From Fallen Pegs to Emergency Evacuations – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
This week, our big topic highlight was the highly-anticipated den building! After lots of fantastic contributions to our construction resources, Thursday arrived and we couldn’t wait to get started.
First, in class, we discussed what a den actually was, and all the equipment we would need to be successful. Our first task was to group ourselves into teams of four, which was easier said than done!
We divided our building resources between our groups and found an area in the hall. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed something!
One of the hardest parts was tying our resources together and making everything secure, but we worked together in our teams to make our dens as strong and sturdy as possible. There were a few times where an emergency evacuation was needed to rescue children from inside falling bed sheets, but we lived to tell the tale…
Some of us had the brilliant idea of having strength in numbers and decided to band together to form larger teams! What a great idea! (This came in very useful when it came to packing away some very confusing clothes horses.)
Once our dens were assembled, we walked carefully around the hall to give feedback to each group and to note ideas for how to improve our own!
Next, to enjoy the fruits of our labour, we all relaxed inside our dens with our books, using torches, and listened to music. We think we have the explorer life cracked!
We even invited other classes to come and see our hard work, and we escaped with only one collapsed den!
Finally, it was time to clear up. This was probably the most tiring part! We had to work together really well to make sure everything went back to how we found it.
We had a brilliant, but exhausting, day and we couldn’t have done it without your generosity, so thank you very much for sending in your supplies once again. We do, however, send our apologies to the fallen pegs that didn’t make it home.
Please look through our pictures from the day below!
-Mrs Burgess and Miss Wilson
Identity
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. Pupils will learn about their rights and responsibilities, what makes themselves and others special, valuing the similarities and differences between themselves and others and what is meant by community. This will be taught through our Living and Learning sessions and also two focused weeks – Anti-bullying week (13 November) and Who do you think you are? (20 November).
Our full Living and Learning long term plan is now available on the health pages and you can keep up to date with our weekly Living and Learning statements on the parent noticeboard in the playground and also on the school calendar.
Our new school council
Congratulations to our new school councillors!
We had a record number of candidates this year and there were some very close votes but here are our winning candidates.
Their first meeting will be on Wednesday 08 November.
Well done to all children who prepared a speech. We hope they don’t feel too despondent and are resilient to have another go next time.
Final school council project
Back in July, our Year 5 and 6 school councillors attended the Leeds Youth Voice event at Leeds Civic Hall. They were very keen to share their experience back in school with the school council and also in a whole school assembly. The one idea they wanted to implement back at school was to have a friendship stop.
With the support of the rest of the school council, this is now in place!
This was a great project for the school council to work on as they came to the end of their time as school councillors. Representatives spoke to the whole school in assembly to explain how the friendship stop works.
Ask your child if they have seen the new sign and what they would do if they saw someone at the friendship stop.
Here is a note from Grace who was one of the school councillors that wanted to make this happen.
The friendship bus stop, which is new to our school, is a great chance to make new friends. It encourages people of all age groups to make sure that everyone has someone to play with. The bus stop is located above the bench closest to the entrance to the middle playground. We hope that this idea goes well and that every child uses this correctly. Your child should definitely know what the friendship stop is and how to use it in the right way because it has been discussed during our Friday assembly.
From Ghosts and Ghouls to Colouring and Councillors – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
This week’s Living and Learning theme was: “I know I live in a democracy.” Children were tasked with writing a speech to run for School Councillor or a Talk Time about the importance of voting. I was bowled over by the quality of these speeches and the passion and confidence each candidate showed.
There were some fantastically creative campaigns!
A very exciting part of our week was our long-awaited trip to the Forbidden Corner!
Although the excitement seemed to get a bit much for some!
When we arrived after our long journey, the first thing we did was eat our lunch. We were starving and it was only 11:45!
We were even joined by two visitors (but we didn’t let them steal our quackers).
As we begun our journey into the unknown, we felt a little nervous, but we trooped forwards, just like real explorers would!
We even managed to spot Mr Catherall hiding in the trees!
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The Forbidden Corner was a very strange place with bizarre twists and turns. We didn’t know what was coming next!
We were worried we might never get out!
Spot the real statues.
Our explorations proved truly a-maze-ing!
Here is photographic evidence of Year 3 breaking the rules!
We were the kings and queens of the castle! What a lovely view.
Our trip gave us chance to show our teamwork and map reading expertise.
It felt lovely to be outside with nature.
There were some impressive sculptures. This giant woodcutter inspired us to complete some brilliant artwork as you will see below.
His axe was pretty heavy!
This week, we tested our rafts to see if they would float with the weight of five marbles. First, we predicted what would happen and jotted down our method. Some of our rafts successfully floated!
While some of our rafts had a slightly soggy end…
But the experiment was a great learning experience as we discovered which materials floated and which unfortunately sank!
We also tried our hands (or feet) at football, this week.
Of course, we had to practise our celebrations!
To round off our diverse and creative week, we used a photo taken at the Forbidden Corner as an art stimulus. We drew the same picture four times but changed the media used each time: graphite pencil, wax crayon, oil pastel or pencil crayon.
After each drawing, our partner gave us a star and a step for us to improve in the next picture.
This allowed us to experiment with different materials and find out which we liked best; exploring happens in art, too!
What an all-round fantastic half term for Year 3. We’ve made massive amounts of progress in only seven weeks and I look forward to seeing what else is in store.
I hope everyone has a lovely week off. Make sure you keep on exploring!
School Council elections
Our School Council elections will take place tomorrow, Thursday, 19 October. All children have the opportunity to vote at our polling station using the following instructions.
Before voting, please read the following:
- Vote once for one person.
- Place one X only on this ballot paper beside the name of the candidate you have chosen.
- Do not write or mark anything else on the ballot paper; if you do, your paper will be invalid and your vote will not be counted.
- When you have marked the ballot paper, fold the paper and place it in the box provided.
Votes will be counted tomorrow and our new School Council will be announced at the end of the day. This will be made up of two children from each class with the highest number of votes.
Good luck to all our candidates.
City of Leeds basketball
City of Leeds basketball club recently led a PE session for Year 5 and delivered our basketball after-school club in the summer term.
Here are details of their sessions available locally.
There is also a new girls-only session at Allerton High School on Monday evenings, 6pm – 7.30pm, ages 7 – 14 years. The first two sessions are free and then it is £5 pay to play.
Bonfire themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Friday 03 November. Please contact the office, before Wednesday 18 October, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
- Posh dogs in finger rolls or Vegetarian meatballs in finger rolls
- Curly fries
- BBQ baked beans
- Rocket lolly
- Fresh fruit and yogurt
From Code Breakers to Saving Mr Owen – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
Miss Wilson is reporting for Moortown Magazine.
Moortown Primary School, set in picturesque North Leeds, was where ground-breaking learning took place this week. Experts claim that Moortown Primary is home to some of the most hardworking pupils in the country.
This week, Year 3 has enjoyed: brilliant raft building, a confusing code breaker, phenomenal physical education, resilience in reading sessions, and fantastic fact files.
After being presented with the challenge of designing and creating a raft in order to save Mr Owen, who was stranded on a desert island, the students worked in pairs to meet the design criteria.
Will, a member of the class, said: “It was really exciting and fun.”
Jessica commented: “I liked using our own designs.”
On Monday, the students’ creations will be put to the test to see if they actually float and can save the poor Y4 teacher.
Problem-solving has also appeared in maths this week, where children were faced with a code-breaker situation. Number sentences were given to the young mathematicians, who had to use column addition to work out the answer. Their resulting number translated to a letter which formed a word. This is what the code breakers had to say:
Rayn, who enjoyed the task despite its difficulty, stated: “I found it really tricky to match the number answers to the letter codes.”
“It was hard because it was a race against other teams,” fellow classmate, Emma, said.
The class will apply this knowledge to their subtraction studies next week.
Year 3 were visited once again by local gymnastic experts. The focus, mirroring previous weeks, was balance and coordination alongside lots of elements of fun.
“I liked it because it was fun sliding on the benches using our bodies!” a visibly excited Yusayrah purported.
Leo claimed: “It was tricky bending down on one leg with the other one sticking out in front of you.”
Check out these epic slow-mo videos captured at the scene:
Stretching tall and jumping high
Balancing on the benches
Bunny hops
During reading this week, Year 3 has sampled a variety of tasks. One of these challenges was ‘Draw and Label’ where students listened to a description from their class novel and had to sketch out how they imagined the scene to look.
Hifza, who is soon to turn 8, said: “I thought this activity was interesting because I’ve never done it before.”
Meanwhile, Musa alleged that it was fun because he enjoyed labelling the drawing.
Continuing their geography theme in topic lessons (‘LO: to know about global regions’), Year 3 worked collaboratively to build a country fact file in pairs.
Regarding the task, Jemima remarked: “It was hard because some of the words were really tricky.”
“I enjoyed searching on the iPads,” said Mr Laverick, aged 7.
If you haven’t already guessed, this week and next week’s English theme is newspapers! We have discussed the features of news reports and learnt about the punctuation required for quotes and speech. (Ask your child what a colon means! “Hang on…”) This has been tricky for many, as it may be completely new, so when we did succeed with our learning, it tasted even more sweet!
It was great to meet lots of parents at the homework review on Thursday and I hope you enjoyed looking at and hearing about our amazingly creative homework! Here are some highlights:
I look forward to seeing you on Monday or Tuesday for parents’ evening.
School council elections
Our school council elections will take place next Thursday 19 October.
In an assembly this week, our current school councillors told us what characteristics are needed to be an effective school councillor.
These included:
- use all the 8 Rs for learning
- be respectful
- help others
- be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
- tell the truth
- be confident with your ideas
- accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
- be friendly and approachable
- make good choices in class and around school
Watch out for the whole school homework this week all about the election and democracy.