SATS and More!

A lot of children found they really had to use their critical thinking skills when doing SATS this week.
"I thought the maths was a mixture of hard and easy work. I could work most of it out though and think I did all right." (Erik)
"I thought the writing was interesting. I wrote a long piece of work." (Abigail)
"I found it a bit hard because the questions were difficult. I think I did well, as I did my best." (Joshua)
"When we did maths on Tuesday, I think I got all of the maths sums right
because I used all the strategies I'd learnt during the year. (Sam B)

In our class this week, we've also been thinking about team work. We heard a story about some giants who forgot the useful skills of Knee-high Nigel. They forgot how clever he was because he was small. He forgot he needed their strength to build his castles.
After hearing the story, we got into groups to see if we could work as a team. Some of us found it was quite hard.
Sam D worked with his group to make a robot. "We made a plan, chose which bit we were going to do, and made a robot out of multilink. We were proud of it in the end."
Emma enjoyed making a castle. "It was bit messy on your hands, but the end result was really good."
"Our group (Joshua talking) made models of the giants in the story and Knee-high Nigel. It made us think about size isn't as important as what you do in a team."
Abbie says, "Working in a team taught me that not everyone can get their own way or what they want to do, but the end result is better if we share ideas."
Do come and see what we made. There are photographs, but we still have trouble putting them on the blog!

Maths, Story Openers and Art

In Year 3 we've been concentrating on using all our maths skills to solve problems. 'Maths Man' has been inspiring us.
We also enjoyed solving Reese's Riddle (see Y4 Blog).
Hope it's helped our thinking skills!!
We've also been reading an adventurous story. You'll find it in the library as a play if you want to. It's called Tom and the Smugglers of Mourne.
It made us think about how to write exciting story openers. If it's a good one, you want to find out what happens next. So we thought we'd have a go.
Mrs Hunt brought in an atmospheric picture of the Suspension Bridge by the River Avon to inspire us.It was a night time picture.

Here are Holli and Erik's story openers which they have written for you to continue if you'd like to:-

The Monster of the Gorge

One dark night the water of the Avon Gorge rose higher than normal.

I, Henry Williams, asked my older brother if he wanted to go blackberry picking and take the camcorder.

Ben said, "Yes".

So we got there and suddenly we saw a mysterious light glowing in the water.

So we videoed it.

Very slowly it rose out the water.

We fainted.........

The Mystery of the Avon Gorge

One mysterious night it felt like someone was watching me as I walked along the river bank.

But I just carried on walking. Then I looked in the water and I saw lots of ripples. Suddenly I heard a spooky sound tap tap tap and there was something green reflected in the water........

While we are on the subject of atmosphere, in art we have been exploring colours and how they are connected to mood. We thought about colours which were happy, sad, hot and cold. We all made an Egyptian Landscape in one colour. Only the shade of it changed. Come and see what you think of them!!

Poetry, Pyramids, Puzzles and Sports Day....Hooray!

Hello it's Alice here....We listened to lots of lovely poems.
We wrote some of our own.
But what I liked doing best
Was reading one into the microphone.
(It was about Dinosaurs and it was funny!!)

Hi It's Sam Barnes here. We wrote poems acrostic poems about our Dads to celebrate Fathers Day.This is mine:-
Fantastic father
Amazing dad
Terrific Father
Happy as ever
Eating all the time
Really funny.
(Have a great day Dad!)

Samuel Dorrington here.....
On the subject of Fathers Day, we wanted to make something special for our wonderful Dads. We made pyramids (Still learning about Egypt) and Mrs Hunt thought as our Dads are such heroes looking after us so well we'd be like the Egyptians and hide something inside for you. Hope you like it.

Abbie Maker talking..... I decorated my pyramid with drums as my Dad is in a band, football as he plays it and a big heart. I put a message on the base.

Alfie here... In maths we've been improving our skills by solving problems and doing maths puzzles. I was amazed I could do quite hard sums by thinking of facts I already knew. I got all the answers right. Here's one for you.....Use all the numbers 1-9 and place them on a 3 by 3 grid so the difference between each neighbouring number vertically and horizontally is odd. Ask me if you need help.

Sport Week and other news!

It has been brilliant fun in Year 3 this week. We started the week with a 'Wake up and Shake' assembly and we found some of the actions quite difficult. By the end of the week after plenty of practise some of us were really good. It is good for our brains as well as our bodies - so well worth remembering.
Country Dancing was great too. A big thank -you for all friends and families who joined us.
It was fun doing rounders, athletics and more sports on Wednesday afternoon, but we were a little disappointed that Sports day itself had to be postponed because the weather forecast said it would most likely rain.
We did lots of good things in the classroom though. Come and see some of them!
We also have thought a little more about Ancient Egypt and now we have a new projector have enjoyed watching some excellent videos on the subject.
And lastly a message from Mrs Hunt.......
I expect some of you will have read in this week's newsletter that I shall be retiring in September - a few weeks into the new term.
I know I shall miss you all very much, but am pleased how well you you are doing, and am sure, if you work as hard in the future, you will all
have a brilliant time ahead.
So I'm hoping my last few weeks with this Year 3 will be the best ever!!

Tasty!!

Apart from reading and writing poetry our highlight of the week has been tasting the recipes we'd created using couscous as a basic ingredient.
We added a variety of foods to it, some sweet and some savoury and decided which was our favourite. Tom's was the most popular with strawberries and grated chocolate as his main ingredients. Everyone ticked the 'delicious' box and said it was 10 out of 10!!
We also gave our first performance of Year 3's Water Music to Years 4 and 5 as they may be able to programme our fountain so it is in harmony with the music. Thanks to Mr Humphrey for his in-put to help us improve our playing.
We also thought about our future ambitions after thinking about the kinds of places people work and the jobs they do there. Nearly all the jobs we chose will need lots of hard work, as lots of qualifications will be necessary for us to achieve our ambitions.
Several of the boys decided they wanted to be footballers. Football has been in the news very much this week and many of our class are off to Wembley tomorrow to support Bristol City in their effort to gain promotion. (Let's hope everyone returns feeling happy.)
Have a brilliant week off everyone!

Creating music and recipes

Another busy week in Year 3!!
We've all been thinking about our Year 6 and wishing them well in their SATS.
This week our focus in Literacy has been on writing instructions. So we've been doing lots of reading and writing of instructions. We've thought about our favourite games and our favourite food. We've read cookery books and each written our own menu, which we made into a class book.
We also have designed our own recipes and chosen the ones we would like to try out next week. We will let you know whether they tastesd good or not!!
We have started to think about the special event planned to launch the Fountain. Our class is hoping to play some music we will have composed. To inspire us we listened to Handel's Water Music. We got to know it very well.
Then we tried out our own ideas.
We wanted to use percussion instruments as well as chime bars and recorders. We also decided to keep to a simple rhythm. We wanted to have the softness and gentleness of dripping water and the powerful effect of a torrent of water in our composition. It wasn't easy and when we recorded it we could see there was a lot we can learn from our efforts!! Perhaps you'll be at the launch and may see us play.

Hard maths!!

We have been trying hard with our maths this week, particularly using our skills to do harder calculations. We found out it's quite important to keep work neat and columns straight so we don't mix up our hundreds, tens and ones!!
Some of us are brilliant at new challenges, but others can get confused. Our class star of the week showed us the importance of stickability.
We found out even more about Ancient Egypt this week. One of our Guided Reading books had an interesting article about the food they ate. We found it hard to imagine life without supermarkets. But imagine what it was like to be paid with food instead of money!
We also are finding things about the subject everywhere. Holli bought the class a picture of Queen Nefertiti. She saw it at a car boot sale and it cost 50p. Strangely our Big book told us our the Ancient World inspired art today - and this was a good example.
We finished our own pictures of Artefacts produced using brusho and wax crayon. You must visit our classroom and look at them as we seem unable to put the photographs on our blog.
Also don't forget to visit the Art Trail this weekend. Everyone has worked so hard and the quality of work is very good.