This week’s spelling activity is an investigation. You need to find words that begin with the prefix ‘dis’. For example: disappear.
The prefix ‘dis’ is a negative or reversing force! How many words can you find? Can you spot any patterns? Can you show your words in a creative way?
We’ll discuss our investigation on Friday 13 October.
This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Thursday 12 October:
I can show why I would make a good explorer.
Parents are invited to come and see our homework review process! Children have been asked to demonstrate why they would make a good explorer. We have spoken about our flying ship’s crew, made up of people such as a zoologist, navigator or anthropologist. Some ideas we had in class were:
When completing this Creative homework, as per the name, be as creative as you like! Make sure you chat about ideas with your child: could the homework be in the form of a poster, a letter, a comic strip, some writing, a PowerPoint…? Could it use photos, drawings, fold out ‘extras’ on the page…?
We are practising the four times tables this week. This is a new times table for most, so this week, children should focus on becoming familiar with this. It may take some time to learn a new times table, but as long as the practice is little and often, they’re sure to get it in no time. Make sure to reiterate division facts, too.
For example, if we know 5 x 4 = 20, we should know 4 x 5 = 20, 20 ÷ 5 = 4 and 20 ÷ 4 = 5.
We took on the role of spies this week in Maths, with secret addition missions to accomplish. We also practised how to mark our own answers and we’re shaping up to be independent and responsible learners.
For a more concrete representation, we have used place value grids to help us visualise how to add a 3 digit number to a 1 digit number.
Our maths talk this week has revolved around explaining what happens when we solve these calculations.
In English, this week, we have analysed what makes a good description. This helped us write our own as a group…
… and then move to more independent writing by the end of the week. I have been blown away by the quality of the children’s writing, especially their use of expanded noun phrases and prepositions.
As we continue our journey with our Explorers topic, we identified and described human and physical features of geography. Our flying ship was cut off from its communications with HQ this week, so we had to describe our location using photos taken out of the portholes.
PE was a highlight of the week again, as we continued to work on our flexibility and coordination in gymnastics. Some of the stretches were a little tricky but I’m sure our core strength will be improving as the weeks go by! Why not try a back support or an egg roll whilst you’re watching TV or even doing your spellings!
We’ve discussed what it means to be a part of a team, alongside our Living and Learning theme this week: “I am resourceful. I am resilient.” We talked about our goals and how we will need these two Rs for Learning to achieve them.
Well done to certificate winners Leo, who is a great example of someone who doesn’t give up when they face a challenge, and Nryan, whose spelling investigation impressed me greatly.
Another fantastic week in Year 3 – well done to everyone!
This week’s spellings are all words where you need to drop the ‘e’ for an ‘ing’. If you’re not sure what any of them mean, find out. We may ask children to spell similar words that follow the same pattern. There are some easy words and some tricky words this week so make sure you continue to practise little and often.
| decide/ing | exercise/ing | joke/ing | write/ing | use/ing |
| make/ing | dine/ing | hope/ing | love/ing | describe/ing |
Learn this pattern in preparation for the test on Friday 06 October.
This week’s homework is Practice Makes Perfect and is due in on Thursday 05 October:
I can revise place value.
Children been given a sheet of questions which revises learning which we’ve done in class over the last few weeks. If there are any questions, children should come and see us for help before the date it’s due in – we like helping!
We’re improving our 3 and 5 times tables this week.
We continue to explore our spelling theme: ‘drop the y for an i‘. This week’s spelling activity is an investigation. You need to find words where you would drop the ‘y’ for an ‘i’ and then add either ‘ier’ or ‘iest’. This makes either a comparative or superlative adjective. For example: funny > funnier > funniest.
We’ll discuss our investigation on Friday 29 September.
Welcome aboard!
This week marks the beginning of our Explorers topic and so we welcome our newest member of the Year 3 team.
A vote was taken to decide their name; introducing… Bobby the astronaut!
(Somehow, tables 1, 2, 3 and 5 didn’t take to the Table 4 suggestion.)
To delve into the mind of an explorer, we had lots of lively discussion about what sort of items they should pack into their travel bag.
From fast food menus (“No! How will they deliver to half way up a mountain?” vs “Yes – we could use the paper to start a fire.”) to party poppers (“We shouldn’t pack it – setting them off could scare animals.” vs “Yes – if we discover a new species, we need something to celebrate with.”), we debated it all. We also used maps to locate supplies lost by our flying ship in a terrible storm:
In maths this week, we’ve been ordering numbers to 1000. This was quite a tricky skill, so we made sure to keep our brains engaged with some active maths. Here we are creating human number lines:
Next, we put our skills to the test in a place value number line challenge. We made actions to help us remember the steps for putting numbers on a number line!
Our English theme for the week has been grammar. We’ve looked at conjunctions, proper nouns, verbs and pronouns. For example, we extended sentences using conjunctions:
Our rusty, old car broke down.
Our rusty, old car broke down although it wasn’t really broken.
Our rusty, old car broke down although it wasn’t really broken, so we had to get a taxi.
To improve the flow of our writing, we looked at changing proper nouns for pronouns. For example:
Jessica waved at Felix and Felix waved back at Jessica.
Jessica waved at Felix and he waved back at her.
Balance, coordination and team work were all skills we used in our PE lesson this week! Maybe one of us will be the next Kyle Wilson!
I’ve been absolutely blown away by the creative homework this week. Each child interpreted the task in their own way and produced some wonderful results. We really enjoyed discussing our own efforts and the effort of others. Here are some highlights, featuring the character Dark himself!
Well done to certificate winners Setayesh and Musa! Both of you are an asset to this class and it’s great to see such enthusiastic and responsible learners!
This week’s spellings are all words which need you to drop the ‘y’ for an ‘i’. Then, you add either ed or es to make the past tense or a plural noun. If you’re not sure what any of them mean, find out. We may ask children to spell similar words that follow the same pattern:
| carry/ied | fly/ies | family/ies | hurry/ied | copy/ied |
| try/ied | daisy/ies | worry/ied | puppy/ies | story/ies |
Learn this pattern in preparation for the test on Friday 22 September.
This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Thursday 21 September:
I can show what I have learnt after reading Orion and the Dark.
Children have been asked to demonstrate what they have learnt and enjoyed after reading our class novel. Some ideas we had in class were:
When completing this Creative homework, as per the name, be as creative as you like! Make sure you chat about ideas with your child: could the homework be in the form of a poster, a letter, a comic strip, some writing, a PowerPoint…? Could it use photos, drawings, fold out ‘extras’ on the page…?
We are practising the three times tables this week. This is a new times table for most, so this week, children should focus on becoming familiar with this. It may take some time to learn a new times table, but as long as the practice is little and often, they’re sure to get it in no time. Make sure to reiterate division facts, too.
For example, if we know 5 x 3 = 15, we should know 3 x 5 = 15, 15 ÷ 5 = 3 and 15 ÷ 3 = 5.
This week, the children were extremely excited to make their monsters. As you can see from their facial expressions, they came up with some terrifying creatures! Challenge your child to describe their monster using interesting adjectives!
We discussed vocabulary and their impact upon readers with ‘shades of meaning’. Children worked in groups and talked about what each word meant and where an author might use it.
We had a go at acting out each word, from creeping to marching, from worried to petrified:
Great drama skills!
In maths, we have been working on missing number patterns, using detective skills to figure out which numbers complete the sequence. Not only have we been practising our 5s this week, but also counting in 50s with our ‘First to 1000’ game!
We used iPads and books to research the question: ‘What is a constellation?’, and presented our results back to the class…
We drew known constellations, but designed and named our own creations, too!
We have also been inspired to make some constellation art, using different paints and glitter. Hopefully we’ll have some clear evenings this weekend so you can go stargazing, something a lot of children have been very enthusiastic about. See if you can spot any of the constellations we’ve talked about this week!
Sadly, this week brings the end of our time with Orion and the Dark, but children have been writing their own version of the story. With some fantastically creative ideas from the class, we turned the story on its head and entitled ours ‘Orion and the Sun’. A boy who is afraid to go outside goes on an adventure with his new friend Sunny to find out if there’s more to life than his video games! I’m looking forward to reading the results!
A warm welcome to our new class pet, Mr Fluffy…
…who helped us discuss our Living and Learning theme for this week which was “I show I am ready to learn and I respond to feedback”. Congratulations to Jessica, who won this week’s Living and Learning certificate, for our brilliant conversations about her work and for always being one of the first ready to learn. Congratulations to Adam, this week’s Star of the Week, for his enthusiasm, contribution and all round hard work.
Another great week in Y3! Well done everyone!
