Welcome to Year 3! We hope you enjoy reading about our learning this year.
Autumn 1
Week 1: We have had a great first week back at school, although Year 3 have been very busy! We have been consolidating our knowledge of tens and ones in Maths. We used base 10 and working partners to help us with our maths work.
Week 2: This week we have been learning how to use a thesaurus to search for synonyms to help us make our descriptive writing even better! We searched for adjectives to describe Antarctica and Ernest Shackleton's adventure!
Week 3: We have discussing the importance of friendships in Year 3. We designed and coloured a friendship cloud and we made sure we wrote all the positive things that we think makes a good friendship!
Week 4: We learnt about the importance of focused breathing in Yoga this week. We really enjoy learning the names of the different yoga poses and challenging ourselves to be steady and calm.
Week 5:
This week we have been developing our addition and subtraction skills. We used a hundreds, tens and ones model to help us work out our calculations. We have worked really hard!
Week 6:
This week we have been exploring our Science topic of Animals including Humans. We have learnt all about vertebrates and invertebrates and even looked at some x-rays of different animals! We used a skeleton model and some amazing teamwork to help us put all the bones of a human body together!
Week 7:
We have been developing our setting description by challenging ourselves to write a descriptive story just from a picture! We are getting really good at using excellent adjectives.
Autumn 2 -
Week 1:
Year 3 have had a very busy first week back! We have started our new literacy topic - Non-chronological reports! We had to research an animal and make a poster all about their diets, habitats and characteristics. Then we used this poster to inform our non-chronological report about this animal. We really enjoyed completing this activity!
Week 2: We had such an exciting week in Year 3! We went on our first trip of the year to learn about rocks and fossils in the Manx Museum. The workshop involved learning about how permeable and impermeable certain rocks are and how to identify rocks from their features. We had such an amazing morning and even got to look at some fossilised poo and ammonites from Madagascar!
Week 3:
What an exciting week! Not only did we have so much fun performing our class assembly for all the families in Year 3, we also got to watch someone else perform!! We had the amazing opportunity to watch the pantomime Snow White and we had so much fun joining in with the singing, dancing and some of us even got up on stage.
Week 4:
This week we have been exploring experimenting in Science. We used some rocks (from the Manx Museum) to test out our permeable and impermeable hypothesis as well as which is the hardest rock and which is the softest rock. We had to rub the rocks together and observe what happened. We also learnt a lot about Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic rocks, including how they are formed. We came up with some actions to help us remember - Squish squish squish (sedimentary), Hot hot hot (Metamorphic) and Cool down (Igneous)
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Spring 1: Welcome back to Year 3!
Week 1: We have had a busy first week back in Year 3! We have begun learning about the features of a wishing tale and reading our new text Kwame's Wish. We have also started this terms topic of Africa! We began the topic by researching Africa. Did you know there are 54 countries in Africa? We are so excited to learn more about this topic and can't wait to share it!
Week 2: We have been learning about our class artist this week: Georges Seurat. He was a French painter and used dots of colour to create paintings. The paintings would look like hundreds of dots up close but would create a beautiful image when seen from afar; this technique is called pointillism. First, we practiced our pointillist skills and used blocks of colour to work on our dot technique. Then, we completed a colour puzzle using colours that were similar to create an effective pointillist painting.
Week 3: This week, we had the fantastic opportunity to learn some new cricket skills. We had a coach come into school and teach us how to catch effectively and how to use a cricket bat. It was loads of fun and we learnt so many useful skills, including teamwork and the importance of communication.
Week 4: We have had a great week in Year 3 and we were very lucky to have the opportunity to watch a theatre show. The company had made their own puppets are performed some stories from the Grimm Brothers tales! We saw Little Red Riding Hood pick flowers in the woods and a giant frog from The Frog Prince, before finishing the performance with the story of Rapunzel. Year 3 loved all of the puppets but especially the wolf puppet. We also loved the Manx puppet that was made from a shell from Peel Beach!
Week 5: We have had such a busy term so far! This week we went to the Wildlife Park to learn about and take part in a workshop about Rainforests. We had to use our imagination to pretend some of our class members were the trees in the Rainforest and we learnt about all the animals that use the rainforest as their habitat. Then we went around the park to look for animals from Africa! We found so many amazing animals and it was so fun to learn about how the rainforests help us and the world, as well as the animals that live there. We had the best time at the Wildlife Park and are hoping we will be going back very soon!
Week 6: To finish off our busy half term, we have had a campus animal day! We all got to dress up as an animal to raise money for the charity MSPCA. We had a fantastic day and got to learn about so many different animals. Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Half Term!
Spring 2:
We have continued to work on our time adverbials in class this week, we ordered our class trip to the Wildlife Park and then choose some excellent time adverbials for each event. Then, we added some detail to each event and how we felt about what we did. We worked really hard and made sure we worked as a team to discuss what we did. We are all set to write our recount paragraphs!!
Finally after weeks of planning, we have started our pointillism paintings. We used the same paint colours from our plan and began to use our dotting method to complete our paintings. We didn't use the side of the paintbrush that you would think of using though; we used the end of the paintbrush!! It created a perfect dot, but we had to make sure we were watching for when we ran out of paint. It took a while but we are continuing to work on our masterpieces; Seurat must have been very patient!
To develop our pointillist skills even further, we have been looking at how we can use other materials to create a piece of pointillist artwork and our class choice was tissue paper! We had to carefully crumple the tissue paper and then dip it into PVA glue, before gluing them onto our African patterns. We discussed how African patterns are important to each tribe and are mostly geometric and symbolic. We tried really hard to make sure our patterns were close in colour to authentic African work.
We have been very busy saving up some money in Year 3 and we were able to spend it in our Year 3 Maths Toy Shop! We worked in teams to buy and sell some priced objects and work together to add and subtract the prices to work out how much we will need. It was great real-life experience and was super challenging when we wanted to buy multiple objects, we had to use our column addition and subtraction skills to help us. Hopefully we will be able to go home and do the shopping next!
Summer 1
Week 1: What an amazing first week back!! We had the exciting opportunity to have a football training session this week with a fantastic coach. We learnt how to stop the ball with a STOMP and how to dribble with the inside of your foot. We even played a game of stompers and dribblers, and had to count how many times we stomped on the ball. It was so much fun! Then, we played some football matches and had to run really fast with the ball to make sure the other team didn't score!
Week 2: We had the most amazing opportunity this week! We got a loan box from the Manx Museum focused on Life at Sea and the history of the Isle of Man. We learnt about William Hillary who founded the RNLI and the Tower of Refuge, as well as learning about some superstitions that Manx sailors believed in and what they used to protect themselves. We even got to try on a waterproof hat that sailors would wear and an old fashioned life jacket. It was very heavy and didn't offer a lot of help, but thankfully the modern life jackets are much better! Thank you to the Manx Museum for loaning us some artifacts!!
Week 3: EUROVISION WEEK!! We have had such an exciting week learning all about Australia, the country we were representing in our Vallajeelt Eurovision. We researched Australia and found out loads of interesting facts for our Eurovision presentation! Did you know the national gemstone of Australia is the opal? We also made some fairy bread; made from white bread, butter and sprinkles, fairy bread is an Australian delicacy required for any party! We loved making it, but particularly loved eating it. We worked so hard on our Eurovision song Ngarra Burra Ferra and it paid off; We came 2nd place!! Miss MB and Ms Lyon were so proud of us and we are also proud of us!! Well done Year 3!!! :)
Week 4: This week, we took advantage of the amazing weather and did some outdoor learning. We started our week with a fraction hunt in the sun. We worked in teams to match our written fractions to the shapes and the parts that were shaded. We had to race to beat the timer and make sure we had our whole sheet completed; this allowed us to work on our communication and teamwork skills! Then on Wednesday, we learnt about the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It is home to over 2900 individual reefs and it is gigantic; you could fit the Isle of Man in there over 40 times!! We thought it would be a nice idea to bring the Great Barrier Reef to Meadow Campus, so we decorated the playground and made our own version. We researched the sealife and plantlife that lives there and made sure to add them to our project. It was loads of fun and great to combine our artistic skills with our topic knowledge!
Week 5: This week, we completed our Under the Manx coastline silhouettes. We used black card and soft pastels to create an under the sea feel. We also used our knowledge of light and dark to help us choose which colors would blend together well to create an underwater light effect. We each choose a sealife creature that can be found around the Isle of Man and stuck them to the card using blue-tack. After that, we started by drawing lines around our creature with the chalk and then using our fingers to blur the chalk creating a background for our creature; it was very messy but very fun! Then, we peeled off the creature and it left a silhouette which we then outlined with black marker. We created some fantastic silhouettes, have a look if you can guess what sealife creature we focused on!
