Year 3 Blog - 06.12.2024

6th December 2024

Another very busy couple of weeks in year 3. The children have loved starting their swimming lessons and are very excited for this to continue. 

In our writing lessons, we have been continuing our sentence stacking lessons focused on the book ‘The Secret of Black Rock’. We have been writing our twist on the dramatic events that unfold in the story. The story follows a young girl called Erin who longs to go out to sea but is always told it's far too dangerous because of Black Rock. So far we have written all about how Erin has snuck on board her mom's boat but has unfortunately fallen in. We have also put ourselves in Erin's shoes by looking at stories where people have fallen overboard. We used Moana and an extract from Micheal Murpurgos ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ to help us gather ideas. The children then created their freeze frames of someone falling overboard and discussed their emotions. This allowed them to add extra ideas to their writing. We also explored the different sea creatures and the children then picked four creatures to create their very own fact files about. 

In maths, we have continued exploring our addition and subtraction strategies. We have been looking at regrouping and using our column method. We have been articulating our reasoning when sharing our method. The children have been explaining their strategies and why they are the most efficient. They have been focusing on the column method and understanding why we use this method. They have become much more confident in explaining their choices and showing their understanding. 

In science, the children have been working scientifically. They have been exploring what makes a fair test and understanding the importance of this in an experiment. They experimented to see if temperature affected how far a ping pong would travel. They have also been looking at making predictions and have done this by answering the question ‘Do all liquids mix?’ They conducted an experiment with water, oil and food colouring to answer this question. They had 3 tubs each filled with water. One tub was filled with cold water, another was filled with warm water and the last was room-temperature water. The children then poured oil on the top and used food colouring to see if this would mix. Before conducting the experiment they made their predictions about what would happen in each glass. The children have enjoyed developing their experimental skills through conducting experiments. 

The children have been learning the different ways of greeting one another in French. We have been practising greeting one another and also sharing how we are feeling. The children have really enjoyed their introduction to French and have been practising by greeting each other throughout the day to develop our skills.