Welcome to Year 3.
Our Teachers are Mrs Wood and Mrs Hornblow and our Teaching Assistants are Mrs Kotrcova, Mr Le Roch and Mrs Da Palma.
Apr 042025
Fantastic Week of Learning!
We have been very busy in our final week before the Easter holidays. We finished our Magic Box poems and performed them to each other. This also helped us with our PSHE topic about feelings and strategies to help us with processing grief; whether that be from moving house to the death of a pet or beloved relative.
We have focused on RE this week exploring 3 different crosses that helped us think about the meaning of Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Everyone loved the vibrant colourful Easter crosses from South America and they inspired us to create joyful Easter crosses.
In Art we completed our learning sequence exploring how to make a model of an animal from plasticine inspired by The Wild Robot. We had some very impressive results. Please see below for a variety of examples.
In Maths we continued to practise our division skills. Everyone used Dienes to prove their answers. Please see photos below.
Have a wonderful Easter holiday! We look forward to welcoming you all back for the Summer term.
The Year 3 team
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Mar 282025
What would you put in a magic box?
First of all, well done everyone who brought in their volcano posters they look great!
We started the week by exploring the poem ‘Magic Box’ by Kit Wright. Then we used a thesaurus to develop our vocabulary and planned our own poem using the same structure as the ‘Magic Box’ poem. Next week we will be writing, editing and performing our poems.
In Maths we completed our work on short multiplication and have moved onto division. In Geography we thought carefully about why people might want to live near a volcano. We found the reasons quite surprising – such as the land being more fertile and geothermal energy meaning free hot water. In RE we started to look at the events of Holy Week focusing on Palm Sunday. In PSHE we explored how words help us describe the intensity of a feeling such as annoyed, angry, furious.
In Science we completed our work on friction by carrying out our investigation into which surfaces have the most friction. See photos below.
Have a lovely weekend,
The Year 3 team.
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Mar 142025
The fantastic Welsh mountains, friction and fabulous fiction!
This week we have been working on our writing skills: writing in past tense, using conjunctions and emotive language. Everyone tried really hard practising these skills so we are ready to write our diary entry about ‘Escape from Pompeii’ next week.
In Maths we have completed our work on fractions for now and have learnt how to multiply by 10.
In Geography we learnt about the Welsh mountains and how they are used to support the economy; from rearing sheep and hiking to mining and even zip wiring! We wrote a short report about our favourite ones.
In RE we learnt about the importance of forgiveness to Christians and thought about how being forgiven or forgiving someone makes us feel.
Art was very tricky this week. We were challenged to draw and then paint the outline of our chosen animal character in one stroke – without taking our pencils and paint brushes off the page. We all surprised ourselves with great results.
We tested the friction of a variety of surfaces around the school in Science this week. We found that our desks and the hall had the least friction and made our marble travel smoothly whereas the new outdoor surface had the most friction and was the hardest to roll the marble on. See the pictures below.
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Mar 072025
Virtual visit to Snowdon!
We had a lovely World Book Day. It was great to see some of you dressed up as some interesting characters and others in cosy reading clothes. We spotted Dogman, Fantastic Mr Fox, Paddington and Pippi Longstocking – to name but a few and all in year 3!
We enjoyed our quiz with year 5 and guessing which teacher was reading including a mysterious Welsh giraffe!
In other news we worked on equivalent fractions as well as adding and subtracting fractions. In English we immersed ourselves in the story ‘Escape from Pompeii’. We asked and answered questions about the main character Tranio and researched the real eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Geography was a stand out lesson this week, we explored maps of Snowdon linking the real Snowdon with how it looks on a map. The children loved it!
Congratulations Vermillion on an amazing assembly.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Year 3 team
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Feb 282025
Welcome back!
We had a busy first week back, we warmed up our writing skills using a picture of a path through the countryside. First we used a thesaurus to help us find interesting words to use, then we wrote sentences to describe different parts of the picture. Finally, we imagined we were in the picture and wrote powerful descriptions. In Maths we continued developing our understanding of fractions by drawing them, comparing them and ordering them.
In other learning we are continuing to develop our understanding of mountains and will be learning about volcanoes too. In RE we are thinking about Lent. In Science we are starting our new topic on forces and in Art we started to learn about illustrations.
Well done Amber class on their fantastic assembly. Good luck to Vermillion class for next week.
Feb 142025
Mountains and Pizzas Part 2!
This week Vermillion became pizza experts. We planned our pizzas, measured our ingredients and kneaded the dough. Our dough was left over lunchtime and the rise on the dough was impressive! We shaped the dough, grated cheese, spread tomato sauce and chopped mushrooms, peppers and chicken. The pizzas went into a hot oven and the delicious smell filled the corridors! We hope that you enjoyed eating them at home! See below for photos of our pizza making.
In English, we made shadow puppets using our knowledge of opaque materials in Science. We planned conversations in English and we used our knowledge of speech marks to write out our conversations.
In Maths, we continued our work on fractions, working on how to find fractions of an amount. In Geography we researched the tallest mountains in the four countries of the UK and we looked at contours on Ordnance Survey maps to find out how cartographers draw mountains on a 2D map.What a fantastic end to this half term! Well done Year 3!-
Feb 072025
Mountains and pizzas part 1!
It was Amber’s turn to focus on pizza making this week. We planned it, made it and evaluated it; developing our kneading, rolling, slicing and spreading skills. See below for photos of our pizza making. Lots of staff visited us because it smelt so good! I bet you can’t wait Vermillion!
Meanwhile, Vermillion were learning a lot about mountains this week including looking at a 3D map of Snowdonia. They also used maps to find the tallest mountains in each country of the UK. It will be Amber’s turn next week.
In our other learning we have been working on fractions in Maths. Remembering that the denominator is the bottom number in a fraction and tells us the total number of parts. The numerator tells us how many parts we are looking at. In English we finished our pizza reports.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Year 3 team.
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Jan 312025
An interesting week in Year 3 !
Wow, what a week in Year 3! Our feeling of the week was interesting and I think all the children and staff in Year 3 found our learning very interesting this week. Early in the week we investigated which materials make good shadows. We learnt that opaque materials make the best shadows and we were surprised that the transparent plastic made a shadow (even though it was very faint). See the photos below:
On Wednesday we used our knowledge and understanding about mosques and turned both classrooms into ‘mosques’. See the photos below:
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- Muslims take off their shoes before they go into the prayer hall.
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- Muslims wash before they pray. this is called Wudu
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- All mosques have a dome with a crescent moon and stars on.
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- They also have minarets where the call to prayer comes from.
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- When Muslims pray they face Mecca.
In English we worked on our non-chronological reports about pizza. Whilst in Maths we finished working on our 8 times table and investigated doubling and halving. In Geography we learnt about fold mountains -when the tectonic plates create folds in the Earth’s crust.
Don’t forget to visit the Cathedral, the moon exhibition is free and very impressive.
Have a lovely weekend,
Year 3 team.
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Jan 172025
Light, times tables and tectonic plates!
Another exciting week in Year 3! In English we wrote interesting descriptions of the Rich King from War and Peas. Then we worked on using prepositions to add detail to our writing.
In Maths we are working on our 3 times table. We made arrays to show these number facts and used manipulatives to calculate division sums, including remainders. Please keep practising times tables with your child so they know the whole sum e.g. 5×3=15 rather than as a sequence 3,6,9 etc. The latest research shows that children retain these facts when they learn the whole sum.
In R.E. we recapped how Muslims pray and found out about the features of a mosque.
In Geography we learnt that the Earth’s crust is made up of tectonic plates. We then explored how tectonic plates move on top of the mantle, using cream cheese and biscuits. See below!
In Science we learnt that light travels in straight lines!
Have a great weekend!
Year 3 team
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Jan 102025
Welcome back!
It has been lovely to welcome everyone back after the Christmas holidays. We hope you all had a wonderful break. Thank you again for all your kind gifts -the whole team are very grateful.
In English we have started using a new book as a stimulus for our writing called ‘War and Peas’. This week we did a lot of work on understanding the main character and building our vocabulary using a thesaurus.
In Maths we are working on the 3 times table. We have been using manipulatives to show our times table facts as arrays.
In Geography we started our new topic: Mountains and Volcanoes! In DT we started learning about pizza and did a quiz about the history of pizza. Do you know what the word pizza means in Italian?
Our new Science topic is light and we worked hard thinking about objects that are sources of light. We are encouraging everyone to go and take a look at the moon installation in the nave of the cathedral in St Albans.
We hope you have a lovely weekend. Don’t forget your recorders every Monday and PE kits for Mondays and Thursdays. Please ensure you are reading regularly with your child and asking them questions. Please record this in their reading record.
The Year 3 team.
