Trotts Hill Primary School and Nursery
Welcome to Year 3 and the first year of Key Stage 2. Mrs Chumbley is the class teacher and Mrs Hunter is the teaching assistant.
During the the year we have many exciting things planned for you to participate in.
During the AutumnTerm we will learn about a range of exciting topics including countries of the world in geography, the Stone Age to Iron Age in history and rocks and forces in science. The children will continue to explore key artists and develop their Cave painting skills, they will also have the opportunity to design and sew a pencil case in D&T. In PE the children will explore ball games and gymnastics.
We provide the support needed for each child to reach their potential as well as enjoy the journey along the way. Children are encouraged to express their individual talents across the curriculum and there are plenty of opportunities to celebrate these achievements.
Please support at home with reading, spellings, times tables and home learning so that children make the best possible progress in all areas of the curriculum.
We all enjoy being in Year 3 and look forward to an exciting term ahead.
Year 3 have been exploring Advent and made their advent wreaths.
The children are loving our new unit of learning in English which we started last week. The learning is based on the book: Atlas of Adventures and takes the children on a tour of the world. This also links with our geography learning. The children, so far, have written postcards from Paris and London; explored the Northern Lights in Finland and, today, investigated festivals and celebrations in Asia.
As part of our unit of learning on Countries of the World, today we focused on using an atlas to locate capital cities of different countries. We discussed the difference between a continent, a country and a city.
This week Year 3 wrote their own set of instructions. They were inspired by Roald Dahl's The Twits and wrote a set of instructions for a trick which could be played on an unsuspecting person! They thought carefully about the layout and order and included adverbs of time and imperative verbs.
In English, we will be exploring and writing instructions. To help us with this we played different games, following the instructions, and also built using Lego, giving instructions to our partners so that they could build the same model. We identified the imperative verbs and adverbs of time used in an instruction.
The children continued their learning in gymnastics by creating a sequence with matching and contrasting balances.
Year 3 have been learning about fables. They have read and enjoyed the modern fable 'War and Peas'. They retold the story using adverbs of time to help them organise the key events.
The children explored Stone Age cave paintings and then had an opportunity to create their own.
The children were exploring counting in 50s. They investigated the link between counting in 5s and counting in 50s. The children then worked together to devise a game which helped them with learning to count in 50s fluently.
Year 3 enjoyed a fantastic day at Celtic Harmony learning about the Stone Age. They saw fire created, heard a Stone Age story, hunted and gathered, prepared soup and built a shelter.
In science we are investigating forces. This week we explored friction by testing different surfaces within the classroom. We observed and then concluded our findings with our partners.
In maths, Year 3 are exploring place value. They created 2-digit numbers and represented these using different equipment.
This morning, Year 3 made their pizzas. They used the following skills: kneading, cutting and grating. The pizzas smelt and looked delicious. Well done Year 3.
The children explored the muscles in their body and discussed how they worked. They then created their own muscle so that they could explore the stretch and contract.
The children have started a new unit of learning in maths: shape. Today's lesson focused on identifying angles and turns. Year 3 took part in an active maths lesson where they had to give their partner directions using the correct mathematical vocabulary.
Year 3 had a great day at St.Albans Cathedral learning about the Romans. They met a Roman soldier, learnt about the Romans in St.Albans and the story of St.Alban. They finished the day by creating their own Roman mosaics.
In guided reading this week we are exploring the poem 'The Dragon of Andor'. We spent some time miming the poem.
As part of Year 3's science learning they investigated what owls eat. They used owl pellets to uncover and then identify bones.
In maths, Year 3 have started their unit of learning on time. They have begun by exploring an analogue clock and telling the time to the nearest 5 minutes.
Year 3 have been developing the use of characterisation during their dance lessons. They have created a dance to 'The Circle of Life' each group representing a different animal which was feeding around a water hole.
Year 3 explored observational drawing. They started by exploring different grades of pencils and chalks and pastels. They then started drawing different objects and focused upon creating a 3D shape. Year 3 then explored the local artist, Sarah Graham and produced a piece of artwork based on her sweet creations. They found it very hard not to eat the sweets which they were drawing!
Year 3 have started their new unit of learning: money. They spent the lesson exploring the coins, identifying them and comparing the amounts they made.
The children in Year 3 had a great session with Fit Kidz. They used a range of different equipment to help build their fitness levels.
In English we are exploring adventure stories. We are listening to the story Ice Palace by Robert Swindlles. As a class we are producing a story map after each read. We have explored vocabulary used to create an adventure story setting and wrote a setting of our own. The children are really enjoying this story and some children have even acted it out at playtime.
The children created fantastic 'Moving Monsters' as part of their D&T learning. They used a pneumatic system using a syringe and a balloon or a syringe and a syringe to make their part move.
In English, we are focusing upon non-fiction texts. We are using a fabulous book called "Atlas of Adventures" and will be taking a trip around the world. The children have created a synonym word bank for the word 'spectacular' and revisited using conjunctions to extend sentences. The children have visited Finland and London so far and wrote a diary entry about their London trip.
Year 3 completed their art unit by creating prints inspired by Andy Warhol.
In computing today, the children used the Advanced mode of 2Caculate. They explored named cells and completed activities which used cell addresses to create a picture and complete a treasure map.
Year 3 celebrated World Book Day by dressing up as their favourite book character or as a character from our class book 'The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon'. They listened to the class book and then created characters to decorate the classroom door. The children then took part in an illustrator session to learn how to draw a cat.
This week, Year 3 started their new science unit: Plants. They looked at some plants and then matched plant parts and function cards. Then, they drew their own plants and labelled them.
In science we were exploring whether sun light was safe. We were given different statements about the sun and had to decide whether the sun was a hero or a villain. We discussed each of the different statements to learn why it was a hero or a villain e.g. sun creates vitamin D and the sun causes sun burn. We learnt how to keep our eyes safe in the sun and then produced a hero/villain poster.
As part of our PSHE this week, Year 3 took part in the NSPCC Assembly: Speak Out. Stay Safe. They learnt that abuse is NOT ok, who they can go to for help and about Child Line.
In maths, the children are beginning to explore length and perimeter. Today the children completed an active lesson and measured using m and cm.
This week in science, Year 3 continued to learn about light. They investigated whether light can travel through all objects. They classified objects into three categories: opaque, translucent and transparent.
This week Year 3 have started to explore traditional tales. They listened to a selection and had the opportunity to read other traditional tales with their partner. They then chose their favourite tale and, with a partner, produced a story map to retell the tale.
This week the children evaluated a range of pencil cases before designing and making their own. They impressed us with their hard work and very good sewing skills. Once completed, they evaluated their final products.
In PSHE we explored the British Value of respect. We discussed different respectful and disrespectful scenarios and then played a respect board game.
The children started the lesson using sentence stems to help them answer the questions: What is soil? Where does it come from? What is it made from? They then spent time exploring a soil sample and observing what their sample consisted of. They drew their findings in their books and identified organic and non-organic matter.
As part of our geography learning, we used the internet to research human and physical features of countries around the world. We included details of mountains, rivers, population, tourist attractions, climate zones and language.
In English we are learning about recount writing. For this we are focusing upon news reports. This week we have explored a news report script in guided reading and in English lessons identified the features of a newspaper including how reports answer: who? what? when? where? and why? We will be writing our own newspaper reports based on the book: The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.
The children had lots of fun using bikes to make healthy smoothies in a healthy eating workshop. They learnt about the importance of eating a 'rainbow' of food. They tasted their smoothies - the blueberry and oat milk was the favourite.
The children had lots of fun taking part in the science and maths day. They built their own balloon buggies using their D&T skills. They then measured how far their buggy would travel. They used their previous learning from forces to choose the most appropriate surface for their buggy to travel on. Some of the buggies travelled for more than a metre.
This week, the children used different media to create their own Stone Age cave painting.
The children explored Stone Age cave paintings during art this week. They recorded their observations, thoughts and comments in their sketch books.
The children have started a new unit of learning which focuses on addition. During this active maths lesson, they explored adding different amounts of ones to a 2-digit number. The children built the number using either place value counters, Base 10 or bead strings. Some of the questions involved the children completing an exchange.
