Year 3 News

Year 3 have been working incredibly hard practising for their upcoming ukulele concert and are showing growing confidence with their playing each week. They have demonstrated great perseverance while learning new chords and songs and are becoming more confident performers. We are all very excited and looking forward to showcasing our musical talents in just two weeks’ time!

Sports Day was another highlight of the term and the children thoroughly enjoyed taking part in all of the activities and events. They demonstrated excellent teamwork, resilience and determination throughout the day, cheering one another on and showing fantastic sportsmanship. It was wonderful to see everyone trying their best, encouraging their peers and celebrating each other’s successes. We were incredibly proud of how well Year 3 performed and the positive attitudes they showed from start to finish.

his week, Year 3 explored the fascinating differences between life in ancient Athens and Sparta. We learnt about how children lived, the types of education they received and what was important to each city-state. The children were fascinated to discover that life in Athens focused on learning, art and creativity, while life in Sparta centred around strength, discipline and military training.

We then held an exciting class debate where the children discussed which city they would rather live in and why. They shared thoughtful ideas and used evidence from their learning to justify their opinions. Some children preferred Athens because of the opportunities for education and the arts, while others chose Sparta because of its bravery, teamwork and active lifestyle. We were incredibly impressed with the children’s enthusiasm, speaking skills and respectful discussions throughout the week.

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.