Non-fiction reading!
This week in our Reading lessons, we have focused on a non-fiction book called ‘A Street Through Time’. This book shows us how life has changed throughout history. We used the page about Romans because that’s our new topic!
We first spent a lesson reading through the text and picking apart the language and features. Non-fiction texts have headings, sub-headings, labels and pictures to help the reader.
We then summarised each part of the text by matching it up to its correct sub-heading. Summarising means finding the main parts and describing it in a clear and concise way.
Here’s how we got on:
Summarising a text and deciding what the main, important parts are can be tricky! Help at home by practising summarising. Can you summarise your day in 20 words? 10 words? 5? 1?
New year, new topic!
Happy New Year! We hope you had a great break from school and are feeling refreshed.
With a new year, comes a new term and a new topic. This half term, we are being historians and learning about the Romans and Anglo-Saxons.
Before we spend time learning about how the Romans came to invade Britain and how the Anglo-Saxons lived after the Romans had left, we needed to know what the timeline of British history looks like.
A timeline shows us the chronological order of events.
Here is what we came up with:
From the longest ago to the most recent, we had Stone Age Britain to the Coronavirus. Before the Romans, was the Iron Age Britain so this is where we begun our learning.
The Celts:
- lived in tribes
- were farmers
- lived in wooden, thatched huts
- had no rulers but did have chiefs
- made tools and weapons out of bronze and iron
Help at home by comparing the Celts lives to our lives. What do you think the children did in the Iron Age? Is there anything that we have in common with them?
Final art sculptures!
After a few lessons of hard work, Year 3 have finished their sculptures and they look amazing! Here’s just some of them:
As you can see, they all look so different which is so lovely to see their imaginations coming to life. We set up a mini art gallery and walked around to observe each others sculptures. We did this silently as that’s what they’re usually like! After, we made positive comments about each other’s work using our art vocabulary. For example:
- I like this because they have used complementary colours.
- This one reminds me of the planets as it’s made out of big circles.
- I like this one because it’s so different and looks more figurative (the shape of a person) than abstract.
- They have used warm colours on one side and cool colours on the other.
A big well done to Year 3!
Basketball new year camp
City of Leeds Basketball Club, who run our basketball after-school clubs, are running a new year camp. Details can be found below.
Art, art and more art!
After many weeks of learning and discussing the artwork of Kandinsky and Napaltjarri, Year 3 have designed and begun creating sculptures that are inspired by them!
First, they sketched and drew rough designs of the shapes, colours and patterns that they wanted to use.
Then, they began cutting their shapes. As you can see, lots of the children have chosen to have a mix of shapes. Kandinsky is well known for his concentric circles so we have been inspired to use circles too.
The next step was then to start decorating these shapes using oil pastels, chalks and eventually, wax resist! Some have chosen warm colours, complementary or cool colours. Napaltjarri uses a lot of warm colours while Kandinsky uses complementary.
Some of us are ready to start slotting these shapes together to make our sculpture three-dimensional. Come back next week to see our final pieces…
Help at home by identifying colours of everyday objects. What kind of colour is your blue wallpaper? How does that blue make me feel? What does it remind me?
Living and Learning: What is a feeling?
This week during Living and Learning, we talked about feelings.
What are feelings?
‘A feeling is our emotional state, or our reaction to something. Feelings are important because they help us to manage different situations and look after ourselves. Feelings and emotions are about our minds but we might
also experience them in our bodies.’
What feelings might we have?
We drew ourselves and thought about the different feelings that we might have during the day. For example, feeling sleepy in the morning, overjoyed at break time and determined during a test! Our feelings change throughout the day depending on our experiences.
How can we manage our feelings?
We decided what some good and not so good feelings might be and how we can manage these. Sometimes bad things happen and we need to have some self-care techniques to look after ourselves. Here’s some things that we thought would make ourselves feel good:
- talk to someone
- read a book
- have some quiet time
- get into bed
- take some deep breaths
- hug our teddies
- do some colouring
- go cycling
Feelings are normal and part of life but as long as we have these strategies in place, we will feel much better overall! Help at home by encouraging your child to practise some of these techniques when they are not feeling so good. Take some deep breaths, get some fresh or talk to someone!
Write it like a poet!
Today, Year 3 had a visitor from the British Library. We learnt a lot about the British Library like what they do, how they are different to a “normal” library and where they are based. Luckily for us, they have a base in Boston Spa!
The British Library have a copy of every single book, newspaper, magazine or even leaflet that has been published in Britain. They want to keep a record of all of these so that in years to come, people can look back and see what things were like over the years!
We read a few poems, picked a part the vocabulary and discussed what we liked and disliked about them. Then it was our turn to write our own poems. It can be quite tricky just to sit down and write a poem so we played lots of games to help us generate some ideas.
Some of us wrote about our day, our emotions, a hobbie we like or just something random! The children really enjoyed it and were desperate to share their writing at the end.
Help at home by playing the word association game. Start with ‘apple’ and see what word the other person can think of that links to it!
Leeds Schools Sport Association Cross Country
A number of children have recently represented school and competed in the Leeds Schools Sport Association Cross Country races.
The date of the next race is Saturday 02 March 2024 at Woodhouse Grove.
In the meantime, have a look at our physical activity guide to see how to get involved in athletics.
Maths – multiplication
We’ve begun our multiplication journey this week!
Before learning how to do long multiplication, we had to go back to basics – understanding equal groups and how they link to our number sentences.
We decided that equal means having the same value. Even if the groups are arranged differently or look different, if there is the same amount, they are equal.
Here’s an example we used:
There are 3 plates.
There are 4 strawberries on each plate.
There are 3 equal groups of 4.
3 x 4 = 12
4 x 3 = 12
The 3 represents the amount of groups and the 4 represents the amount in each group.
We then had a go at making equal groups and arrays with counters and writing the matching number sentences.
Here’s some of the ones that we created:
Being confident with equal groups will help us later when learning new methods!
Help at home by making equal groups out of everyday items. For example, can you make equal groups from the peas on your plate or the pens in your drawer?
Cross country stars
*UPDATE* Four of our Year 3 runners have qualified for the Leeds School Games cross country final!
On Friday, twenty two Key Stage 2 children took part in the Leeds North East School Games Cross Country festival at Roundhay High School attended by 900 pupils.
We had a great start from our Year 3 runners with 4 children coming in the top 10! After that, we saw some excellent efforts from the rest of the children throughout the afternoon with great support and encouragement from the other pupils.
Well done to all the children who took part and represented the school. We are sure there will be some qualifiers for the next race, the Leeds final. Watch this space!
Thank you to the parents who came along to help and support at this event.
It was a brilliant event. The Team Moortown spirit was very strong.
If you’re child would like to take part in cross country, have a look at our physical activity guide for details of local running clubs and junior Park Runs.