Year 3 Class News

England Schools’ Swimming Association Primary Team Championships

This weekend, our Year 5 and 6 swimmers took part in this prestigious national finals event at Ponds Forge, Sheffield after recently qualifying in the North East regional heat.

Competing against schools from all over the country from Westminster to Guernsey to Devon, and with tough competition, all the team put in 100% in their mixed stroke and freestyle races. For some of our swimmers, this was their first experience of competitive swimming. We are very proud of how well all the children represented Moortown with such a great, supportive team spirit.

A huge thanks go to parents for their support with the team over the two events.

Races can be watched back on the following link.

1:08:00 lane 2 mixed stroke

2:40:50 lane 7 freestyle

Design and Technology – I can sew using a needle and thread.

In Year 3, we’re going to be design, making and evaluating a pouch! This pouch can be for whatever purpose that the children choose. It could be a pencil case, a coin purse or a general pouch.

A key skill that we’ll be using to make these pouches will be sewing. Some of us had sewed before but many of us hadn’t.

We followed these instructions:

1. First, thread the needle and tie a knot in the thread.
2. Then, complete a running stitch using your binka fabric.
3. Finally, tie a knot at the end of the stitch and cut the excess thread.

The children worked so hard to be precise with their sewing and their running stitches look fantastic! More confident sewers were helping their friends and all worked together. Have a look at some of our outcomes:

One of the trickiest parts was tying the knots in the thread. Help at home by practising tying knots in a piece of string or even learning how to tie shoelaces! These fine motor skills will be really beneficial for the children.

Maths – What’s the time?

This week, Year 3 have been learning to tell the time. Telling the time can be tricky as there are lots of ways to read the same time e.g. 2:15, 15 minutes past 2 and quarter past 2.

We began by reading the time to 5 minutes.

“three twenty”

Then, we had a go at reading time to minutes past and minutes to. The key to this is lots of practice!

Here’s the children’s fantastic learning:

Help at home by having a go at reading the time.

Challenge: Can you read a digital and analogue clock? What about a clock that uses roman numerals?

What can you achieve?

Today, Jess Wright, who is a coach with PE Partner and leads one of our after-school clubs, came to speak to the children in an assembly.

At only 17, Jess has been playing football for over ten years and currently plays for Sheffield Wednesday. She also coaches at different levels from children to adults and referees too.

Jess has another role which is to try to get children, especially girls, into football and providing opportunities for children who want to get involved.

Jess shared information of how to get involved in local physical activities. This could be our school after-school clubs, other local physical activities listed in our guide for parents and carers or other opportunities especially around football and getting girls into football.

Leeds City JFC are a local club looking for new members especially in their girls teams.

Wigton Moor JFC are another local club with opportunities.

Catalan Soccer offer classes and camps.

Thank you to Jess for coming into school to inspire the children and to share her experiences around football and the opportunities and skills it provides.

New spelling list for half term 6!

HT6

Year 3,4

This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative graphemes: tion, sion, ssion, cian
• alternative graphemes: i, ie, y, i-e
• homophones: he’ll, heel, plain, plane, groan, grown, rain, rein, reign
• alternative graphemes: sc
• spelling patterns: que
• alternative graphemes: u spelled ou

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

Science – Does the amount of seeds affect the growth of a plant?

Hello! We hope you’ve had a relaxing half term.

We’ve come back to some amazing growth from our sunflower seeds! With the warm and sunny weather, they’ve shot up.

There is still a big difference between the heights of the plants in each pot too. With the plants with 2 seeds in now being the tallest and the pot with 1 seed being the shortest.

Check back next week to see more growth!

Triathlon

This week, thirty of our Key Stage 2 pupils took part in the Brownlee Foundation Mini Triathlon event at John Smeaton. This is always a great event and it introduces the children to the elements of triathlon – a swim, a bike ride and a run.

Well done to all the children for taking part.

If your child is interested in triathlons, please see more details in our physical activity guide or have a look at this bike and run offer at the Brownlee Centre.

Living and Learning – I know that being physically active is healthy mentally and physically.

Over the last couple of weeks, Year 3 have been discussing how to stay healthy mentally and physically.

Physical activity helps to:

• strength our muscles
• develops our coordination
• improves our fitness
• maintain a healthy weight

We discussed our day to day lives to work out if we are being active enough. These are some opportunities we have to be active; walking to and from school, Wake Up Shake Up, PE, swimming, clubs, playtimes.

Help at home: Have a look at Uma’s day. How could she be more active? Have a look at your own day.  How can you be more active?

Physical activity helps to keep our minds healthy too. Being active releases chemicals in your brain that make you feel good – boosting your self-esteem and helping you concentrate as well as sleep well and feel better.

Science – sunflower update!

Hello,

Does the amount of seeds in one plant pot affect the growth of the plants?

Lots of us predicted that the plant pot with 1 seed would grow quicker and taller than the others because it has more space to grow in the soil and doesn’t have to share its nutrients and water with other seeds!

However…

At the moment, our plant pots with 8 seeds is growing quicker and taller than any of the others with the tallest being 8cm.

Help at home: Can you think of a reason why this could be happening? 

Writing – The Flood

In Writing, Year 3 are planning a narrative. A narrative is a story that entertains and interests the reader. Our narrative is going to be based on this picture book called ‘The Flood’.

Features to include:

• description
• action
• dialogue (direct speech)
• different sentence lengths

In today’s lesson, we spent time generating vocabulary to use in our narrative. We tried to describe nouns like the storm, rain and clouds.  We used the iPads to find synonyms of words we could think of. Here’s what we found!

Help at home: Can you think of any more adjectives to describe these nouns?