English
In English, we have been exploring different narratives with dialogue and understanding its importance in bringing stories to life. We’ve focused on using inverted commas correctly to show when someone is speaking. We’ve also learnt how to use question marks and exclamation marks in dialogue, like “What’s your name?” or “That’s amazing!”.
To up-level our writing, we practiced using alternative words for “said,” like whispered and shouted, and added adverbs like excitedly or angrily to show how characters speak. We also discovered the rule “new speaker, new line” to make speech easier to follow.
For inspiration, we watched videos such as Catch a Lot and The Way Back Home, which had no dialogue. Children enjoyed role playing what the characters might say and created their own conversations. For our final hot write, children are reading the book The Invisible by Tom Percival and writing a dialogue between two characters. This is a fantastic opportunity for them to showcase all the new skills they’ve learned.


Reading
In our reading lessons, we’ve been diving into the book See Inside Ancient Egypt, which links to our topic on Ancient Egypt. This book is helping to deepen our understanding of ancient civilisation. Throughout our reading sessions, we’ve enjoyed doing a variety of activities that have strengthened our reading skills. We’ve made predictions about what will happen next, explored new vocabulary, and practiced skimming and scanning to find key information. We’ve also answered comprehension questions to check our understanding and worked on summarising what we’ve read. We will soon begin looking at a poetry unit, Stars with Flaming Tails by Valerie Bloom.



Maths
We have covered 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 done in that unit. 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. We enjoyed taking part in World Maths Day and had fun using shapes to create our very own TTRockstars!


Science
This half term, we have taken a deep dive into our unit on Light and Shadows. The children have enjoyed exploring different light sources and going around the school to identify them. We’ve also looked at the importance of sunscreen and how it protects us from the sun. Did you know light travels in straight lines? The children have been studying the journey light takes from the light source to the object and then to our eyes. Additionally, we have been learning about different materials (transparent, translucent, and opaque) and how their properties are affected by light. In the last couple of lessons, the children will be identifying reflectors and learning how they help keep us safe.

Wider curriculum area
We have also enjoyed taking part in and dressing up for World Book Day! The children participated in lots of fun activities throughout the day, including an in-class fashion show, creating their very own comics, and even taking part in a ‘Booknic’ with the children in Year 5. We loved sharing some of our favourite books with the other children and having a snack too!
This term, we’ve had the pleasure of focusing on a single topic for a deep dive throughout Spring. The children have been learning about Ancient Egypt while also developing their skills as historians. We’ve learned 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 discussed what they could have been used for and why they were found in places like the tomb of Tutankhamun. We were also lucky enough to invite some visitors to help us run an ‘Ancient Egypt Day’, which I’m sure you know the children absolutely loved taking part in.



Values
This term, our value was curiosity, and the children had plenty of opportunities to be curious learners. Whether it was delving into science experiments, exploring historical topics, or solving maths problems, the students were encouraged to ask questions, explore new ideas, and think critically.