Friday 22nd March

On Wednesday of this week we got 4 laptops and set them up, outside on chairs, on ‘Times Tables Rock Stars’. We also got 4 thrisbys and 2 buckets and set up 4 cones a certain distance away from the buckets. We then had to try and throw the ball in the bucket and if we did then we were allowed to run and answer a calculation on the laptop. The times tables and division problems were set to three minutes and all groups started their 3 minute timer at the same time. Once the 3 minutes was up, the team with the most correctly answered times tables were the winners of that round. We played many different rounds with many different variations on ‘what we had to do to win the chance to answer a calculation’ and, all the while, we were getting plenty of division and multiplication practice in as well.

Friday 15th March

This Wednesday we had our first healthy eating workshop with One Life Suffolk. In this first session we got the chance to think about all of the different things we do that are important for staying healthy. Once we had discussed this, and had a chance to ask any questions we had, it was then time for us to do a bit of biology revision. After getting one member of our group to lay down on a big piece of paper so that we could draw around them, we had to then position the brain, heart, lungs, intestines, kidneys and liver on to our drawn bodies. We also learnt a bit about what each of these organs does and what types of foods are good for them.

Friday 8th March

In science this week we talked about how when a ball is thrown or kicked into the air (a push through contact with a hand or foot) it will then be pulled back down to the ground by gravity (but nothing touched it). This made us ask the question ‘Are there any other ways that forces can act without contact?’

Each of us was then given a paperclip and a piece of stiff card to put it on. We then asked ‘How can you make the paperclip move without touching it?’

A few suggestions were made. ‘Yes, you could tilt the card it’s sitting on – gravity will make it slide downhill but is there any other way it could move without contact?’  Some children suggested blowing it along. ‘If you blow the paperclip along, is it a contact or non-contact force? Yes, it is a contact force because although you can’t see it, the moving air has to touch (make contact with) the paperclip.’

‘What would happen if we used a magnet?’ We investigated this question with everybody being given a magnet and we had to try to make our paperclip move without contact. After being given time to explore this, we learnt that magnets (like gravity) can act without contact.

Friday 1st March

This week the standard of home learning that Class 3 has produced has been very high. Below are some examples of what I mean. I have awarded loads of house points for these amazing pieces of work and hopefully next week I will be able to award loads more. Keep up the great work!

Friday 15th February

French: - Ou habites-tu (Where do you live)?

-      J’habite a…(I live in…(+city/town/village)).

-      J’habite en…(I live in…(+country)).

-      Nous habitons a/en… (We live in…).

-      Venez a/en… (Come to…)!

-      L’Angleterre (England)

-      L’Ecosse (Scotland)

-      Le Pays de Galles (Wales)

-      La France (France)

-      L’Allemagne (Germany)

On Wednesday of this week we revised the above French phrases and then practiced them by playing a series of games in the hall. In one of the games we had to get into groups of 3 and 2 of us would sit facing the other 1 in our group. The 2 would then ask the 1 ‘Ou habites-tu (Where do you live)?’ and the 1 would reply with their choice of the 5 countries. For example, they might reply ‘J’habite en L’Allemagne (I live in Germany).’ and the 2 would then have to race to be the first to get to the mat with the German flag on it.

The second game was the same as this except everyone had to be in pairs as this time the reply to the question ‘Ou habites-tu?’ had to be ‘Nous habitons en… (We live in…).’

The final game involved us getting into groups, having one person selected out of our group to be taken to the corner of the hall where they would have to shut their eyes and the rest of the group would then have to move to a mat with a country flag on it. The group members positioned on the mat would then have to call out to their group member with their eyes shut ‘Venez en… (Come to…)’ followed by the French translation for the name of country whose flag they were standing near.

 

In today's maths lesson we played a game where each child got 3 dice. One dice (the 2-digit 9-sided dice) represented centimetres, another (the 1-digit 9-sided dice) represented metres and the last one (the 6-sided) represented kilometres.

We split the class in two and positioned each half at one end of the hall or the other. We then assigned one end of the hall as the side that the winners move to and the other end of the hall as the side that the losers move to.

The children then had to roll their 3 dice and work out who, between them and their partner, had the longest length. The child with the longest length moved to the winning side of the hall (or stayed at the winning side of the hall) and the loser moved to the losing side of the hall (or stayed where they were). The aim was to be positioned on the winning side of the hall by the end of the time.

We then adapted this into a team game by getting pairs to play against other pairs, adding what their partners rolled to what they rolled and comparing it to the other pairs’ length.

Our final adaption of the game was to turn it into a knock out game where two children were drawn against one another and the winner from each head to head progressed through to the next round.

Friday 8th February

To start off our science lesson this week, we learnt three new words: translucent (some of the light passes through it), transparent (almost all of the light passes through it) and opaque (none of the light passes through). We then tested our knowledge of these new terms using an interactive PowerPoint on the interactive whiteboard.

After learning these new words, we started to do some investigating as we tried to find out the answer to the question ‘How do you make shadows bigger and smaller?’ Having spent some time playing around with making some different shadows, each group concluded that to make a shadow bigger you have to move the object closer to the light source and to make a shadow smaller you have to move it further away. The final question we investigated in today’s science lesson was ‘Does the shadow of the object ever get smaller than the object itself?’ This provided some mixed answers from the class because sometimes the object’s shadows looked smaller than the object at different angles. However, when it was explained that the shadow can never be smaller than the object casting the shadow because no less than that amount of light can possibly be blocked out, everyone had to concede that this made sense.