Friday 7th June

On Thursday of this week we had a French/Music lesson where we learnt the song ‘Alouette, gentille alouette (Lark, nice lark)’. First we sang the chorus and then we sang the 5 verses. The class was then split into 5 groups and each group was given a verse to practice singing. After being given time to practice, the groups all came back together on the carpet to perform the song. Everyone sung the choruses whereas the verses were sung only by the groups they were assigned to.

Friday 24th May

On Monday this week we had a P.S.H.E lesson on the importance of everybody in school and the job they do. 

Activity 1 – Pass the Ball Game

In a circle sitting on the floor with our legs outstretched, we had to pass the ball around the circle, including everyone, but we were not allowed to use our hands and we had to make sure that the ball didn’t touch the floor. We did it once as quickly as we could (1.04 mins) and then, as a group discussed how we could do it even quicker. After discussing this, we had another go and achieved a quicker time (25 secs). This prompted a discussion about the ‘Teamwork Skills’ that we used in order to knock 39 seconds off our time. We decided we needed everybody in the class in order to achieve as well as we did, take one person out of the circle and our method would have worked so well.

Activity 2 – Job Roles

We discussed some of the different jobs that people do at our school: head  teacher, teacher, teaching assistant, cleaner, lunchtime supervisor, etc. Picking from some cards showing these job roles, one person had to try and mime the job role while the rest of the class guessed what job they were miming. This then developed into us getting into pairs and each being given a specific job role to analyse. We analysed the job role by writing down 3 bullet points how what the person, whose job role this is at our school, does to help us learn. Pairs then had to read out their bullet points and the rest of the class had to, once again, guess the job role they had been given. We then discussed which job role was the most important at our school, lining the roles up at the front of the class, but we decided that this was an impossible choice because take one job role away and this would mean another person wouldn’t be able to work as well.

Activity 3 – What do I do to help people learn at our school?

Lastly, we gathered in a circle on chairs and took turns saying what we think we do at school in order to help people learn, as we tried to understand the importance of our own roles at school and the difference we make.

Friday 16th May

On thursday of this week, we had a French/Music lesson. The lesson started off with us revising the French words for listen (ecoutez), touch (touchez), look (regardez) and give (donnez). After this we took turns using these commands to play Simon says (or Simon dit). 

It was then time for the music part of our lesson as we learnt the English and French lyrics to the French lullaby ‘Frère Jacques (Are You Sleeping)?’ We started by singing the song all together as a class, in both English and French, and then we split into two groups with one group singing the English version at the same time as the other group were singing the French version. We also sung the two versions as a round with the two groups starting and finishing at different times, as well as giving the children the chance to come up with their own creative versions of how to sing the song.

Friday 3rd May

This term in Class 3 we have started reading a new book during our English lessons, 'Varjak Paw' by SF Said. The book is about a cat called Varjak Paw and on Monday, after reading the first two chapters of the book, the class was split into 4 groups of 5. Each group were asked to consider the relationship between Varjak and the five key members of his family: Mother, Father, Jasmine, Julius and Elder Paw. Every member of each group chose a family member to play and came up with a 'freeze frame' of that character during a family discussion when Varjak was telling them about something extraordinary he’d seen. The groups showed their freeze frames in front of the class and each child voiced what they thought their character would be saying at this ‘frozen moment in time’. Each of them then wrote this thought in a thought bubble.

Friday 26th April

Welcome to Class 3.

Summer term

Our new topic is: UK Detectives

Maths:

Year 3’s will learn about: fractions of quantities and amounts; measuring time and being able to tell the time on a digital or analogue clock; geometry (including the properties of shape); measurement (including mass and capacity).

Year 4’s will learn about: decimals; measuring money and being able to solve problems involving money; measuring time and being able to tell the time on a digital or analogue clock; statistics; geometry (including the properties of shape and position and direction).

Times Tables Rock Stars

One of the things that most pleased me about the Spring term just gone, is how much children in Class 3 embraced ‘Times Tables Rock Stars’! The speed that some children are now able to answer any times tables up to 12x12 is nothing short of incredible. And thank you so much to parents who have also embraced this effort to get all children knowing their times tables. Now, as we enter the summer term, I hope that we can continue to work together to keep this enthusiasm going. Rock on!

English

Grammar and Writing: Year 3’s will learn about: inverted commas (speech marks); using paragraphs; expressing time place and cause using conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions; prefixes and suffixes; homophones; possesive apostrophes and using a dictionary.

On top of including the Year 3 Grammar listed above in their writing, Year 4’s will be challenged to: use fronted adverbials (remembering the comma); use pronouns to avoid repetition and use expanded noun phrases showing a broader vocabulary of adjectives and prepositional phrases.

Reading/ Speaking and listening: Guided reading is something we do every day in Class 3 and in these sessions we put a heavy focus on comprehension, where we talk through what we’ve read and work on understanding what it means. Children are also encouraged to discuss their  own writing with a classmate or a teacher before they begin and when they produce good work they are given the chance to read it out loud to the class. Summarising, predicting and questioning are all important skills that we continually work on in both class and group discussions.

The Power of Reading (POR): The POR initiative is something that we are embracing at Wenhaston Primary and it works on the idea that children shouldn’t just be taught to read but should also learn to love reading. In Class 3 we will be reading some highly recommended children books together as a class and through drama, art and other cross-curricular techniques our aim will be to get all children feeling enthusiastic about reading.

Science:

Summer 1 – States of Matter

Children will learn to: compare and group materials together, according to whether they are solids, liquids or gases; observe that some materials change state when they are heated or cooled, and measure or research the temperature at which this happens in degrees Celsius (°C); identify the part played by evaporation and condensation in the water cycle and associate the rate of evaporation with temperature.

Summer 2 – Electricity

Children will learn to: identify common appliances that run on electricity; construct a simple series electrical circuits, identifying and naming the basic parts; identify whether or not a lamp will light in a simple series circuit, based on whether or not the lamp is part of a complete loop with a battery; recognise that a switch opens and closes a circuit; recognise some common conductors and insulators, and associate metals with being good conductors.

PE/ICT/French/Music/RE/PSHE: 

P.E for the whole of the term will be on Thursdays. Please make sure P.E kits are in school on Thursdays. In ICT the children will complete the Discovery Education Coding scheme of work for their year group, one lesson at a time. Discovery Education will also be a source of learning during the children’s French lessons. In Music children will learn about tempo, pitch and rhythm while learning popular songs, both old and new, using Charanga. Also, starting this term, we have invested in schemes of work for both RE (Discovery RE) and PSHE (Jigsaw).

UK Detectives:

Children will focus on the questions: … ‘How and why is my local environment changing?’ and ‘How can we live more sustainably?’ Our Great British Geography topic is also the focus of the home learning this term, as you will be able to see on the home learning activities list that all Class 3 children will be given. History, Art and DT will very much be subjects which are dominated by a UK theme as this term we aim to help the children learn about things a little closer to home.

Friday 29th March

On Tuesday, all of the spelling sentences that we have been tested on so far this year were chopped up and placed under cones on the front playground. After they had all been put out, there were 11 columns and 10 rows of cones with spelling sentences underneath them. Once the activity was all set up, we got into pairs and each pair lined up behind one of the 11 columns of cones. Each pair numbered themselves 1 and 2. For a start, all of the number 1’s were the spellers and the number 2’s read out the sentences. Each pair’s aim was to complete the spellings under the tenth cone and that would mark the finish, having started at the first cone and worked their way up. Pairs could only ‘complete a cone’, and be allowed to move onto the next one, once number 2’s had read out the sentence and number 1’s had identified the spelling words in that sentence and spelt them correctly. Number 2’s were not allowed to offer any help and were only allowed to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to number 1’s answers. The first pair to finish received 11 house points each, the second pair 10 and so on. Number 1’s and 2’s then switched their rolls for the next round. They also changed the column of cones they were lining up behind.

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.