Year 3 - Peace Class
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Autumn term
History
Our history learning this half term is all about Prehistoric Britain. To kick this off, the children learnt what prehistory (the time before written communication) means by trying to communicate an important message through cave art alone. We created 'caves' in the classroom; produced our messages and then gave them to our friends, who struggled to interpret them, to show how difficult it was to share information without written language. As you can see, it was rather dark in our caves, which added an extra challenge!
Art
The children returned to school on Tuesday to a collapsed art day. They learnt about Stone Age cave art and used a mixture of mediums to create replicas of these before having a go at creating positive and negative monoprints.
25th October - CAST's 10th anniversary
What a fun and busy day we have had celebrating Plymouth CAST's 10th anniversary!
We have made some lovely hanging Mary decorations; written thoughtful prayers; gone on a pilgrimage to the Cabin Nursery and decorated handprints to accompany our class name made from coins - thank you for your generous donations.
For the children, the highlight of the day was their mini-decathlon event delivered by Argyle, with the tug-of-war being a particular hit!
We have made some lovely hanging Mary decorations; written thoughtful prayers; gone on a pilgrimage to the Cabin Nursery and decorated handprints to accompany our class name made from coins - thank you for your generous donations.
For the children, the highlight of the day was their mini-decathlon event delivered by Argyle, with the tug-of-war being a particular hit!
Science
In science this week, the children have been learning about the process of erosion. We carried out an investigation to replicate what happens and had lots of fun modelling the force of rivers and seas on rocks.
Music
As Mrs Avery was away on Wednesday, I had the pleasure of joining the children for their ukulele lesson with their professional music tutor. They learnt their first chord and practised playing it whilst singing the song: 'A sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea'.
English
In English this week, we have begun a unit of learning on wishing tales. Our chosen text is: The King of the Fishes. To help the children to recall our example text, we spent a lesson learning the opening accompanied by actions and another lesson freeze-framing the key parts of the story in small groups. Why not ask your child what happens in this story?
Science
In science, we are currently learning about rocks. Part of this unit, includes the tricky concept of the rock cycle. To help the children to understand how the three different types of rock (igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic) are formed, we made our own chocolate rocks on Thursday afternoon.
We used layers of different types of grated chocolate squashed together to show how sedimentary rock is formed. We then used heat and pressure to change sedimentary rock into metamorphic rock. Mrs Quick then used very hot water to show how magma (in this case melted chocolate) can cool and harden to become igneous rock. Hopefully this helps to explain some of the more unusual looking photos!
We used layers of different types of grated chocolate squashed together to show how sedimentary rock is formed. We then used heat and pressure to change sedimentary rock into metamorphic rock. Mrs Quick then used very hot water to show how magma (in this case melted chocolate) can cool and harden to become igneous rock. Hopefully this helps to explain some of the more unusual looking photos!
Plymouth Marine Park Project Trip
Peace Class had an excellent day at the aquarium today, learning lots about the marine life and habitats found in Plymouth's National Marine Park during our morning session. Our guides, Elspeth and Jess, said that the children were the best school group they've had in so far this year during our classroom based session exploring what they had learnt! During the afternoon, we got to visit the rest of the aquarium, with the sharks, stingray and tropical fish being big hits.
RE
Yesterday, many of the children participated in our show and tell session as part of our RE learning. We realised that there are many reasons for why an object/person might be special to us.
Science
Our science learning this half term is all about rocks and soils. On Friday, we carried out our own investigation into which soil type (peat, chalky, clay or sandy) would allow water to drain through it the quickest. We had a go at making our own predictions and conclusions, and then reflected on which type of soil would be best for farmers and gardeners to use.
Geography
We kicked off our mountains and volcanoes geography learning this week, with our own volcanic eruption. Unfortunately, the test run in the staffroom was much more dramatic than the explosion in the playground, but the children enjoyed it all the same. We even have some budding volcanologists in the class!
Maths
In maths this week, Peace class have been looking at how to partition 3 digit numbers. After spending a day looking at how to partition numbers in the standard way e.g. 324 = 300 + 20 + 4, we spent a couple of days looking at the trickier skill of flexibly partitioning numbers. Look at all the different ways we found to partition 324!
