Year 3

Key information for parents:

• Year 3 children come into school at 8.40am and enter school through the playground door. 
• Year 3 leave school at 3.15 pm through the same door.
• Year 3's PE sessions take place on a Wednesday and a Thursday, children should come to school in their PE kit on these days. If it is non-uniform day on their PE day, children will need to wear appropriate clothes and footwear for their PE lesson. 
• Reading books are changed on Tuesdays.

Mrs Carter-Newbon, Mrs El-Hashahar and Mrs Griffiths look forward to seeing you in Year 3.

World Mental Health Day

Year 3 have been thinking about how different feelings can affect us. They learnt that you can experience over 400 emotional experiences every day. They talked about how they can keep their minds healthy and what they could do to do this. They also talked about who are their trusted adults to go to if they need help.
Taking care of your mental health is important, year 3 explored the acronym ‘Yellow’ and how it can support their own mental health.
Y - Your feelings matter 
E - Everyone needs support
L- Listen to your body
L - Learn to relax
O - Offer kindness
W - Wiggle and move

Gestural drawing

As part of our gestural drawing for art we have explored drawing by candle light this afternoon. The children investigated what cave paintings were and how they were used as a form of communication during the Stone Age. 
The children went into their caves (under the tables) with their sketch books, a range of drawing material and a battery powered candle. 🕯️✏️📚
They had a fantastic afternoon and the drawing produced were amazing.

Music - ballads

Year 3 have been exploring ballads during this half term. They have listened to and appraised different ballads which include Space Oddity by David Bowie, Winds of Change by Scorpion, Hello by Adele and Run by Leona Lewis. 
They have learnt that a ballad is a story which is through a song and have started to write their own verse to accompany the short video Soar.

Eccleshall Rugby Fest

Year 3 took part in a Rugby Megafest, run by Eccleshall Rugby Club. They had the opportunity to play various games that gave them a taster of the rugby game. This was a fantastic experience for the children to be involved with and there was a real buzz around school.

Year three have made a fantastic start to their life in Key Stage 2. 

In English they have written super sentences which include a verb and a noun and have practised their joins when writing. There seems to be some fierce competition about who will get their pen license first! We will have to wait and see!

Reading and writing numbers to 100 and 100 was that start to the place value unit in maths with presentation being a big focus. They all accepted the challenge and the presentation was fantastic! We were all very impressed. 

Well done Year Three! A fantastic start.

Science.

Year three have been exploring the structure of plants and the use of each part. They started by sketching the plant before labelling and explaining what each part was for and how it kept the plant alive. 
As part of our scientific enquiry we will be testing to see how watering a plant affects its growth. Plant A will be given 20ml of water a day, plant B will be given 10ml and plant C will be given no water at all! Come back in a few weeks to see what happened to the plants! 🌱🪻🪴

Year three were very lucky to have a visit from Yasmin, who is studying plant science at University. 
Yasmin explained that the first land plants were on earth before the dinosaurs - over 500 million years ago!
Year three talked about what plants need to grow and that plants are essential for our lives - for food, oxygen, clothes, paper, medicines and our homes.  
Year three learnt how plants can reproduce and how insects are important to plants. 
The fact of the day - some plants can survive in temperatures as low as -70!!
Thank you Yasmin!

Geography

As part of our new Geography audit ‘Are all settlements the same?’ Year three started to look at countries and counties in the United Kingdom for which they used a map  to identify their location. Their map skills were excellent and they had no problems locating the different places given. 

On our visit to church the children took part in a number of activities including tricky maze problems, word scrambles, colouring as well as a treasure hunt around St John’s in Ashley. 

The children learnt that God is with them always even when they feel uncomfortable, he is by their side giving them courage and reassurance. We’ve also been learning about Jesus ascending into heaven and sending his helper the Holy Spirit to guide us in our daily lives.

The children also located various sacred statues and monuments in and around the church which included the font - used for baptisms, the high altar, the pulpit and where the choir stand to address the congregation. They answered a number of questions to complete the treasure hunt finding out what these important places were and used for. 

Science Week

As part of Science Week we were set the task of finding out which biscuit was the best for dunking in a cup of tea. 

We had three types of biscuit, we had pink wafers, rich tea and chocolate digestives. 

We conducted a survey to find out people's favourite biscuits followed by all children making a prediction about which biscuit would be the best dunker. The votes are in: 16 children said that the rich tea biscuit would be the best, 11 said the chocolate digestive would be the best with 2 saying the pink wafer would be the best. 

We conducted the experiment and counted how many times we could dunk the biscuit before it broke and landed in the cup of tea. We were all amazed by the results!

The rich tea withstood 4 dunks before breaking

The chocolate digestive withstood 6 dunks before breaking 

The pink wafers withstood a huge 84 dunks before breaking!!

PSHE

This week in PSHE we have been thinking about how to be safe online and what that looks like. 

Year three have looked at how to recognise unkind behaviour and know how to report it, how to be a responsible digital citizen and how as an individual they can offer advice to support other people who are victims of cyberbullying.

A scenario was shared and through the use of a decision tree they generated the outcomes which would come from the decisions they made. They all worked well as a team to do this. Some great discussions were had on how to support others who find themselves in that situation. 
Well done Year three! Lots of thoughtful discussions and outcomes. 

Design and Technology

Today year three made an apple crumble. 
After washing their hands and getting all of the equipment they needed they were ready to start making apple crumble. 
They peeled and chopped the apples into small pieces using the skills they learnt when cutting fruit for the Japanese Fruit skewers. Following this they measured the flour, sugar and butter before mixing it to make the crumble topping. 
Everyone sampled the crumble and the majority of children liked it with the crumble to

ping being their favourite🧑‍🍳👩‍🍳🍚⏲️

Japanese Fruit Skewers

In Design and technology year three looked at fruits and vegetables from around the world. They investigated how climate zones affect the growth of different fruits and the type of fruits which grow in the different zones. 🍒🍓🍇🍎🍉🍑🍊🍋🍍🍌🥑🍏🍈🍐🥝🥭🥥🍅🫐

Japanese’s Fruit Skewers are made with watermelon, strawberries, banana and lychees.

Once the fruit was cut up into slices it was thread onto the skewers and coated in plum sauce. 
Some children liked the skewers some did not!