Friday 21st October

I haven't set any home learning for your week off but keep on reading at home and the more spelling and times table practice you can fit in the better prepared you will be for next half term. Having said this, your main job over the coming week is to make sure you have a lovely holiday and have lots of stories to share with your friends when you come back to school.

What we have done this week

Our week in Class 3 has consisted of a mixture of end of half term assessments, a visit to another school for the day and relatively little (compared to usual) in class time. Despite this, the first few pictures on this week's blog show us practicing our times tables using number fans. Any member of Class 3 will be able to demonstrate how we practice our times tables daily using 'Stick 'm' Up' and the number fans were simply a different way of us practicing our 3 times tables.

In English we have been learning about how to write newspaper reports and on Friday it was time to have a go at writing one. Some of Class 3 then felt confident enough to share their reports with the rest of the class and help spark some ideas in others.

On Thursday we visited Ilketshall St Lawrence school, joining together with the other schools in the area for a creative arts day. The day included a dreamcatcher making workshop, a singing and dancing workshop and a drama workshop. There was also some halloween themed origami ready and waiting for us to have a go at when we first arrived. 

Halloween was also the theme for our Friday PE session with Mr Knights as he planned some fun games for us involving zombies and pumpkins and the like.        

Home Learning

Friday 14^th October

English - This week I have stuck your next ‘Grammar Hammer’ challenge in your home learning books. Try your best to answer each question just as if you were completing it in class.

Maths - I have stuck three Sudoku puzzles in your home learning books along with an explanation of what a Sudoku puzzle is and how it should be completed. There are 3 because I wanted to give you the option of choosing which one you complete. You can think of the smallest one as a pink challenge, the second smallest as a green challenge and the biggest as a black challenge.

Spellings - I want you to learn these and expect to be tested on them but I’m not going to say when. You will have 5 spellings a week to learn and your tests could be on any spellings from any week!

What we have done this week

This week in Maths we have been doing some work on doubling and halving. The first couple of pictures that you can see in this week’s blog show us playing a maths game where, for a start, one team member stood in the middle with a ball. That team member then threw the ball to one of their teammates on the outside of the circle and called out a number. The teammate on the outside then threw the ball back saying what the number they were given is doubled. If they got it right then they got to sit down, if they got it wrong they had to stay standing. The first team with all outside of the circle members sitting down were the winners.

Our English work this week has taken on a harvest theme, building up to our harvest festival celebration. I set class 3 the difficult task of imagining they had been to the harvest festival (when they hadn’t yet) and writing a newspaper report on the events that took place. The last couple of pictures show us getting ready for our harvest festival performance with Mrs Bowles.

Home Learning

Friday 30th September

English - This week I have stuck four questions in your home learning books. These questions are: ‘What is a verb?’, ‘What is an adverb?’, ‘What is an adverbial phrase?’ and ‘What is a fronted adverbial?’ Try your best to answer these questions and give an example for each one.

Maths - For Maths I have stuck three irregular 2D shapes in your home learning books. Your job is to write as many things about these shapes as you can, making sure you are using mathematical language (for example, you might say how many acute or obtuse angles each shape has).

Spellings - I want you to learn these and expect to be tested on them but I’m not going to say when. You will have 5 spellings a week to learn and your tests could be on any spellings from any week!

What we have done this week

The pictures above highlight what an unusual week we have had in Class 3 this week. This is because on Monday and Tuesday we worked very hard to not just create a 3D BFG display, but also a 3D giant peach! The process took a long time as we had to use scrunched up newspaper (and a lot of busy artists) to build up the shape of both the BFG and the peach. Once we had done this our next job was to add colour using coloured tissue paper and a lot of glue. Everyone took responsibility for making sure we covered the entire BFG and peach and knew exactly how we wanted it to look having decided on the designs altogether. The BFG took longer to cover in coloured tissue paper than the peach but those of us working on the peach still had another job to do, as we still had to create the illusion of 5000 seagulls for our display. Led by the guidance of our self-appointed management team we were able to create enough seagulls for our display, a display that is starting to take shape as you can see from the last picture.

Home Learning

Friday 30th September

English - This week I have written my own version of how I think daddy fell into the pond. The problem is I have forgotten to add in any adjectives. Can you fill in the gaps in my ‘daddy fell into the pond’ story in order to describe the nouns I have used?

Maths - I have stuck a sheet in your home learning books asking you to name the 2D shape being described. Don’t be fooled by the picture and use the shape names down the bottom to help you.

Spellings - I want you to learn these and expect to be tested on them but I’m not going to say when. You will have 5 spellings a week to learn and your tests could be on any spellings from any week!

What have we done this week

In English this week we have been looking at the poem ‘Daddy fell into the pond’ by Alfred Noyes. The pictures you can see above are of us painting pictures of the colours and images that we got in our heads when listening to the poem. Each table had a different stanza of the poem to focus on and so our pictures at the end of the lesson told the story of the poem through colour and our imaginations.

English is again featured in the second lot of photos for this week as we aimed to use the discussions and pictures we created on Wednesday to help us turn the ‘Daddy fell into the pond’ poem into a story. The task was to come up with our own versions of how we think Daddy fell into the pond and, at the end, a lot of us were keen to share our ideas with the rest of the class.

The final lot of pictures this week show our Maths lesson from Thursday when we were sorting shapes based on their number of sides, angles (acute, obtuse or right angle) and lines of symmetry. We also now have a good way of remembering the difference between acute and obtuse angles and I’m sure that all of us in class 3 are happy to share this with anyone who asks.

Home Learning

Friday 23rd September

English - I would like you to write a couple of sentences (in the labelled space in your new home learning book) in first person about your week (like a short diary entry). I would then like you to write these sentences again (in the labelled space in your book) changing them into third person language.

Maths - For maths I set you all this challenge https://nrich.maths.org/927 (follow this link). No one has managed to figure it out in school this week, can you be the first! Show me how close you get using the labelled space in your home learning books.

Spellings - I want you to learn these and expect to be tested on them but I’m not going to say when. You will have 5 spellings a week to learn and your tests could be on any spellings from any week!

What have we done this week

This week in Class 3 we have done lots of creative writing. For a start on Wednesday we took our grammar focus of learning about strong verbs further as we extended a story which ended on a cliff hanger. The story was about some children visiting an Egyptian pyramid and being surprised by what they saw. Our job was to come up with an exciting next chapter to this story, all the while trying to use strong (tiptoed) in place of weak (walked) verbs in our writing.

On Thursday our grammar focus switched to practicing writing in third person which gave us a chance to control the actions of another member of Class 3. The pictures that you can see in this week's blog show one person reading out their narration of someone else's actions (so reading out a piece of third person writing that they have done). Those who said they didn't mind having their actions chosen by someone else (otherwise known as our 'puppets') were then asked to come to the front of class and perform while their narrator directed them.

Friday then saw another creative writing task as we used our expert knowledge of Ancient Egypt to put ourselves in the shoes of an Ancient Egyptian and write a story about what our day might look like. Some Class 3 members chose to write as if they were a slave building a great Egyptian pyramid while others chose to be pharaohs, but all were writing in first person.

Next week there will be a big focus in Class 3 on up levelling our writing so that it is not just meeting our learning objectives in grammar and punctuation but it is also exciting for the reader to read.      

Home Learning

Friday 16th September

 

English - Home learning is a tricky one this week. You’ve all been given a sheet on time and place prepositions to complete. While doing so try to remember Friday’s lesson with the posters and the music to help you. Some examples of time prepositions are on (I will see you on Monday), at (at 8.40 a.m. you should be in school) and since (I have had a cold since Monday). Some examples of place prepositions are over (the ball flew over my head), under (I found my socks under my bed) and next to (I put the lamp next to my bed). Have a go at completing the sheet, if you have tried and don't think you can then simply list on the sheet some different time and place prepositions.

 

Maths - Because the English home learning that I have given you this week is quite challenging, I will not be setting you any maths home learning. Next week however you will receive your home learning books and from then on will have a piece of Maths, English and Spelling home learning to do each week.

 

Reading - You should have received some amended pages to the reading challenge guide on Thursday. If you didn’t receive these please let me know. I, Mrs Sparkes and Mrs Hayes have all been impressed with your reading at school this week so continue to read as much as you can at home and you will continue to improve.

What we have done this week

 

 

On Tuesday of this week was Roald Dahl Day, celebrating what would have been Roald Dahl's 100th birthday! To mark this special occasion, we spent a couple of lessons on Monday looking at 5 of the famous characters that Roald Dahl created and how they linked to our school values of trust and compassion. This started with us completing some character studies in the morning before moving on to some drama in the afternoon. During our drama session each member of each group was asked to take on the role of 1 of our 5 characters. Each group was then asked to come up with a short piece of drama where their characters displayed either trust, compassion or both towards one another. The five characters being expertly portrayed in the top 3 pictures above are 'Charlie Bucket' (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), 'Matilda Wormwood' (Matilda), 'The BFG' (The BFG), 'Grandmother' (The Witches) and 'James Henry Trotter' (James and the Giant Peach).

Our Maths sessions this week have seen us focus mainly on addition. On Thursday we covered the classroom tables with post it notes with sums written on them in pink, green or black. We had to complete all of the pink sums correctly in our books before we could move onto the green, and then do the same with the greens before moving on to black. Anyone who managed to complete all of the blacks correctly earned a house point.

The bottom 2 pictures show the children practicing their football skills in a session taken by Mr Knights. Luckily it was our turn to have P.E. before lunch time and so before it started to rain!

Next week we will continue to link our English work to our topic, as we did this week when we conducted our interviews with a pharaoh.



Our First Full Week Together!

Home Learning

Friday 9th September

 

English - This week I would simply like you all to have a go at explaining what a clause is and what a conjunction is to your parent or carer. See if you can give examples of both, remembering to see if you can include what you know about subjects and verbs (see if you can be really impressive).

 

Maths - I have given you all a sheet that asks you to show off your knowledge of place value. Don't worry if you don't manage to complete all of the questions, just do what you can. I would like these sheets back to me by next Thursday (15th) at the latest please in order to give me a chance to see how you all found it.

 

Reading - There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm towards reading in Class 3 which is great! To help keep this up you have all been given a guide to our reading challenge and a record to keep track of what you are doing. The guide is full of great things that you can do to help your reading improve so do make sure you have a look and find something that is right for you.

 

What we have done this week

 

 

 Apologies for the lack of pictures, I keep forgetting to take them but don't worry I will get better at this and you can all help by reminding me.

 

The two pictues that I have added to our blog this week show the science lesson we did on Tuesday when we tried to sort the animal pictures based on what those animals eat. Our three categories, separated by our hoops, were omnivores, herbivores and carnivores and by the end of the lesson all our animals were positioned correctly. 

 

Our English and S.P.A.G this week have combined as we have built up to writing our Egyptian fact sheets. Our knowledge of Ancient Egypt has grown throughout the week as we have shared what we know, read up on some facts and had a great time watching some 'Horrible Histories: Awful Egyptians' clips. This all led us to Friday where we completed our fact sheets and used our knowledge of conjunctions to extend our sentences where we could.

 

Next week we will continue to apply our place value knowledge in maths as we do some more addition and subtraction. P.E. will be on a Monday and a Friday and we will continue to link our Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek topic into our learning across many subjects.