lots of practice at sewing, we are almost ready to make our final pieces.  For World Book Day, we shared the story; The Enormous Crocodile' and spent the day designing and making crocodile traps.  We also started using an animation programme to retell the story. 

Thank you to everyone for all the fantastic costumes and 'Book in a Jar' entries.

Next Tuesday and Thursday are our Parents' Evenings and we are looking forward to seeing you all. 

Friday 15th February

We have had a lovely week completing lots of artwork linked to the circus and trying to write our own Circus themed performance poetry.  We finished off the week enjoying our class reward, watching 'The Greatest Showman' and eating ice cream.  

Have a great time over half term. 

Friday 8th February

A huge thank you to all of you that managed to attend our 'Share our Learning' afternoon.  It was so fantastic to see so many of you here and the children were incredibly excited to be able to share their fantastic work with you. 

Friday 1st February

Whilst the snow has been falling outside, we have been designing our own circus costumes, writing our own circus themed stories and are finally getting to grips with finding equivalent fractions.  We are all doing very well with our weekly spelling and our reading is improving every day.  Please continue working on these at home.  We also had a visit from Harold, the Giraffe in his Life Education bus where we found out lots more information about our bodies and brains and how we can look after them properly.    

Friday 25th January

We have finished our class story, 'Leon and the Place Between' and we are going to write our own versions over the next couple of weeks.  We have been completing lots of works on fractions; looking at adding them and finding fractions of numbers. 

Friday 18th January

We have had a very busy (and loud) start to the Spring Term with our wider opportunities percussion lessons and we have already learned the names of lots of new instruments.  In class, we have started looking at the circus as our overall theme; exploring different acts and costumes and examining lots of maps of different scales to find out about where circuses are located, starting of course, with the Tower Circus at Blackpool. 

Friday 14th December

This week, we have finished our Sparky, the Sloth, stories and we have started to make our different sleeping solutions for him.  

Thank you for all the projects that have been made at home, they are fantastic.  You can see a selection of them below. 

Friday 7th December

This week we have created some beautiful artwork based upon the Nativity Story.  We selected a particular part of the story each and painted it using some famous pieces of artwork for inspiration.  

To celebrate Advent this year, we have bought a charity Advent Calendar and each day when we open a window, we find out which charity we have helped that day.  We have started to look at some of the work these charities do and we feel very lucky to be able to help others in need. 

Friday 30th November

Friday 23rd November

We have had an energetic week learning our times tables with BBC Supermovers, you can join it at home too if you follow this link: BBC Supermovers

A visitor came into school and taught us some fantastic yoga moves. 

Friday 16th November

Our children have had an amazing week remembering WW1 and 100 years since Armistice Day. Children visited the war memorial in St. Annes on Monday and this led on to some fantastic work remembering our local fallen soldiers. Children created their own memorials, time part in a whole school display, wrote poetry and learned a lot about war time including trenches, rationing and life as a soldier. The week was topped off by a wonderful workshop delivered by a soldier. Many thanks to the PTFA for supporting this event. Please take a look at the display in the foyer if you are passing.

Homework: SPAG sheet and spellings..

Friday 9th November 

A huge thank you to all the parents for meeting with us over this week and to those who have rearranged appointments. We feel very lucky to be able to teach your children and it is great that we are all working together to ensure you child gets the most out of each and every day.  

We have had a extra member join our class this week: Sparky, the Sloth.  He arrived in a box on Monday and we have spent the week getting to know him a little better.  We also received a letter asking us to design a new place for Sparky to sleep as it is getting too cold for him to sleep outside in the tree.  In order to make sure we make the best sleeping structure possible, we starting looking at how we build structures and how we make them strong and stable.   

Friday 2nd November 

We have has a fantastic week finishing off all of our Stone Age to Iron Age work.  We have build 3D models of a Iron Age settlement and look forward to you seeing them next week.  Today we made some oat flat bread and stewed fruit: a Stone Age version of jam on toast.  

Friday 19th October - We hope you all have a lovely week off and look forward to seeing you all again on Tuesday 30th October 

This week we have had a fantastic archaeology workshop where the children were really engaged with lots of Stone Age artifacts and practices.   

Friday 12th October

This week we have been learning all about different shapes and how we find and measure right angles.  We are continuing to develop our times tables knowledge, not just the answers to them but also the patterns and rules within them. We have started to retell our class story in our own words and have used conjunctions and some fronted adverbials to make them even better.  During P.E., we have looked at different ways to travel, roll and balance and have created sequences for these using the equipment. We have had our creative juices flowing, depicting the Christian Creation story in a variety of different ways. 

Friday 5th October 

First of all, a huge thank you to all the children who came back to school on Wednesday evening to support with Open Evening.  It was a great success and the children made us very proud, as always!

This week we have spent a lot of time researching information about Woolly Mammoths, finding out why and how they were hunted and also the dangers associated with hunting such a huge animal.  We used this information to create our own games and you can see some of them below. 

Friday 28th September

We have had a good week which has been finished off with learning lots of new songs from the Sing Together Team, which have enthused the children so much we now have almost all members of the class wanting to join the school choir which is fantastic.  We have continued to explore lots of mental addition and subtraction methods and understand how partitioning and using a number line can help us. We have explored how Stone Age people might have been feeling throughout our class text and have learned lots of new words for 'scared'.  Following on from last week, we now also know lots information about the Mesolithic Period and are looking forward to creating our own 'Hunt the Woolly Mammoth' games next week. 

In the gallery below you can see some our our amazing Cave paintings.  We worked as groups with pastels and hope you like them as much as we do. 

Friday 21st September

Maths Homework

We have sent home a Mental Arithmetic book for your children to work from.  They will need to complete Section 1, Test 1 and return the book to school by next Friday.  Some of your children will be able to do this completely independently and some will need some support.  This work is designed to revisit and recap all previous and current learning in maths and is to help your child see maths written down in a variety of ways, in order to deepen their understanding.  Thank you. 

We have had a busy week learning all about rocks and The Stone Age.  We  have been archaeologists, exploring Stone Age tools and making decisions about what they may have been used for.  We have also been looking at what life was like for the earliest humans during the Palaeolithic period.  We are learning lots of mental calculation strategies and most of us can now tell the difference between 'its' and 'it's'!  We have had lots of fun with Rob from Fleetwood Town who has been helping us to understand how to be active with our bodies and our minds. A very productive week. 

Friday 14th September

We have sent home some spellings for the children to learn.  They are in a little orange book and should be in your child's school bag.  We have also put a link to the current spellings at the top of this page and this will be updated on a weekly basis.  The spellings sent home are based upon a unit of spelling that we will complete in school each week so your child will have had time to look at,  explore and practice them within school too.  We will do a spelling test every Friday so ask that the books are returned in order to do this.  The children will mark their own spellings and we will just have a check to see how they are doing with them. We find this a very useful method as some children find learning spellings challenging and it also allows children to take some ownership over their own learning.  Please just have a practice with them and we will do the rest. Thank you. 

We have also sent home the GPS homework.  This is a single sheet of paper with 6 sections on it.  This covers some of the GPS that will be covered throughout the year so most children may need a little help with it as, with it only being week 2 back at school, we haven't covered everything yet.  We have gone through it with the children and explained this. 

Welcome to Year 3! The children have made a wonderful start adjusting to life in the junior school. They have been setting an excellent first impression and shown engagement with their learning. This half term we are exploring all things Stone Age - based on the book 'The First Drawing' by Mordicai Gerstein - Yabba Dabba Doo!

Thank you to those who were able to make it to 'Meet the Teacher'. Packs were sent home last Friday with key Y3 information and you will find links to these below. If anyone has any queries, please don't hesitate to catch either Mrs Thomas or Mrs Rainford at the end of the day or organise an appointment via the school office.

Welcome to Year 3

Long Term Plan

Year 3 Word List 

The first homework will be sent home this Friday (14th).

Year 3 2017-2018***Year 3 2017-2018

Thank you to all the children who completed their Summer Term Learning Projects.  They were fabulous.  Please see the videos and photographs below. 

  Adam                Arabella                Bea              Brooke               Erik              Esme            Isabella         Jensen            Amelie 

Jessica              Lilah                    Maja              Martha               Nate           Olivia             Rory            Tristan            Yasmin

A very hot week  in Year 3 but it hasn't stopped us.  We have finished our fraction games and have nearly complete our National Park presentations ready for Year 4 to evaluate them.  We have worked very hard to develop or sketching skills ready to create our very own 'Tin Forests' and are staring to look at where the rainforests are in the world. Our Archery lessons have continued and we are hitting the target a little more consistently.

Archery 

25.05.08 Homework - Your child should have brought home a Year 3 word list.  These are the words they are supposed to be able to read and spell by the the end of Year 3.  For the second part of the Summer Term, we will pick, at random, ten spellings off the list.  Therefore your child, will not bring a spelling list home every week to learn but should, instead, focus on learning the spellings from the list. Thank you.

We have really enjoyed our fantastic Health and Fitness week and want to thank you all for supporting us at our school Sports Day.  We finished the busy week tasting a rainbow of healthy snacks and we are ready for a nice week off. We hope you all have a lovely half term break. 

We have had a fantastic Friday celebrating the Royal wedding.  We designed our own wedding cakes and Mrs Colligan judged them to see which was the best, you can see them below, and we had a challenge to complete the Royal Family Tree. We ate our lunch outside altogether and we are looking forward to the wedding tomorrow.  

Planting Beans

Yesterday we started to look at plants and the main jobs of the roots. We then planted our own beans to investigate how roots grow. Hopefully over the coming weeks we will be able to see how the roots develop as well as having some tasty broad beans to try!

We hope you all enjoyed the lovely weather for the Bank Holiday weekend.  It is hard to believe how much we have managed to learn in just four days!  We have spent some time looking at pictograms and bar charts; answering lots of questions about the information in them and have started a lovely new book called 'The Tin Forest'.  In RE we explored the life of St Julian, and following one of her most famous quotes: 'God made it, God loves it and God looks after it.', we went on to look at images of the natural world and recreate them using pastels . 

We have had a very busy week this week.  We have managed to complete all our work on The Romans and ended our topic with a lovely visit to Lancaster Museum to find out a little bit more about Roman soldiers and to look at some real Roman artefacts.  

Project Presenting

Last week Year 3 got the chance to present their projects, that they worked very hard on! There were a mixture of Lego creations, bridges, games and much more. Some of us even got the chance to play the games that were presented.

We all listened well and asked plenty of questions. Well done Year 3! We are looking forward to seeing your next projects.

Welcome back to school, we hope you all had an enjoyable Easter break, despite the wet weather.  We have started to learn how to play cricket this week with Danny, from Lancashire Cricket Board. We practiced lots of different skills in the playground and are looking forward to learning lots more over the next six weeks.  Please can you make sure your child has an outdoor PE kit, with trainers, in school on a Tuesday and Thursday.  We have also started our Roman themed stop start animation work, which the children completed in groups without much teacher support. Please see below. 

Junior, Joseph, Esme, Erik

Maja, Martha, Olivia, Emma

Another busy week to end the term with.  We enjoyed performing our Samba to the whole school on Wednesday, please take a look here.

We also enjoyed showcasing all of our learning to our parents on Friday, it is amazing how much work we get through!  Thank you to all the parents and family members for turning up once again to support our amazing children. 

Thank you to all the children for their fantastic project work, he have not had a chance to look at them all in detail, so will do this after the holidays. 

We have really enjoyed this week and have completed lots of fun, practical activities.  We have constructed 3-D shapes out of straws and have explored angles that are greater than and smaller then right angles.  We are enjoying our new book during English lessons, 'Escape from Pompeii', are have written lots of descriptive sentences about it already.  Thinking about Roman Art - we have started to make sculptures of ourselves - we cant wait to see if you can guess who is who.  By far the most exciting, and unusual, session this week, has to be our 'Beaver' workshop.  We learned all about beavers and we even when in to the gardens to make our own beaver lodges and dams.  A big thank you to Donald Malone from Wildsidenature.

It has been a fantastic week in Year 3 this week.  We have based all of our work around the book 'The Colour of Home', which tells the story of Hassan, a Somalian refugee, during his first few days at an English school.   We have talked about refugees and have measured distances between places in Somalia. We looked at some traditional Somali dance and made up our own versions, you can see them below. 

Somalian Dance 1

Somalian Dance 2

Somalian Dance 3

Somalian Dance 4

Somalian Dance 5

Somalian Dance 6

Somalian Dance 7

Somalian Dance 8

Somalian Dance 9

We have had a lovely first week back with all children really participating in everything we do.  We have started to write our own chapters in English and have been exploring capacity in Maths.  We even managed to get outside one afternoon to follow compass directions and complete some sketching.  Our Yoga Books are finished and just need to be evaluated by the Year 4 children.   We had fun playing games on Mapzone to help develop our mapping skills, have a play at home too if you like.  The children have been trialing a new behaviour for learning system called ClassDojo and have managed to collect a few points already. 

We are all looking forward to Book Week next week, especially relaxing in our lounge wear on Friday!

This term is flying by, we cannot believe it is only a week until half term - we still have so much learning to squeeze in.  We have started to think of our own ideas ready for adding our very own chapters to our story, in the form of a play script and are looking forward to acting them out to one another.  Looking at division in maths, we know how to share and group and we are getting much more confident when using a number line to help us.  Our Yoga books are almost finished, now we have perfected some of the moves, ask your child to teach you the Turtle! Our contour maps of Scotland took a little bit of work but they look fabulous and Nessie knows exactly where the low lands and highlands are, as we continue to help her navigate her way home. 

We are all looking forward to our Edinburgh visit, a copy of the letter can be found here. Edinburgh Letter

26.01.18 HOMEWORK UPDATE

There has been a little misunderstanding regarding homework through the transition from Mr Thwaites to myself and Mr Parkinson and we would like to apologise and clarify the situation.

From Friday 2nd February, (because the arithmetic books have already gone home) Children will bring GPS (English) homework one week and will complete My Maths the following week. We will continue to alternative between the two, week after week. Children will also have spellings each week and are encouraged to read books and learn their Times Tables continuously.  The arithmetic books will be completed during school time and will therefore, no longer come home as homework.  The children will continue to complete one piece of project work per term, linked to topics being covered in school. 

We hope this clarifies the situation but if anyone has any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you

Mrs Rainford and Mr Parkinson

We have had another busy week. We have looked at how we write dialogue and have started to summarise the main ideas within our story.  We have had a challenging week looking at fractions and where they go on the number line but have all got it now!  In our quest to get Nessie home, we have explored the similarities and differences between the UK, Great Britain and The British Isles. See picture below.  We have started to create our Yoga instruction manuals using 'Book Creator' and have worked really hard to perfect some of our Yoga moves - especially the arrow!

Thank you for the positive replies to the Edinburgh Visit, we are hoping to get everything finalised early next week and will be sending more detailed information as we do this. 

Firstly, we hope you've all had a fantastic Christmas and wish you all the best for the New Year.

This week we've started our new English topic, The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, which has been a huge hit with the children. The purpose of this is to eventually write our own chapter of the book in the form of a play script. We have been looking at lots of different mental addition and subtraction strategies in Maths, and are having a real push on learning our times tables.  Please continue learning these when out and about or driving in the car.  In Geography, we have been looking at the world around us,  developing our geography skills by locating the different continents, oceans and European countries as part of a rescue mission to help 'Nessie' (Loch Ness Monster) find her way back home from outer space. (She has been swapped not for goldfish, but for aliens!).  Children have started looking at different bridges found in Scotland and will be working towards engineering one of their own.

Please click here to see Spring Term Welcome Letter

A huge well done to KS1 for their nativity this week. The children of Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed it so thank you very much for entertaining us. 

The build-up to Christmas has really gathered pace this week with the children practicing their nativity songs, eating a glorious Christmas dinner and wearing their festive jumpers today. 

In English, we have continued with their Poetry unit of work creating their very own, 'Backward Senses,' poem. Over the last couple of days, the children have also created a number of wonderful poems using the poem, 'The Magic Box,' as a stimulus. They have used a range of imagery devices, for instance simile, metaphor and personification. The poems are truly spectacular and convey a number of 'magical' images. Hopefully, if the children manage to get them typed up in time, they will be able to bring a copy home to share with you at home.Below is a little taster of what to expect...

First of all I’d like to apologise about the confusion at the end of the day last week. To ensure you all know when homework and spellings are due in please read the following:

Maths and GPS books were to be handed in this Friday, if you weren’t able to due to lack of time, please hand in on Monday next week.

Spellings – the children received new spellings on Wednesday and they will be tested on these next Friday.

The children have worked very hard this week to use a number of tricky skills to help them create imagery when writing poetry. It’s been great to see them being able to spot skill within poems, when other children are reading their own examples and spotting mistakes when skills have been used incorrectly. As a result, the children can now use metaphors, similes, personification, repetition and onomatopoeia with increasing levels of accuracy. A huge pat on the back is needed.

In Maths, we have been investigating the properties of 3D shapes. Using terminology like edges, vertices and faces. The children have been able to spot incorrect answers when sorting 2D and 3D shapes using both Caroll diagrams and Venn diagrams. Over the last couple of days, we have been learning about horizontal, vertical, parallel and perpendicular lines with great success.

Finally, today has been a very exciting day as the children have been dressed in their Christmas finery as it’s the Christmas Fayre tonight from 4 - 6pm. I’m sure it will be a great evening so please come along and join in the Christmas festivities.

The Christmas preparations have started early in Year 3 this week. The children are busy creating two different craft ideas to sell at the Christmas Fayre on Friday 8th December - an angel to hang from your tree at home and a candle to give you that extra warmth over the Christmas period. They are looking pretty spectacular and a lot of effort has gone into making them so well done to all the children. 

The children have now completed their non-chronological reports on the Stone Age and will be presenting these to Year 6 at the beginning of next week to inform them about the Stone Age period. It's been great to see the children really applying the skills they've been learning during this term in their writing so a huge round of applause goes to the children - keep it up!

In Maths, the children have been taking on learning to tell the time using an analogue clock and 12/24 hour clocks. This has proved to be a tricky concept to grasp yet one that the children have really applied themselves to, resulting in them showing a much improved understanding of how to tell the time.

Where has November gone? It's been an extremely busy week once again. 

In English, the children have taken their notes, related to the Stone Age, and placed them into their own plan. Next week, they will be given the challenging task of producing a non-chronological report to inform Year 6 about the Stone Age. With the fantastic facts they have gathered, their new found ability to change notes into sentences and there enthusiasm for the topic, I'm sure they will produce a number of informative reports.

In Maths, the children have been developing their understanding of how to divide using a range of strategies. To help them with this further it would be great if they could practice their x2 and x3 facts at home as they are very useful when trying to divide. We have been learning them in class and have even learnt a song to help us remember them. I'm sure, if you ask the children, they'll happily sing it to you.

Have a lovely weekend and I'll hopefully see you at the Ansdell light switch on tonight.

What a great end to the week.

This morning we watched an Anti-bullying performance called the Power of One which delivered a very strong message about what bullying is and what we should do to prevent it from happening in our school. The children really engaged in the assembly and had a blast whilst also picking up some extremely important messages about bullying.

At break time, Year 6 held a Cake sale which proved very popular indeed with children queueing from one end of the school yard to the other. It was great to see so many children really engaged in their learning after break time however I’m not too sure whether it was my teaching or the fact the children had eaten so many delicious cakes!

In class, we have been focusing on turning notes into sentences and how to use conjunctions to create complex sentences – two very tricky skills! It’s been great to see so many children persevering with this task resulting in a number of fantastic informative paragraphs about the discovery of Scara Brae – linked to our Stone Age topic.

A great week has ended with the children work incredibly hard today. They have used the features of a non-chronological report to navigate their way through non-chronological reports based on animals  to help them answer a number of tricky questions. It's been great to see their ability to recall the features of non-chronological reports develop alongside their confidence when answering questions related to them. With their new found skills, they will be looking to create their own report about the our new topic The Stone Age - of which Nate has brought in a spectacular model which you are more than welcome to come and view in class.

In Maths, the children have been learning their 2 and 3 times tables. To develop their knowledge of these they have learnt a new song to the tune of, 'Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire' and a new version of Naughts and Crosses. It would be great to if you could play the new game they have learnt with them and see if you can recite the song with them also. These tables are so important and we really need to see if we can retain them to help with their Maths.

Lastly we have started our Stone Age topic looking at the development of tools and how people may have lived during this period. As the term goes on, we will be developing our knowledge, to help create a non-chronological report.

This week we have had Multi-cultural Week. The children have had such a great time they would like to share what they have done with you through sharing a few personal comments:

Emma  - 'I loved the Maths we have done this week because we have learnt new methods.'

Bea - 'The workshop was brilliant because the lady read us some stories about different animals which live in Africa.'

Benjamin - 'I've enjoyed this week because I have learnt so much about Africa. I didn't know anything about Africa before this week.'

Lilah - ' What I liked about this week was standing up at the front and pretending to be a girl called Edinoah during our drama lesson.'

Oliver - 'I loved making the footballs out of newspaper, paper bags and string - they were great. Then you can make football tops out of a bag and you just need to cut the bottom of the bag, write your name on it and then you've got your t-shirt.'

Rory - 'I liked this week because we created instructions on how to make a Bag Garden.'

Below, you will find a number of pictures displaying the fantastic homework projects completed by year 3 this half term.

Another week has come and gone. But what a week we have had!

It started with a superb trip to the Museum of Science and Industry (pictures above) where the children literally didn't stop all day. The MOSI put on a number of wonderful workshops and interactive demonstrations including: Forces and Flight; a demonstration of how a steam engine works and how the revolution of Manchester changed the city forever. A wonderful day was had by all the children and the staff due to the superb behaviour and attitude shown by the children. A real credit to yourselves and the school. 

In class, the children have been planning their newspaper reports related to the Space-bat-angel-dragon, which they will finish off writing up today. Having taken a quick glimpse, it is clear the children have started to understand how a newspaper should be written, which is great to see.

In Maths. the children have worked hard to learn and apply the expanded methods for both addition and subtraction. It's been great to see them seeking support when they need and then trying the methods independently. A great work ethic, which I'm sure will continue as the year progresses.

Just a quick update on the Andy Murray front, it's looking hopeful. Especially because now some of the children have started taking up tennis lessons due to enjoying the tennis we have been doing in P.E so much. It's great to see boys and girls, keep it up!

Please could all children ensure they complete their homework each week as it is a useful tool to assess whether the children have secured their understanding of what has been learnt that week. Also could you ensure your child has an outside P.E kit for next week and after half term as we will be going outside as long as it isn't raining and it's getting quite cold out there. Finally, please could you make sure all tracksuit tops, for P.E, do not have a hood. Due to Health and Safety regulations, children aren't allowed to wear them in P.E. as they could lead to serious injury.

Our Iron Man display is now up showcasing a number of fabulous and engaging pieces of writing so please feel free to pop in and have a read. Currently the children are trying to create a newspaper report based on the Iron Man using examples from myself. This will help them to understand the features of newspapers and the type of language and structure used. Please feel free, at home, to be looking at newspaper articles with your child/children to ensure they are immersed in the language used. Next week, the children will be writing their own newspaper article related to the coming of the Space-bat-angel-dragon from the book The Iron Man.

During Maths, the children have continued to work on improving their knowledge of strategies to add and subtract, focusing on partitioning then recombining when using the expanded method. It has been great to see the children starting to grasp these strategies and now start to apply them within word problems.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the children are really starting to show a great level of development in their tennis skills.They can now drop serve, use the forehand stroke and understand the importance of position on the court. 

A very busy week ended with a great Booths assembly where Yamsin was awarded her certificate and trophy. It was a difficult decision due to how well so many of the children have applied themselves over the first four weeks of term. 

In class, we've been looking at using the expanded addition method to add 2 digit and 3 digit numbers, which has proved a tricky skill to master. Nevertheless the children have shown great perseverance and over the last couple of days have applied this method with great confidence. 

During English, the children have started looking at the features of newspaper reports with the aim of creating their very own newspaper report for the coming of the Iron Man. They've looked at a number of newspaper reports and have started to deepen their understanding of the language and structural features that can be found. Also, the children have been introduced to a number of new conjunctions, which they've used to create complex sentences with great success!

First of all we'd like to welcome you to the Year 3 blog. On this page you will find a number of useful items, resources and pieces of information to update you on what is and will be going on in Year 3. Above you'll notice a number of icons which are hyperlinks. If you click on these, you'll be able to access our Curriculum Overview and Curriculum Map plus the weekly spellings, just in case they don't make it home. Scrolling above this text box, you'll find your child's homework for the week. This week it is Maths and next week it will be English. This will continue to rotate on a cycle. The English will be related to Grammar and Punctuation. The children will be bringing their Grammar and Punctuation books home at the beginning of next week. Alongside their weekly homework tasks, the children have a topic related project to complete. You should find the details for this homework task in your Year 3 Welcome Pack which you received last Friday. If you weren't able to attend and therefore didn't receive your pack, please pop in and collect one from myself or Mrs Welch. If you can't pop in, not to worry, just let us know and we will place the pack in your child's book bag. Finally, your child should be bringing their reading book home every night to read with yourselves. 

I'm fully aware a number of you would have liked to have met myself on Friday afternoon last week. Please feel free to come and see me at the end of the day when you pick your child up for a brief chat and to introduce yourselves.