A brilliant end to a brilliant term!

28th March 2024Jordan Clarke

Welcome to Year 3’s last blog of the Spring term. What an eventful term it has been and the children have really worked exceptionally hard. Even though it has been a relatively short term, we have crammed lots of learning and opportunities in for the children. One that we won’t be forgetting anytime soon is the year 3 and 4 play. This was a fantastic performance and the children worked so hard to put it together. From learning lines, to getting costumes ready and learning all of the songs. A big, big thank you to the parents and carers too who have helped with all of this – we really appreciate it! Let’s have a look at what else the children in year 3 have been getting up to…

Reading

We have had lots of fun in our Reading lessons this term. We have been looking at a story called The Iron Man. The children really enjoyed this immersive book and threw themselves into all aspects of it. The children used their visualisation skills to picture the Iron Man standing on the brink of a cliff, they also considered possible questions they had around who the Iron Man is?Where did he come from?Is someone controlling him? The children also placed themselves in the Iron Man shoes, and considered what it would be like if they were trapped like him and how they would feel when he becomes a hero.

The children also looked at a book called One Plastic Bag, this focuses on the recycling women of Gambia. The children learnt how to use a dictionary to find and define words within the story that they didn’t understand. They also learned about the importance of recycling and how plastic bags can be made into something else of use. 

History

This term we have had the pleasure of being able to focus on a single topic for a deep dive all the way through Spring. The children have been learning about Ancient Egypt as well as developing their skills as historians. We’ve learned all about where Ancient Egypt was, how their civilisation was structured, the beliefs they held and the jobs people did back then. We’ve even started to look at some artefacts from Ancient Egypt and discuss what they could have been for, and why they were found in the places they were, such as the tomb of Tutankhamun. We even were lucky enough to be able to invite some visitors to help us run an ‘Ancient Egypt Day’ which I’m sure you know all the children loved taking part in. We’d also like to say another massive thank you to all the parent volunteers who helped out on that day and made it a reality!

Maths

We have done so many maths units since the last blog it has been brilliant to see the children’s progress this half term! We started out with Fractions and the children did great. It was amazing to see them develop their understanding of what is usually a really tricky subject in maths. But the Year 3 team are all incredibly impressed with how all three classes have worked!

We have since started our unit on Mass and Capacity, the children have been working really hard and have already started to apply their knowledge from outside of school to the work in the classroom. Talking about helping to bake, and measuring things out at home. It’s been wonderful to see and we can’t wait to continue this unit in the Summer Term.

From the year 3 team:

Mr Vettese, Miss Hull, Miss Islam, Mr Clarke and Mrs Prowse

 

Year 3 Blog- Spring Term

31st January 2024Shuhana Islam

Welcome back to Spring Term

Welcome back to Spring Term in Year 3! There has been so much exciting learning going on and the children have impressed us with their enthusiasm and willingness to embrace new challenges.

English

In our English lessons, we have thoroughly enjoyed reading The Iron Man by Ted Hughes.

We have immersed ourselves in the book by carrying out lots of drama activities and retelling the story at each point to check that we have understood the plot. In writing, we have had a big push on punctuating sentences accurately with the correct end of sentence punctuation.

The children have also been thinking carefully about how to engage the reader by using a range of ambitious vocabulary and interesting sentence starters. We used an animation of The Iron Man to help us to write detailed character and setting descriptions. We then progressed to writing from different character’s perspectives and wrote diary entries from Hogarth’s point of view. Have a read of the children’s wonderful writing below:

Maths

We have just wrapped up our unit on multiplying and dividing, the children have learned a range of strategies for multiplying one and two digit numbers together as well as dividing them. We even started to learn how to account for remainders in division for the first time which is always tricky but they did really well!

We have now just started our unit on Length and Perimeter which the children have been enjoying so far. Measuring all sorts of objects around the classroom and discussion whichunit of measurement would be best suited for measuring certain objects. We’re going to continue to build on this fantastic work into the next half term as well as using it for a practical lesson on Number Day this Friday.

Science

This term we have been learning about light and shadows. We have learnt about what a light source is. We discussed that the sun was our biggest source of light. The children went around school looking for different light sources and identifying how that particular light source helps us. For example, some children identified the ‘exit light’ in the hall and classrooms. We spoke about how this light would help us find the exit incase of a fire. Our second lesson saw us being more investigative, we looked at the impact the sun has on our skin if we do not wear suncream. We placed different factors of suncream into separate bags along with some UV beads, which were left in the sun for 15 minutes. The results were very shocking to the children, because even with factor 30 on the UV beads some still changed colour showing the radiation from the sun. Our third lesson started to look into different materials and whether light could travel through them. The children learnt words such as Transparent, Translucent and Opaque. 

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be looking into how we can measure our shadows and whether they can be used to tell stories and also our reflections and the intention that mirrors our images back to front. 

History

This term we have been learning about the Ancient Egyptians. The children used an atlas to identify where Ancient Egypt is on a map and how long ago Ancient Egypt was (around 5,000 years ago). We have also looked at why the river Nile was so important to the Ancient Egyptians, the children created posters to show off the uses and importance of the river. Our third lesson was focused on the Great Pyramids of Egypt and why they were built. The children watched a virtual tour showing inside the pyramids and the different chambers for the Pharaohs. We used our artistic skills again in this lesson as the children then created their own mini pyramids using paper nets. In future lessons, we will be looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics, gods and the afterlife. Also, why and how we know so much about Ancient Egypt. 

We are looking forward to the rest of the Spring Term and have commenced our practises for our excting Year 3 and Year 4 play! Look out for more details in mid February.

We hope you have enjoyed finding out about what Year 3 have been up to over the last few weeks. As ever, please continue to encourage reading at home, spelling practise and remind your child to login to Times Tables Rockstars to improve their multiplication and disvision knowledge.Thank you for your suport with this!

 

 

Year 3 Blog

11th May 2023Jordan Clarke

We have had a busy few weeks here in Year 3! From World Book Day fun to play rehearsals and not to mention all of the fantastic work they have produced.

 

English:

In our English lessons, we have been really busy learning about different grammatical features. These have included modal verbs, relative clauses and the ‘rule of three’. Have a look below at some of the displays that we have created as a class to help us with our writing! The children have really enjoyed our model text of ‘Grandpas teeth’ and have written for a variety of purposes. Their handwriting is improving each week and we are really proud of the progress they are making here!

Maths:

We came to the end of our length and perimeter topic where the children were measuring shapes and practising their skills of using a ruler to find the perimeter. We focused on key vocabulary and ensured that the children were using these in their discussions. This has improved and there are lots of excellent language rich conversations going on. We have moved onto our topic of ‘Fractions’, and so far we have explored some of the key vocabulary and have identified that when the denominator is bigger, the means that the fraction is smaller. We’ve used a fraction wall to help the children see this visually and they have shown a great understanding of the topic already. We can’t wait to see what work they produce!

Music:

The children absolutely love their music lessons each week and we have come to the end of our ‘Junk Percussion’ unit. In this unit they explored sounds they can make with everyday objects including overlapping ostinato (see if your child can remember what this means!) We have now moved onto our second unit using the djembe, which is a drum from West Africa. I’m sure the children will really enjoy this and will tell you all about it!

World Book Day 2023:

A very exciting day for everyone in school is the long awaited World Book Day. The children had a fantastic day taking part in a variety of activities such as bookmark making, creating a patchwork door, buddy reading with year 6 and watching a live lesson where they had to add a twist to their favourite story. Not to mention the quiz at the end of the day, which was very exciting indeed! See some excellent examples of the work they produced and also the brilliant costumes!

 

Year 3 Blog

11th May 2023Jordan Clarke

It has been a very busy half term in year 3. We performed our Year 3/4 eco play which was absolutely fantastic, and I’m sure you would agree that the standard was exceptional if you came and watched it! The children did superbly and had a great time both practising and performing. A big thank you to the parents for helping learn these lines and bringing your children into school for the evening performance, it is very much appreciated! Let’s have a look at what the children in year 3 have been busy learning this half term…

 

Maths:

In maths the children were learning about fractions at the beginning of the half term. They worked really hard on this topic and lots of the children were really confident with explaining some of the key vocabulary and using this correctly in class discussions. It was really pleasing to see the hard work all year 3 classes put in to this topic and it really showed in the work they produced. We finished the half term on ‘mass and capacity’. We explored different ways we can measure involving both mass and capacity and the difference between the two. We looked at a variety of containers and had a go at estimating the volume and comparing them in groups. We also looked at reading scales accurately and finding out how to read and calculate the intervals on scales.

 

Reading:

We have started a new topic of poetry which the children seem to be really enjoying. There have been opportunities for the children to explore different poems by the author Valerie Bloom, and we have looked at some key vocabulary. We have worked together as a class and also in pairs, to come up with ideas for our own poem that we are writing. The children had to think of their favourite things that are calming, peaceful and that embody the 5 senses. By the end of the half term, the children would have written their own poem with 3 verses, all about someone special in their lives.

 

English:

Linking with our eco play, we have started a topic for the last few weeks on playscripts. This has been well received by the children as they are familiar with scripts, and have been given the opportunity to think about well known traditional tales. They were able to select their own traditional tale and transforming this into a playscript. We had think about the features of a playscript, as some of these rules are very different to other genres of writing we have done before.

 

Art:

In art, we have been looking at the style of pointillism and looking at the work of Georges Seurat. The children really enjoyed this and we used cotton buds to create the pointillism style. We designed flag bunting, colour wheels and we then looked at different ways of mixing colours and shading using this technique. We finished this topic by creating our own picture of our choice, using the style of pointillism.

 

We wish you and your families a very relaxing and enjoyable Easter break, and look forward to welcoming the children back in the summer term.

 

 

Year 3 Blog

11th May 2023Jordan Clarke

We have been really busy in year 3 and lots of exciting learning has been taking place. Have a read below to see what we have been up to!

 

Maths:

In our maths lessons we have been learning about mass and capacity. This has seen us using lots of practical resources to look at different weights, capacities and the units of measurement we use. The children really enjoyed this as they were using different containers to compare capacities which I think took lots of them by surprise! We then looked at converting measurements, equivalent measurements and adding and subtracting different quantities too. We are now moving into fractions again, where the children are learning how to add, subtract and find equivalent fractions.

English:

In our writing lessons we have been learning how to use similes, generalisers and headings/subheadings to help us write our own non chronological reports. The children have done some excellent descriptions of characters in the form of a postcard and trading cards – they really enjoyed this! There have been lots of examples of excellent handwriting and it is great to see such improvements across the year group.

DT:

A very exciting half term in our DT topic of making omelettes! We learnt about the different ingredients which are in season and what this means in terms of us as a consumer. We then looked at why eggs are important and what we can make using eggs. We tried some scrambled eggs and then decided on different ingredients that would be suitable for an omelette. The children loved practising cracking eggs, whisking, mixing and forming their own omelettes with the toppings of their choice. All in all, they did a great job and some children even had their first taste of an omelette and really liked it!

Reading:

Our new book that we started reading after the Easter holidays was ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’. This has been a really good book and has taught us a lot about friendships, being kind and using our skills of empathy. We discussed different scenarios that took place in some of the chapters and what we would do in those situations, using drama in groups to show this. We have also practised our skills of retrieval, summarising, inference and prediction to explore the book in detail and taking the time to understand character’s thoughts, feeling and emotions.

 

Great work this half term year 3 – keep it up!

Year 3 Blog

31st January 2023Jordan Clarke

What a fantastic start to the year we have had in year 3! With new teachers beginning this year, there have been lots of changes and the children have settled really well with their new teachers and have been showing some fantastic pieces of work. Let’s have a look and see what year 3 have been up to…

 

English

We have been reading The Great Kapok Tree and have really enjoyed the book and learning about all the fascinating animals of the rainforest. We began the year by looking at what we might see in the rainforest and describing these animals using super adjectives. We made these descriptions of our animals into short descriptive paragraphs where the children were learning how to extend sentences using verbs, adverbs and well-chosen adjectives and we even looked at using speech! The children were given the opportunity to use this text to help them innovate their own story and write their own. Have a look below at some great examples of the hard work that year 3 have been putting in…

 

Maths

It has been a busy few weeks with our learning in maths. Lots of work on multiplication and division and the different methods we can use to solve calculations involving both of these operations. We had a look at some key vocabulary that the children may come across and learnt some of the synonyms for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. To help with our times tables, you would have seen the colourful times table chart that the children brought home this week. This is to help them with their times table knowledge up to 12×12 and is there to help them learn them. Each morning in our maths lessons we are performing a ‘TT Rockstars’ times table challenge. This is a personal challenge for the children and we are already seeing them beat their previous scores which is fantastic progress! They are really enjoying doing it so we hope that this will help them with their calculations in class. Have a look below at some wonderful examples of the hard work from the children in year 3 in maths…

History

Let’s go back to The Stone Age! What a fantastic topic we have had and we have learnt so many facts about The Stone Age. The children have produced some wonderful work in this topic and have really enjoyed it. They particularly enjoyed our cave painting lesson where the classrooms were transformed into real life caves, with paintings stuck under tables and children exploring them like they would have done back in the stone age! They then created some truly excellent cave paintings using charcoal and oil pastels. They used their skills of smudging and blending of colours and then scrunched their papers up to give them the effect of cave walls! We are very excited to take part in our Stone Age day next week on Tuesday and look forward to dressing up too! Have a look below at some of the brilliant work the children have produced…

 

 

14th October 2022Almas Anwar

What an incredible return for a new school year.  The children have settled into Year 3 really well and have adjusted well to the expectations of this year.  Several new children have joined Wigmore this term and it has been great to welcome them into our school community.

 

It has been an exciting start to the year, with the children engaging with a variety of learning opportunities including

  • Drumming lessons – where children have been learning about rhythm and pulse.
  • Resilience building activities – learning about diversity, the qualities of a resilient learner, creating our class moto, learning about the importance of sleep.
  • Science – Learning about light, properties of transparent, translucent and opaque materials, light sources and how shadows are formed.
  • Maths – We have been learnt about Place Value and have now moved onto our next unit on Addition and Subtraction of 3-digit numbers.
  • English – Having completed our first unit on conflict and resolution narrative, the children enjoyed writing their own stories, we have just started our new text Why Dragons are Afraid of Mice, an explanation text.
  • French – The children have been introduced to the first steps of learning a new language.
  • Computing – The children have begun their coding journeys, learning about how to read flow charts to create a computer programme.

Reminders

 

  • Please ensure children read for ten minutes every day when possible and bring in reading books and records in every day for counting.
  • Children should be practicing their 3,4- and 8-times tables.  www.timestables.co.uk is an excellent resource to help children with this.
  • Please be reminded PE is on Mondays and children should come to school in their PE kits.

Looking forward to an amazing year ahead,

Mrs Anwar, Mrs Prowse and Mr Vettese

Year 3 Blog

17th June 2022Shuhana Islam

Welcome back to our final half term in Year 3! There has been so much exciting learning going on, and, as always, the children have impressed us with their enthusiasm and willingness to embrace new challenges.

In our English lessons, we have enjoyed twisting the tale of Little Red Riding Hood and the classes have loved retelling the story from the point of view of the cunning wolf. We have had a big push on how to engage the reader by using a range of figurative language including similes, metaphors and personification. Year 3 have also begun to develop their understanding of how to use a technique called ‘show not tell’ which forces the reader to delve deeper and explore how a character is feeling by reading their body language. Have a read of some of the fantastic sentences the children came up with in Maple Class:

Brodie’s storyCarina’s storyJannah’s story

 

Computing

 

Year 3 have really been enjoying their lessons all about emailing. We have been using Purple Mash to teach them how to send and reply to emails. They now know how to stay safe when sending emails. They should remember:

 

  • Never open emails from people you don’t know
  • Always screenshot and report any emails that make you worried
  • Not to share passwords

Here is an example of an email that they have recieved. Could you ask your child how they would respond to this?

Hi Year 3,
After being stopped in my tracks by the woodcutter I was feeling quite glum. I thought that I’d check my emails and I saw this strange message from somebody that I didn’t know. I decided to open the attachment too… 
 
Now all of my games and apps have been deleted! I don’t know how this happened.
 
Do you know what went wrong?
 
A very upset Mr Wolf
E-Safety - Wheelock Primary School

Science

This half term we are continuing to find out all about plants. The children have found out about the process of pollination and how seeds are formed. They have dissected the flowers looking for different parts of the plant that are involved in the pollination process and we have learnt a song about how bees pollinate flowers.

We have also discussed how plants grow and the conditions that they need to grow in. We are conducting an experiment to help prove that with soil, sunlight and water the plants will thrive. However, the teachers plants in year three, are not receiving the same care as the children’s plants. They are being fed coffee, living in the cupboard and one has even made it to the fridge! Ask your children which plants they think will grow and why.

 

Year 3

23rd May 2022Daniel Pateman

Maths

Our fractions unit is coming to an end! Recently, Year 3 have been learning about equivalent fractions, comparing and ordering fractions and adding and subtracting them. This has provided a good challenge for the children but they have shown great resilience and have made great progress.

 

Below is a fraction wall. Can your children explain what an equivalent fraction is to you…?

Here’s a great song all about fractions too!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZaXtOHNh6s

 

 

 

Digital art

We have recently started our new digital art unit! The children have been using SMART Notebook to create, colour and copy shapes to create pieces of art. They have been so enthusiastic about this topic and have created some wonderful pieces of art! Take a look at this amazing artwork by one of our learners!

 

 

 

 

Topic

Our topic is all about the great town of Luton. In the past few weeks, we have been studying the impact that the airport has had on the town and what it was like to be a straw plaiter. We have also been discussing the children’s favourite parts of Luton and it’s cultural demographics. This has provided lovely discussion about what makes our town so special. Take a look at this fantastic poster that one of our learners has created!

 

 

 

Year 3 blog

28th April 2022Daniel Pateman

English

This term in English, Year 3 have been looking at non-chronological texts. We have started looking at the book ‘The Land of Neverbelieve’ and the children have been really enjoying it. This is a book about an explorer who finds a magical land with lots of interesting creatures like the octofrog and the multi-winged parrot. Each class was able to create their own creature for the Land of Neverbelieve. Why not ask your child about the animal they created?

 

Moving on with this unit, we will be focusing on how to make our writing engaging to the reader. The children have really enjoyed creating trading cards about the different creatures from the island. The progress that each child has made since the start of the year is incredible and we can’t wait to see more pieces of amazing writing this term!

The Land of Neverbelieve: Amazon.co.uk: Messenger, Norman, Messenger, Norman: 9781844287796: Books             LET'S

Here is a link to the video we are using in our lessons:

 

Writing 

During this half term we will be working closely with Stopsley Primary School to produce a two week unit of work about Little Red Riding Hood. We will be looking closely at the story, planning the unit and moderating our work together. The children will be learning all about the characters in the story and how to use the structure of the story to create their own version of the tale – a bit like a twisted tale. We are very much looking forward to what the children will come up with…Will the Wolf be victorious and eat Granny and Red? Will Red Riding Hood forget about Grannie and eat all the goodies in her basket? We will have to wait and see…

A twisted tale for you to watch.

 

Science 

Our new Science unit this term is plants. Excitingly, the children will have the opportunity to grow their own flowers and broad beans and learn all about the conditions such plants need to grow and stay healthy. We will also dissect a range of flowers to help us to identify the different parts of plants. Following on from this, the children will learn about the function of each part and will take part in lots of fun, practical activities to engage them in their learning.