Author: Miss Wilson

Today, we had a special visit from Police Community Support! We talked about how to be safe when crossing the road and walking home, and how we can help our parents decide the safest place to park!

First, we put on our hi-vis jackets (so people could see us and we were safe) and listened to our briefing.

Next, we went outside to the road in front of school and one by one had a go using the speed gun to measure how fast (or slowly and safely) the cars were going.

“They taught us lots of bits about road safety that we might not have known.”

– Felix

“Hold hands with your adult and ask them not to park on the yellow lines.”

– Liam

“I liked it because I got to wear a police hat.”

– Phoebe

“I liked using the speed gun because you got to do something that not many other people could do.”

– Emma

“I liked the speed gun because it was fun seeing how fast the cars go.”

– Isabella

Yesterday, we were lucky enough to have some visitors from BID Services – a charity committed to promoting choice and independence.

They talked to us about how to signal and help people with hearing impairments and taught us how to Fingerspell the alphabet which we thoroughly enjoyed!

“My favourite part was learning the numbers.”

– Rayn

“I really liked it when we tried to make our names with the alphabet.”

– Safiya-Mishal

“My favourite number was the number nine and you held your hand up sideways.”

– Hifza

“I liked the doorbell so if you were blind and deaf you had the remote in your pocket and it would vibrate so you would know to open the door.”

– Kashif

For more information about Sensory Support, check out the Leeds Sensory Support Service or for resources and games to learn British Sign Language go to their homepage.

As part of our Who Do You Think You Are? themed week, we have discussed what community means to us in our Living and Learning session. First, we made a mind map as a class…

… and then split into smaller groups to make our own.

• “Community is sharing happy memories.”
• “Community is our heritage.”
• “Community is where you belong.”

We look forward to welcoming our visitors through the week and learning and discovering more about our Identity topic.

This week’s Living and Learning theme was: “I know how to stop bullying”. This underpinned a lot of what we covered in class.

In our Living and Learning session, we discussed the impact that our words have on others.

Using our ‘friend’, we took it in turns to say mean things about them. With every hurtful comment, we ripped our friend to pieces.

Once there was nothing left of our friend, we took it in turns to say nice things about them, putting them back together as we did so.
We were able to put our friend back together, but what do you notice? Our words had changed our friend. We discussed how important it is to build each other up and understand the power of words.

In reading and writing sessions this week, we have analysed instructions by following some to make our own treasure maps (Learning Objective: Retrieving Information)…

…and collecting a word bank of appealing recipe language (Learning Objective: Which words interest the reader?).

In maths, (Learning Objective: Multiplying and Dividing By 4) we’ve used story problems and bar models to support our learning. We’ve used reasoning skills to explain if diagrams were true or false:

Thank you to the masses of parents that came to our assembly on Wednesday! The hard work you’ve been putting in at home really shone through.

On Thursday, we had some visitors from Y6 to share opinions with and discuss our learning.

Friday brought with it the long-awaited Takeover Day! Roles were shared amongst the class such as “Star Chart Monitor” and “Register Taker”. Children were extremely enthusiastic and relished the responsibility! They even asked if they could take on more chores at home!​

Well done to certificate winner Emily, for always knowing the right thing to do, especially how to stop bullying, and all of Year 3 for their fantastic assembly using all the 8 Rs for learning.

Last week’s Living and Learning theme was I know we’re all the same and we’re all different. We used Our Rules that we created last week in our discussion of the pros and cons of being the same and different to everybody else. We decided it would be really boring if we were all the same all the time! In teams, we wrote a recipe for success for teamwork. Some ingredients we thought of were ‘problem solving attitude’ and ‘good listening skills’.

We took on the role of detectives in English this week, spotting features of an instruction text in cookery books. We had competitions to see whose text contained the most features – but we had to give evidence of each feature to win the point!

Maths has revolved around multiplying and dividing by 3! We’ve looked at finding groups of three and finding three equal groups which is tricky because they sound similar but are very different. There are lots of ways to represent one number sentence. For example: 5 x 3 =  could be expressed as ‘3 x 5′, ’15’, ‘five threes’ or shown by fifteen counters. We played Snap to test our knowledge of this in a fun way.

Some of us had more luck than others. You had to be quick!

To round off our Explorers topic in a creative way, we went on a Smell Journey around school, after discussing artwork by Kate McLean: NYC’s Threshold of Smells.

This inspired us to write a descriptive recount of a walk to school where we were bombarded with stinky stenches and awesome aromas. We also wrote a class Pongy Poem, which we displayed in the style of a smell.

Next, we experimented with colour and shape using watercolours to represent what the smells might look like if we could see them. (There were some interesting discussions about certain smells!)

This week’s Creative Homework task was to show understanding of addition and subtraction and I was absolutely bowled over by the quality of the submissions! The children had clearly gone to so much effort to show what they had learnt over the past few weeks and they were so proud of what they had done, which sparked some great conversations between pupils. It was fantastic to see. There were lots of board games with their own rules using addition and subtraction at their core, there were online quizzes and mazes and puzzles, there was even a video presentation (see the bottom of the post)! We all thoroughly enjoyed discussing each and every one, so I would like to say a massive well done from me, once more. Check out some of their brilliant learning below:

Starring pen and paper…

Well done to certificate winners Hifza, for a fantastic contribution to this week’s Living and Learning theme and her understanding of how we are the same and different, and Henka, for an unbelievably good piece of descriptive writing and your handwriting has come on leaps and bounds, too! Keep it up!