Year 3 Class News

School Council elections

Posted on Wednesday 18 October 2017 by Mrs Taylor

Our School Council elections will take place tomorrow, Thursday, 19 October. All children have the opportunity to vote at our polling station using the following instructions.

ballot

Before voting, please read the following:

  • Vote once for one person.
  • Place one X only on this ballot paper beside the name of the candidate you have chosen.
  • Do not write or mark anything else on the ballot paper; if you do, your paper will be invalid and your vote will not be counted.
  • When you have marked the ballot paper, fold the paper and place it in the box provided.

Votes will be counted tomorrow and our new School Council will be announced at the end of the day. This will be made up of two children from each class with the highest number of votes.

Good luck to all our candidates.

City of Leeds basketball

Posted on Wednesday 18 October 2017 by Mrs Taylor

City of Leeds basketball club recently led a PE session for Year 5 and delivered our basketball after-school club in the summer term.

Here are details of their sessions available locally.

There is also a new girls-only session at Allerton High School on Monday evenings, 6pm – 7.30pm, ages 7 – 14 years.  The first two sessions are free and then it is £5 pay to play.

Bonfire themed menu

Posted on Sunday 15 October 2017 by Mrs Taylor

Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Friday 03 November. Please contact the office, before Wednesday 18 October, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.

  • Posh dogs in finger rolls or Vegetarian meatballs in finger rolls
  • Curly fries
  • BBQ baked beans
  • Rocket lolly
  • Fresh fruit and yogurt

From Code Breakers to Saving Mr Owen – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up

Posted on Friday 13 October 2017 by Miss Wilson

Miss Wilson is reporting for Moortown Magazine.

Moortown Primary School, set in picturesque North Leeds, was where ground-breaking learning took place this week. Experts claim that Moortown Primary is home to some of the most hardworking pupils in the country.

This week, Year 3 has enjoyed: brilliant raft building, a confusing code breaker, phenomenal physical education, resilience in reading sessions, and fantastic fact files.

After being presented with the challenge of designing and creating a raft in order to save Mr Owen, who was stranded on a desert island, the students worked in pairs to meet the design criteria.

Will, a member of the class, said: “It was really exciting and fun.”

Jessica commented: “I liked using our own designs.”

On Monday, the students’ creations will be put to the test to see if they actually float and can save the poor Y4 teacher.

Problem-solving has also appeared in maths this week, where children were faced with a code-breaker situation. Number sentences were given to the young mathematicians, who had to use column addition to work out the answer. Their resulting number translated to a letter which formed a word. This is what the code breakers had to say:

Rayn, who enjoyed the task despite its difficulty, stated: “I found it really tricky to match the number answers to the letter codes.”

“It was hard because it was a race against other teams,” fellow classmate, Emma, said.

    

The class will apply this knowledge to their subtraction studies next week.

Year 3 were visited once again by local gymnastic experts. The focus, mirroring previous weeks, was balance and coordination alongside lots of elements of fun.

“I liked it because it was fun sliding on the benches using our bodies!” a visibly excited Yusayrah purported.

Leo claimed: “It was tricky bending down on one leg with the other one sticking out in front of you.”

Check out these epic slow-mo videos captured at the scene:

Stretching tall and jumping high
Balancing on the benches
Bunny hops

During reading this week, Year 3 has sampled a variety of tasks. One of these challenges was ‘Draw and Label’ where students listened to a description from their class novel and had to sketch out how they imagined the scene to look.

Hifza, who is soon to turn 8, said: “I thought this activity was interesting because I’ve never done it before.”

Meanwhile, Musa alleged that it was fun because he enjoyed labelling the drawing.

Continuing their geography theme in topic lessons (‘LO: to know about global regions’), Year 3 worked collaboratively to build a country fact file in pairs.

Regarding the task, Jemima remarked: “It was hard because some of the words were really tricky.”

“I enjoyed searching on the iPads,” said Mr Laverick, aged 7.

If you haven’t already guessed, this week and next week’s English theme is newspapers! We have discussed the features of news reports and learnt about the punctuation required for quotes and speech. (Ask your child what a colon means! “Hang on…”) This has been tricky for many, as it may be completely new, so when we did succeed with our learning, it tasted even more sweet!

It was great to meet lots of parents at the homework review on Thursday and I hope you enjoyed looking at and hearing about our amazingly creative homework! Here are some highlights:

I look forward to seeing you on Monday or Tuesday for parents’ evening.

School council elections

Posted on Wednesday 11 October 2017 by Mrs Taylor

Our school council elections will take place next Thursday 19 October.

In an assembly this week, our current school councillors told us what characteristics are needed to be an effective school councillor.

These included:

  • use all the 8 Rs for learning
  • be respectful
  • help others
  • be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
  • tell the truth
  • be confident with your ideas
  • accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
  • be friendly and approachable
  • make good choices in class and around school

Watch out for the whole school homework this week all about the election and democracy.

From Decapolagests to Hellos and Goodbyes – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up

Posted on Friday 06 October 2017 by Miss Wilson

This week’s maths has been all about giving context to our calculations by telling a story and asking a question. For example: “Talha had 452 cookies. Kashif gave him 30 more. How many cookies did Talha have altogether?” We used our place value grids to tackle these calculations and these will help us with our column addition next week.

Collaborative learning has been a recurrent theme across the week, where we’ve given feedback on each other’s learning in English and worked together to find facts in a newspaper article…

… and used our sketching skills to draw a new species of animal we found on our exploration (Emily discovered a Decapolagest!). We did this by drawing its head, eyes and mouth and passing it to the next person. Next, we drew the body, arms and wings and passed it on. Then, we drew the creature’s legs and tail. Finally, we drew the animal’s feet!

It certainly produced some humorous results!

Our wacky pictures helped us plan a descriptive piece of writing.

  

Continuing the team work theme, in groups we have also researched our continents in our topic lessons, and presented our findings to the class!

   

Using our drama skills, we recreated a scene from a short film. When Miss Wilson shouted, ‘Freeze frame!’ we had to hold our positions whilst the audience discussed how each character would be feeling and why, using what we knew from the clip.

Here are some action shots from our PE lesson, where we practised our ginormous jumping and our huge handstands.

 

 

We even got the benches out for some balance and stretching, for the first time! It was very exciting!

Sadly, this week, we had to say goodbye to two of our classmates: Maya and Setayesh. You will both be deeply missed and we wish you lots of luck for your new schools, but we’re sure you will both be fantastic!

A humongous welcome to our new friend Talha, who joined the Year 3 team on Thursday! Already, you are a valued member of the class and I look forward to getting to know you better.

From Addition Missions to Egg Rolls – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up

Posted on Friday 29 September 2017 by Miss Wilson

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!

 

 

After-school clubs – it’s not too late to sign up

Posted on Thursday 28 September 2017 by Mrs Taylor

Our Autumn term after-school clubs start next week for 8 weeks.

We do have some spaces available so please contact the office if you would like your child/children to take part.

Clubs on offer include hockey, multi-sports, multi-skills, dance, gymnastics, cookery, Lego Club and Code Club.

School Savings Club dates for paying in

Posted on Monday 25 September 2017 by Mrs Taylor

The School Savings Club paying in sessions for this year are at 3.15-3.45pm on the following dates (the penultimate Thursday of each half term).

  • 12 October
  • 07 December
  • 01 February
  • 22 March
  • 17 May
  • 12 July

If you’re unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be deposited to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.

Information will shortly be sent home about the accounts and if your child would like to open account, please enquire at the office.  There is an extra incentive for pupils in Year 3 as Leeds City Council will add £10 to your child’s account.

From Party Poppers to Human Number Lines – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up

Posted on Friday 22 September 2017 by Miss Wilson

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!