As part of our What’s the matter? mini topic, we’ve been studying fossilisation! (LO: How are fossils formed?)
We worked in groups to jot down key words and phrases from an informational video.
Next, we were given pictures of the different stages and had to put them in the correct order and write a sentence about each.
There was no need for a fossil fuel boost today- nobody was being a lazy bones! Fossils rock!
This week’s homework was I know what community is.
As usual we were blown away by the quality and effort put into every piece!
From showing where we belong to where we live…
… to communities we are a part of…
… and information about where we’ve come from …
… to showing who makes up our community… 
… we thoroughly enjoyed discussing them all!
Well done everyone!
Today, we performed our acrostic poems about our chosen community hero.
“Rhythm makes the poem easy to remember.”
– Phoebe
“Harris’ poem rhymed in lots of places!”
– Talha
“Imagery helps put a picture in your head.”
– Hifza
“Jess really thought about her poem and she really took her time and the rhythm was really good.”
– Musa
Today, we learnt a new superpower: mindfulness! This new skill can help calm us down in stressful situations and can help us talk about our emotions and understand them.
To demonstrate how mindfulness works, we were shown a bottle of water. We named emotions and assigned them to colours of glitter, which were poured into the bottle one by one. If the emotions were shaken up and not dealt with, it was hard to see through the water clearly. We practised some breathing techniques…
… to calm and relax us. As we did so, the glittery emotions in the bottle settled and the water (symbolising our thinking) was now clear!
In the wise words of Master Oogway: “Your mind is like the water. When it becomes agitated, it becomes difficult to see. But if you allow it to settle, the answer becomes clear.”
This week’s spelling activity is an investigation about words with a long ‘a’ sound. For example: ei in vein or aigh in straight.
We’ll discuss our investigation on Thursday 30 November.
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.
We look forward to welcoming our visitors through the week and learning and discovering more about our Identity topic.
This week’s spelling list is all about homophones: words that sound the same but have different spellings. We voted for the ones that we find most difficult, using our investigation from last week.
| blue/blew | ate/eight | board/bored | sun/son | wear/where |
| right/write | knew/new | knight/night | wait/weight | hear/here |
There will be a spelling test on Friday 24 November.
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.
