Investigating the size of shadows

Wednesday 23rd April

The children worked in groups to investigate the effect of moving a light source further away from an object on the size of it's shadow. We found that as we moved the torch further away, the shadow got smaller (which is what we predicted!).

Trip to St Albans Cathedral

Tuesday 1st April

We enjoyed learning about the history of St Albans Cathedral as well as practising Geography skills including using maps and compasses. The weather was perfect! Thank you to our parent volunteers for making the trip possible.

Overworking Our Hippocrumps

Thursday 20th March

Having drawn our own versions of The Hippocrumps in Art last week with oil pastels, this week we overworked them using water colour paint. 

World Book Day

Thursday 6th March

As part of our World Book Day celebrations, we headed over to Year 1 Foxes to do some paired reading. It was a real pleasure to watch the children interacting and sharing their books. Mrs Walton was very impressed by the expressive reading she overheard! Hopefully we can make this a regular occurrence as we all really enjoyed it.

Investigating Environmental Quality

Tuesday 4th March

In Geography, we have been using size and quality of front gardens as a way of measuring the quality of an environment. First, we predicted what would happen to the size of people's front gardens as we got further away from the centre of town. We then used Google Earth to test our predictions. 

Art

Thursday 27th February

We had our first Art lesson of the Spring term this afternoon. We started by looking at line drawings by Vincent Van Gough. We had a go at replicating some of the lines and marks we could identify in his artwork, and then used oil pastels in concentric circles to take this further. 

Posters to Persuade

Friday 7th February

As part of our English unit looking at Stella and the Seagull, the children have produced posters about an environmental issue facing our school. They needed to use second person to address the reader directly, alliteration in their title and questions to persuade the reader to make a change.

Designing Gardens

Tuesday 4th February

Over the last few weeks in PSHE, the children have been working in groups to design a garden. They decided on a group of people who were facing a challenge to be the users of their garden. We had a lesson to plan out what they wanted in their garden and then another lesson to produce a professional garden plan. They look great and the children worked really well in their teams to overcome any obstacles or frustrations. 

Calculating Perimeter

Monday 20th January

The children worked really hard in Maths to calculate the perimeter of various rectangles by doubling the length, doubling the width and then adding them together. 

Investigating Friction

Wednesday 15th January

We really enjoyed our Science lesson today. We investigated the friction produced by different surfaces on a toy car! The surfaces we looked at were Lego, bubble wrap, whiteboard, tissue paper and cloth. We predicted that the bubble wrap or Lego would create the most friction as they are bumpy. The children worked in groups to slowly lift the surface 1cm at a time, recording the height at which the car started moving.

Wednesday 8th January

The children have settled into the new term quickly and we enjoyed our first Geography lesson of Year 3 yesterday. Our new topic is all about how our local area has changed over time. We started by comparing maps of The British Isles, United Kingdom and Great Britain, then looked at the capital cities of each country in the UK. The children then used compass points to describe the location of countries and cities within the British Isles, e.g. 'Northern Ireland is north west of Wales', 'London is east of Cardiff'. 

Tuesday 17th December

The children produced some lovely pieces of artwork this afternoon, taking inspiration from various animal prints. They used lolly sticks to scratch their pattern into polystyrene tiles, then rollers to print these into their sketch books. 

Wednesday 11th December

We have now reached the end of our history topic, "How did Britain change between the Stone Age and the Iron Age?" The children completed their concept maps to show off everything they have learned since the beginning of this unit. 

Tuesday 26th November

We began our new English text, Incredible Jobs You've (Probably) Never Heard Of yesterday. We discussed the purpose (to inform) and audience (children) before spending time identifying other features found in the text. 

Tuesday 12th November

The children have been really impressing me with their confidence and accuracy when using the formal written method of addition. We have been working on ensuring our columns are lined up properly and remembering to include units of measurement when appropriate. 

Friday 8th November

In PE, we have started our new unit of work on Orienteering. Miss Black and I were really impressed by how well the children worked in their pairs to follow the map, adding up the numbers on the cones as they went. We are looking forward to exploring more of the school site over the coming weeks.

Wednesday 16th October

Thank you to all of the adults who were able to join us for our first Learn and Share of the year. It was a great opportunity for the children to show off their learning so far. 

In English, we played 'Walky Talky sentences' with our writing from yesterday. We are working on demarcating sentences accurately and needed to change direction every time we reached the end of a sentence.

Science Investigation

Wednesday 9th October

In Science this afternoon, we investigated whether the length of someone's femur affects the distance they can jump. We made sure to keep certain things the same, such as footwear, the type of jump and the surface we were jumping on. 

Coding

Monday 30th September

Today, we used the repeat command to program our character to draw a square. We also included a button so that the action would only begin when our button was clicked. 

Shell Structures with Windows

Thursday 26th September

In DT this afternoon, we worked in groups to add a window into an existing shell structure. We discussed the purpose of these being to allow customers to see what's inside. We will be deciding whether or not to include a window into our final product in a few weeks time.

Rounding

Tuesday 24th September

In Maths, we have been rounding numbers to the nearest 10 and 100. We use rounding mountains to identify the 10 or 100 before and after our target number, as well as the midpoint. We then decide if our number is greater or smaller than the midpoint to identifyt whether we round up or down. 

New Spelling Scheme

Tuesday 17th September

We started our new spelling scheme today. It focuses on adding prefixes and suffixes to 'root morphemes'. Today, we started by adding suffixes to 'jump'. Have a look at some of our word sums and the sentences we created. 

Food and Nutrition

Wednesday 11th September

We have started our Science topic, 'Animals including Humans'. Last week, we recapped the Eat Well Plate and sorted various foods into the correct section of the plate. This afternoon, we took a closer look at the nutrients that each food group provides and made suggestions for how to improve a meal.

Welcome to Year 3 Otters!

Tuesday 3rd September

We had a brilliant first day of the year today and the children were full of enthusiasm for the year ahead. We started looking at our new book for English, Mini Rabbit Not Lost, and explored the place value of 3-digit numbers in Maths. This afternoon, we worked in groups to create our 'Feel It TEAM Promise' which is attached below. Keep an eye on our class page which will be updated weekly.