Year 3 News

Year 3 have loved reading The Twits this week and exploring the horrible characters of Mr and Mrs Twit. We went on a “Twits Trail” to help us bring the characters to life and inspire our writing.

We listened to the disgusting sounds they made while eating, felt what their wrinkles might be like using corrugated card, explored Mr Twit’s coarse, food-filled beard, spotted Mrs Twit’s glass eye floating in a bottle, smelt what they might have smelt like, and even pulled our own “ugly faces” to see how our expressions changed!

This exciting, hands-on lesson helped us generate lots of rich vocabulary and descriptive ideas, which we then used the next day to write fantastic character descriptions.

The children have had a fantastic first week back after the Easter break and have settled quickly back into their learning routines. We have jumped straight into developing our grammar skills in English, with a focus on plurals, possessive apostrophes and the use of adverbs to add detail to our writing.

In maths, we have been exploring non-unit fractions, building our understanding of what they represent and how to recognise and work with them confidently.

Our new topic this term is the Ancient Greeks, which the children have already shown great enthusiasm for. In our first lesson, we explored who the Ancient Greeks were and began to understand their place in history.

This week in Year 3, we have been learning about branching databases in our computing lessons. The children explored how information can be organised by asking simple yes/no questions to sort and identify different items.

We began by looking at groups of animals and foods, and the children worked together to think of questions that would help separate them. For example, they asked questions such as “Does it have four legs?” or “Is it a fruit?” This helped them understand how computers use similar systems to organise and find information quickly.

The children then created their own branching databases by choosing animals or foods and carefully planning a series of questions. They learnt that the questions need to be clear and precise so that each item can be sorted correctly. We also discussed how changing a question can affect the outcome, which led to some great problem-solving and teamwork.

This week in English, Year 4 have been exploring the book Somebody Swallowed Stanley. The children discussed the impact of plastic pollution in our oceans and what can happen when plastic isn’t recycled. We also thought about practical ways we could reuse everyday items, such as plastic bags.

Using this idea, the children designed and made their own kites from old plastic bags and took them outside to test how well they flew. To finish the week, the class created informative posters about the dangers of plastic in the ocean, encouraging others to recycle and help protect sea life.

This week we have been learning how to make zines in Art.  The children loved learning how to make these and were keen to make more!  We then added artwork and facts about Ancient inside.  They all looked amazing!

Everyone also worked really hard on their Star Writes, creating informative leaflets about Ancient Egypt.  We look forward to sharing these with Year 1 after half term.

This week we have enjoyed learning about Ancient Egypt.  We have been acting out the different roles that existed in society and learnt that they were organised into a hierarchy.  We then have worked really hard to use our new knowledge to start our non-chronological reports for the museum in Egypt, ensuring that new we are using formal language.