Focus Week - Year 3
What a wonderful start to Year 3 for Beech and Birch. The children have settled in so well, adapting to life in Year 3.
In Maths, we have been learning about place value starting with representing numbers to 100.
This small step provides the opportunity to revisit and consolidate their learning before moving on to numbers beyond 100. We then moved on to partitioning numbers, representing numbers on a numberline. Estimation and comparisons. We will soon be moving on to addition and subtraction, spotting the pattern, using the operation with exchange leading to inverse operations.
In English we have been learning about the text ‘ The First Drawing’ which is linked to our History topic Stone Age, Iron Age and Bronze Age. Focusing on different elements of grammar, such as using verbs and adjectives we retold the narrative in our own words as if we were stone age children. We are now reading the ‘BFG’ which will lead to us writing our own chapter using lots of different writing skills.
As part of our PSHE, Year 3 are having weekly Paws B mindfulness lessons. During these lessons we have been learning about specific areas of the brain and how these affect our ability to focus and make good choices. We are also learning different breathing techniques that can support us in school and at home.
‘Movement and Nutrition’ has been a hot topic in Science for this half term. We have been carrying out different investigations on how our bodies work. We have made split pin skeletons and moving fingers to show us how the joints work in the hand.
In Art and Design we have been using our own observation skills to describe shapes and textures in objects and learning about the four shading rules. We used simple shapes to build initial sketches of an animal in our sketchbooks. Then using charcoal, we copied the sketch onto sandpaper to recreate the style of cave artists. Finally, using natural pigments we mixed colours for the animal’s body.
In music, we are learning about mountain melodies, steps and leaps. We will be combining movement with singing, and exploring pitch by drawing melodic lines.
Spanish has been interesting as we have been learning greetings in Spanish. We have also been practising to make an introduction in Spanish in the correct accent.
In Computing we are using the platform Scratch to develop our coding skills.
