Welcome to our Year 3 blog.

Come here for weekly updates.

Friday 24th March 2023

We've had a very fun Friday afternoon playing in a FOOTBALL TOURNAMENT at Warwick Junior School. All the PE teachers and children were really friendly. We played some fun games like the 'Dragon and eggs' games while practising our football skills.  We are looking forward to going back to again to play more sport in the Summer Term.

In Art we have been learning about CUBISM, abstract art and the famous painters Picasso and Braque.  Did you know that Braque used lots of musical instruments in his art and loved to collage?  We have mixing tints and shades of colours and drawing and painting musical instruments.

In Maths we have started learning about using scales and measuring in grams. Next week we will be measuring in grams and kilograms.  

In English we have started work on different sentence types and conjunctions.  We have started debating the argument ' Bullfighting should be banned'.

In Geography, we compared the weather data we collected for Warwick with Madrid and drew a graph to show rainfall and temperature.

Have a lovely weekend

from the children and teachers in Year 3

Friday 17th March 2023

On Wednesday we had a special visit from Mr Olteneau who works for the Land Rover company. He taught us about how cars work – we learned about dampers and shock absorbers.

 This week is Science Week so on Wednesday we brought in our science projects to show to some younger children and our parents.  We also did a class investigation about the wing length of helicopters.

Today is red nose day so we all were asked to wear silly socks. On Thursday we brought in 50p so we could buy a red nose.

In maths we have just finished learning about perimeters. First we calculated them then we measured them. You can see our perimeters drawing on the playground if the rain has not washed them away!

This afternoon, we ended the week with an exciting talk about ENGINEERING by Mrs Helen Burbidge.  Her job sounds very exciting and we learned lots about the sorts of things engineers do every day.  

Have a lovely weekend,

by Lola and Stanley on  behalf of year 3.

Friday 10th March 2023

In PE we have started our new topic, Sportshall athletics.

In computing we are making our own podcast about Spain.

In PSHE we were learning about children’s rights.

In English were forming sentences with conjunctions and prepositions phrases.

In Maths we are measuring cm and mm and m and converting between them.

In MFL we are leaning Spanish because our topic this half term is Viva Espana.

In Geography we were using an atlas  and searching  different  places in it  - in Europe, North and South America.

In Science we have been doing light and shadows and finding objects in the dark.

Have a  great weekend!

by Elena, Jamie, Leah and Risha

on behalf of Year 3

Friday 3^rd March 2023

This week we’ve started our new topic, Viva Espana and in MFL lesson from next week we will be learning some Spanish. We have finished our front covers which we based on the famous Spanish artist Picasso.  On Thursday we had a Spanish dance workshop with a dance teacher called Suzanne.  We learned about some colourful carnival and festivals in Spain and then had a go a creating some dances linked to these.

This week On Wednesday we had a visit from a famous poet called Terry Caffrey. His book is called ‘It wasn’t me Miss,” and it was really funny.  We had a poetry assembly and workshop with Terry and we made a mini book with a poem in.

As you might know, this week was World Book Week and we had a brilliant day dressing up on Thursday – we all loved the costumes.

In PE from now on we will be doing SWIMMING on Mondays.

In Maths we have been learning to measure in mm, cm and metres. Did you know there are 1000 mm in a metre?

Finally, today was our whole school ‘Poetry Slam’ .  This week we wrote poems in our classes about the Earth and looking after it. We put some of our best words and phrases together to make a class poem and performed the poem in assembly. What a week!

by Elena, Kayler and Jamie

on behalf of Year 3

Thursday 16th February

We have a short week this week because it's INSET day tomorrow, but we've still fit lots in! 

We had gymnastics where we practised  balancing, jumping , shapes and rolls and we used the ropes, tables and climbing frame too.

We finished our Stone Age Stories and some of us wrote a best copy too.

In Maths we carried on with formal methods for multiplcation and then for  division and were learning the bus stop method.

In Science we looked at food labels and what they tell us about different food groups like fat, saturated fat and protein.

In computing we carried on learning how to send emails.  

We also had an assembly with Becky from the Dog's Trust. 

Have a great half-term!

From the Year 3 Children

Friday 10^th February 2023

This week is  children’s mental health week.  We have talked about what mental health is and how we can keep our mind healthy. Today we wore EXPRESS YOURSELF clothes to school. Today we had a  Mindfulness workshop with Candice. We did lots of different exercises starting with  tasting two chewy sweets first quickly and then slowly, taking at least a minute.  We practised active listening with a partner and noticing what colour eyes people had as well as lots of other details.

In French, we practised the days of the week and read a French story, La Chenille qui fait des trous, which is the French version of a popular children’s story.

In Maths, we were practising multiplying by 10 and solving multiplication and division problems. We are learning the written method of multiplication.

In English , we have been learning how to use inverted commas in a narrative and analysing the story structure of ‘Stone Age Boy’ ready to plan and write our own stories next week.

In Science, we investigated how much sugar is in different flavoured soft drinks and have started to look at our food diaries.

We got the apparatus out in gymnastics and practised climbing, balancing, shapes, rolls and jumps.  In tennis we had to keep a rally going with a partner and try using forehand and backhand.

We also  learned about attaching pictures to emails as attachments and talked about being kind online just like we are in the real world. It was Safer Internet day too and we had an assembly to help us stay safe online.

Friday 3^rd February 2023

In French we have been learning how to write and say the days of the week.

 On Thursday we had theme day. All day we had a workshop and we did activities and learnt lots about the STONE AGE .We all dressed up and had a really good time!

In RE we have been learning about the Hindus and what they believe about different gods and goddesses and what they represent. Did you know that many Hindus believe they represent the different faces of Brahman’s personality? Last week we were learning about what Muslims believe about Allah and the Holy Qu’ran. 

We had Come and Learn in Maths this week and we were doing lots of calculations and problems using our Key skills. 

In English we have been learning how to use speech punctuation.

by Elena, Jamie and Remy

27.01.23

27^th January 2023

In Maths we have been learning about fractions and ordering fractions on a number line.

In PE we have been learning bunny hops and trying to attain bronze, silver and gold standards and also and learning hand -eye coordination skills in tennis, as well as backhand and forehand.

In computing we have been learning how to send an email . First, we wrote an email in are books to our friends then we sent them to Miss Slater. Do you know how to send an email?

In English we have been learning about prepositions and the different word classes like adverbs and prepositions. We have also written a WANTED poster using all of our English skills.

In History in year 3 we have been learning about the stone age houses. What we had to do was get pictures of prehistoric houses and sentences describing them and match them up.

Have a lovely weekend,

from Jamie, Theo and Elena on behalf of Year 3 children and staff

20/1/2023

Over the last two weeks we have been researching and writing our information texts about the Stone Age using subheadings and paragraphs.  We have been reading Stone Age Boy by Satoshi Kitamura and practising our Reading Viper Skills -  especially retrieval, predicting and inferring how a character is feeling.

Last week was assessment week so we did a very long Reading assessment and 3 different Maths assessments so we were exhausted!

In PE,  we have been trying to beat our personal bests in gymnastics, by holding a tricky balance for longer than last week.  We have also been practising our tennis skills.

In Maths we have been learning about fractions including  numerators, denominators,  the whole and also we have been comparing fractions with the same numerator  and with the same denominator.   

In History we have ordered events on a timeline and have been remembering our learning about Bertha Benz in Year 1 and also thinking about INVENTIONS in the Stone Age and ordering how important we think they were for humans.  It was really hard to decide if creating fire was more important than farming or building houses! What do you think?

In Computing we have begun learning about sending emails as a way of communicating using technology.

In PSHE, we are thinking about our Dreams and Goals and how we can achieve them by working towards them using little steps.

FInally, we'd like to say a big HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR for this weekend!  We hope you enjoy celebrating the start of this New Year of the RABBIT.

from the Year 3 Children and Staff

6. 1.22

Happy New Year!

We have had only three days in school but we've fit a lot of learning in already!

We've completed our Stone Age inspired front covers using chalk pastels and stencils to draw round and also to make 'negative space'  animal pictures.  We made the background more like a cave wall by crumpling up the paper and then staining it with old tea bags.

In Maths we have been practising column addition and subtraction with exchanging as well as solving problems.

In English we have been learning about why paragraphs are useful and what they're for.

We have also done balances, shapes and jumps in gymnastics  as well as starting tennis skills.

Our new Jigsaw topic is DREAMS AND GOALS.

Have a lovely weekend,

The Year Three Children and Staff

9/12/2022

We ended our week with a fun Christmas Lunch with all of Year 3 - it was very delicious so thank you to our hardworking Dinner Staff!

We also had some rehearsals for our Year 3 Christmas Extravaganza which is next Wednesday morning and we're getting pretty good at the dances but still need to practice  some of the words!

We finished our Elephant sketching art and have been making Christmas decorations for the classroom.

In English, we have been writing CINQUAIN POEMS which were really fun.

Have a lovely weekend,

from the Year 3  Children and adults

2/12/22

Monday was Christmas themed jumper or party outfit day and we had our Christmas Fair which was super fun with lots of games and change to win prizes.  Thank you FRIENDS of Coten End!

In Art we have been practising creating value using shading and are going to use this when creating our elephant art.

We have been practising our Christmas songs for the Year 3 Christmas Extravaganza, although we will need to practise A LOT MORE to get  all the words memorised and the dances too!

In Maths we have been doing the 4 and 8 times tables linked to multiply and divide and some of us have started learning on SHAPE too.

In English we have created our posters to advertise a Bonfire Extravaganza Party.

In the photos, you can also see that we've been doing some more learning about magnets and magnetic materials.

3SL also had a very exciting Science visit from Mr Etheridge at Warwick School with some very helpful students too to make and launch some very cool rockets!  3Cs's turn next week. It was very fun indeed!

Have a very lovely weekend,

The Year 3 children and their Teachers

25/11/22

In Geography we have begun our learning about Volcanoes. Did you know there are three different types that look different to each other?

In English, we have carried on learning about subordinating conjunctions and have also been identifying features of a persuasive text, including  rhetorical questions,  exclamation sentences and exciting vocabulary.  We will be writing our own poster to advertise a BONFIRE BONANZA using all features we have learned about.

In Maths we have  been carrying on with multiplication and division and started work on the 3 and 4 times tables.

In Science we have have been learning about magnetic fields and how they can work from a distance without touching - look at our photos to find out more. Did you know that the Earth act like a giant magnet?  3SS also had a visit from the Science teacher and some children from Warwick Prep School to do some exciting Science. We won't tell you any more until 3CS and 3SL have also had a visit.

In Computing, we have carried on learning about coding with Scratch and we were learning how to do a 'LOOP'. It was tricky!

We might need some more practice.

In PE, we carried on learning passing, dribbling and  using space skills in hockey and netball and  also did some agility practice for speed and fitness.

Have a great a weekend,

The Year Three Children

  18/11/22

In Art, we have been sketching elephants using lines and then using wax crayons or oil pastels to decorate them.  We painted a colour wash background and also colour washed the elephant, using the 'wax resist' technique.  You can see some examples of our Art in the photos above.

In Geography we have begun our learning about Mountains and used an atlas to locate different mountain ranges across the world.  Ask me at home which mountain ranges I can name! Some of us have also been learning how mountains have been formed and about the three different types of mountains.

In English, we have been learning about subordinating conjunctions and the main clause and subordinate clause in a sentence.  This was a bit tricky but we're getting there! Ask me to name some subordinating conjunctions.

In Maths we have started work on multiplication and have been concentrating on equal groups, arrays and multiples of 2, 5 and 10.

In Science we have started investigations into forces and magnets.  Ask me more next week!

In Computing, we have also started learning coding on Scratch which was fun.

Have a great a weekend,

The Year Three Children

04/11/22 

This week was only four days but we fitted a lot in!

3SL and 3SS did their 'Firework Reflections' front covers using chalk pastels and a white chalk line that we smudged to represent the horizon. Have a look at some of our artwork in the photos.

In Maths we have been learning how to represent exchanges using the column method for addition and subtraction.

We had  English 'Come and Learn' where lots of our parents came and helped us with using lots of different grammar and vocabulary skills in our writing.  In English we have started reading the Firework-Maker's Daughter by Phillip Pullman and though about how Lila was feeling in the story.  

In PE we have had our first lesson where we did netball, hockey and multi skills.

We have also started our Geography work about Mountains, Volcanoes and Earthquakes and had a quiz to see what we remembered about lots of learning we have done before like compass directions and names of continents and oceans.

Have a great weekend,

The Year 3 children

21/10/22 

This week we played 'Eliminator' in Archery  which was lots of fun. We had to score points in our team and then collect the same number of items from the hoop. It was lots of fun!  We also had our final football lesson before we start a new sport next half term.  

In 3SS and 3SL we started and finished our DT projects (that 3CS did last week), where we designed and made pop up books using different mechanisms.  We learned how to do a 'box fold', a 'V' fold and a 'hinged lift the flap' and learned about the author, illustrator and paper-engineer pop -up book expert  Mathew Reinhart.

In RE we learned about Rosa Parks and how her Christian faith inspired her to stand up against injustice.  In PSHE  we talked about our NETWORK HAND of trusted adults who we can tell if we get any of our Early Warning Signs.

We are getting really good at adding and subtracting mentally and with 3 digit numbers in Year 3. 

In English we learned about useful words called determiners. Do you know what they are?

Enjoy the photos - and Happy Holidays!

The year 3 Children and Staff

14.10.2022

We have been learning about SOIL in Science and what it's made of. We examined some soil from the school grounds closely to try and work out what soil is.  We learned about different types of soil and which rocks they started off as. We had to illustrate the story of Roger Rock and Simon Soil to show how soil is formed.

In Maths, we have been  carry on with  adding and subtracting mentally and also we have been MAKING CONNECTIONS with our number bond facts.  For example, if we know 9 + 4 is 12, we can work out that 90 plus 40 is 120  and 120 subtract 40 is 90. Clever eh?

In English, we have written our non-chronological  information texts about dinosaurs, although we were allowed to make up some 'facts' to include as long as we used sub-headings, conjunctions and super vocabulary!

In PSHE we are on week 4 of 4 of our TAKING CARE PROJECT and that's all about our body and keeping safe. We talked about parts we keep private and also about things like who we like to hold hands with, who can tickle us and that we need to tell a trusted adult if we are feeling our  Early Warning Signs if we don't like somebody doing something.  

In DT 3CS have begun this half term's work on POP -UP mechanisms and have had lots of fun although some of the folding has been quite frustrating!! 3SL and 3SS are looking forward to this DT next week.

Have a great weekend!

Year 3  Children and Staff

7.10.2022

We have had an extremely busy week in Year 3 and the highlight for lots of us was a really fun dance workshop by a dance teacher called Amy from Urban Strides who came to teach us some street dance.  She was brilliant and taught us about F.A.C.E. that stands for (Focus, Action, Confidence and Energy) and we can use to tackle any challenge.

In Maths, we have been adding and subtracting mentally with 1s, 10s and 100s to and from 3 digit numbers and solving tricky problems as well. 

In English, we have started planning our Dinosaur information texts which we will write next week. 

In Archery, we are better at hitting the target now, so played a game called, 'Build a Burger' with the numbers on the target with our team. We also carried on with our football skills.

In Science we learned about the ROCK CYCLE and some of us made models of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks out of chocolate. It was fun and our teachers said it was very messy!

In Music, 3SL began recorder lessons and 3SS and 3CS will learn next term and the term after.

In PSHE we thought about our Early Warning Signs and also began thinking about our Coten End Values and what we want them to be.

Have a great weekend!

Year 3  Children and Staff

30/9/22

The week began with European Languages day on Monday and we had a visitor in this week called Fletch who taught is a song in sign language.  She was brilliant and has even been on tour with Ed Sheeran!  We looked at different flags for European countries and learned how to say 'Hello' in them. 

3SL have now been on the Science and Geography trip to Cross Hands Quarry to learn about fossils. Some photos are attached.  The weather was cold but it only rained a little and we had sunshine too! We had a fabulous time and learned a lot about fossils and rocks, especially limestone rocks!

In Science, we carried on our investigation into properties of different rocks and seeing which ones are permeable, which ones float and which ones split easily. 

We have begun our TAKING CARE  learning in PSHE and have discussed feelings, our safe place and our rights and responsibilities.

In Maths we were finishing our Place Value  work comparing and ordering numbers up to 1000 and next week will begin Addition and Subtraction.

In Music, we continued learning more about the Elements of Music  and about the pitch, tempo, dynamics and timbre of different music and instruments. 3SL have begun music lessons with Miss Butler from Warwickshire music who will be teaching them recorder next week. 3CS and 3SS will have these lessons over the next 2 terms.

In English  we have been  using coordinating conjunctions to join clauses together.  We have also been beginning research about dinosaurs for our dinosaur information text writing next week. 

Anyway, we must go because it's KS2 Film Night tonight and the fun is starting for lots of us!

Have a lovely weekend,

Year 3 

23/9/22

3SS and 3CS have now been on the Science and Geography trip to Cross Hands Quarry to learn about fossils. Some photos are attached.  3SL are very much looking forward to their trip on Tuesday too so keep your fingers crossed for good weather!

In Science, some of Year 3 have been investigating the properties of different rocks and seeing which ones are permeable, which ones float and which ones split easily. 

Have you heard of the Learning Pit?  We've been thinking how we can be more resilient when we are stuck in our learning and what positive things we could say to ourselves and friends.

In Maths we were carrying on with our work on Place Value and  finding 1, 10 and 100 more and less than different numbers. We also learned how to represent numbers using counters in the correct column instead of dienes.

In Music, we were learning more about the Elements of Music  and about the pitch, tempo, dynamics and timbre of different music and instruments.

In English  we have been identifying the features of a letter and thinking about how we can use the different sentence types when we plan our ideas for writing. 

In PE, we carried on  practising our archery skills and football skills and played some mini games. 

Would you believe we have also nearly finished our  Christmas card designs too?!

Have a lovely weekend,

Year 3 

16/9/22

In Science, we grouped rocks based on their appearance. We looked at them with a magnifying glass and drew diagrams of them in our books.  

In Maths we were representing numbers up to 1000 with dienes and partitioning them into hundreds, tens and ones and then in different ways. 

In Music, we learned about crotchets and quavers and about the different families of instruments.

English has been all about word classes  including  nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. We have been building sentences and making fun sentences.  We have been trying to start our sentences in different ways. Did you know you can start a sentence with an adverb?

In PE, we practised archery and football skills with Mr Butler and all our Year 3 teachers.

3SS went on a Trip to Cross Hands Quarry and we'll share some photos when all three classes have been so we don't spoil the surprise!  3CS will be going next Tuesday and 3SL the following week.

Have a brilliant weekend and Bank Holiday Monday!

Have a lovely weekend

Year 3 

9/9/22

In Science, we started our new unit by learning about the different layers of the Earth and we created  super lift-the-flap diagrams you can see in the photos. We also started to read the fantastic book " The Street Beneath My Feet" by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer. 

In Maths we have been learning about place value and practising the Year 3 Key Skill of counting in hundreds.

We have been learning all about different types of noun in English lessons and also about how useful pronouns are. 

Today we had an assembly to remember to Queen and all she has done for our country. Did you know that this is the first time in living memory that there has been a new Prime Minister and a new King in the same week? 

We have also been getting used to all the routines and Year 3 classrooms and really enjoying playing on the play equipment at break and lunchtimes!

Have a lovely weekend

Year 3 

Week Beginning 27th June

What a busy couple of weeks we have had in Year 3! One of the highlights had to be our fantastic trip to Umberslade Adventure last week. We had so much fun! The activities included den building, zip wires, a commando obstacle course and a low ropes course. We all impressed our teachers with our courage, determination and resilience - not to mention our superb Coten End behaviour and manners. 

Another highlight was Languages Day on Thursday. Madame Allison had arranged a superb day for us on which we celebrated the many languages spoken by staff, children and familes at Coten End. During the day, we had a wonderful assembly led by Myton pupils, painted a pebble to create a whole-school art installation, had a masterclass in our focus language from a native speaker and took part in a 'Guess the Language' quiz. We also all learnt and performed a song in our class' language. 3FC's chosen language was Greek as we have two Greek speakers in our class. We were very lucky to have Mrs Kopailia with us for the day to teach us some basic language and about about Greek culture. We all came dressed in clothes to represent a country of our choice and the kitchen even put a special international lunch for us!

Week Beginning 6th June

We are already really enjoying our new 'Tomb Raiders' learning theme in which we are learning all about Ancient Egypt. We started this week by recapping how timelines work and developing our understanding of BC and AD dates. We learnt about some key events that took place during the Ancient Egyptian period and plotted them chronologically on a timeline. All three classes had some fantastic discussions about what we are keen to learn about, with lots of children (and Mrs Sheepy!) particularly interested in mummification! 

For our new learning theme book covers, we created a mixed-media collage using photos and oil pastels, transforming ourselves into an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh! Weare really proud of them and are excited to get them on the cover of our books!

In Maths, we have returned to learning about fractions. We recapped how to order and compare fractions (both unit fractions and fractions with the same denominator) and we also found non-unit fractions of quantities. 

In English, we were challenged to plan and write our own stories, trying hard to showcase all of the key Year 3 writing criteria. Our teachers were really impressed by our imaginative plots and engaging use of language.

Our coding skills were put to the test in this week's Computing lesson in which we used '2Code' on Purple Mash. It was great revision for our shape knowledge as we were programming the computer to show shapes of different types that changed on the click of the mouse.

Next week is our Ancient Egyptian theme day on Tuesday so this weekend we need to find ourselves a suitable costume!

Week Beginning 23rd May 2022

We have amazed our teachers this week with our incredible sewing skills! Having designed our bags, we embarked on making them out of recycled materials that we had brought in. First we had to cut the material to the appropriate size based on our design criteria. Next, we learnt to hem to top to avoid the material fraying. We then used running stitch to attach each side of the bags, being careful to keep our stitches neat and accurate. We learnt that doing the sewing on the reverse side and turning the bags inside out gives a really professional finish. We finished by sewing straps onto our bags that we had made by sewing down long strips of fabric and turning them inside out. They were quite tricky to attach but we persevered and are delighted with our finished creations!

We have been really enjoying seeing what is happening with the plant investigation we have set up. Our control plant is growing well but the others have begun to struggle, with wilted petals and brown, drooping leaves. 

Tomorrow we will be celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in school. We have been practising the National Anthem and school song in preparation and are looking forward to completing some Jubilee crafts and attending our whole-school street party in the afternoon. 

Week Beginning 6th May

We are already really enjoying our new 'Flower Power' learning theme. In Art, we have been looking at the work of Henri Matisse, a French artist who pioneered the fauvism movement. We looked at how his work changed throughout his life and were inspired to create some amazing collages for our new learning theme book front covers. 

We have continued to be creative in our Design and Technology lessons in which we have started a textiles project in which we will be sewing our very own reusable bags. So far, we have practised threading a needle, tying knots and using running stitch. Our teachers have been very impressed by our sewing skills!

Our English work over the last 2 weeks has been all about poetry. We practised poems in groups and performed them to the class, trying to emulate the engaing style of Michael Rosen. We have also read a range of different types of poem and ended the week writing our very own Kenning poem about a plant of our choice. 

In Maths, we have continued learning about length, including measuring accurately in m, cm and mm and have been comparing, adding and subtracting lengths. Next, we will be moving on to learning about perimeter.

Hinduism was the focus of our RE lesson this week and we had some great discussions about what qualities people might pray to God for in different scenarios. 

Week Beginning 4th April

We finished the half term off in style by mastering the art of flamenco in a fantastic workshop run by Anita La Maltesa (dance and vocals) and Ramon Ruiz (Spanish guitarist and music teacher). The workshops gave us an inspirational insight into Spanish culture, language, folklore and flamenco dance, and culminated in some incredible dance performances! We learnt how to clap properly (as this is an important part of flamenco), some key flamenco movements, the history of flamenco and how it is used to reflect a mood or tell a story. Our teachers were absolutely amazed by our enthusiasm, skill and willingness to give it a try. We all had a lot of fun and Anita said that we have some future flamenco stars amongst us!

Also on our theme day, we created some fantastic artwork, inspired by our learning about Cubism this half term. Look out for it being proudly displayed around the Year 3 corridors. 

The Year 3 team wishes you all a very Happy Easter! We hope you have a wonderful break and that the Easter bunny brings you some treats....

Week Beginning 28th March

We are really enjoying learning Spanish in our modern foreign languages lessons this half term. We have learnt basic greetings, numbers and colours and have found out lots of key information about Spain.

In Computing, we have been planning our podcast scripts using the Chromebooks. We have chosen an aspect of Spanish culture that we are really interested in and thought carefully about which guests we might have on our show! Next week, we will be recording them using iMovie and adding some sound effects/jingles using GarageBand.

Our PSHE work this week focused on emergencies. We discussed what constitutes an emergency and what we would do in different scenarios, including how to contact the emergency services. 

In English, we are continuing to learn about different types of conjunctions, focusing on subordinating conjunctions like when, because, if and although. Next week we will be using them to write a speech about bullfighting. We also typed up our Spanish travel guides using the Chromebooks and they look very professional!

In Maths, we have been recapping how to divide using skip counting. It's much easier if we are confident with our times table facts! Next week we are moving onto learning how to use short division. 

This weekend we are going to find our costumes for our Spanish theme day on Wednesday - we are very excited about our flamenco workshop!

Week Beginning 14th March

What an exciting week we have had this week! Firstly, it was British Science Week so we have enjoyed a range of scientific activities, including a special assembly, whole-school hand span investigation and our infamous annual Coten End Science Fair. The children brought in some outstanding Science projects and did a fantastic job of sharing their learning with both our younger visitors from other classes and the parents who visited at the end of the day. Our Science Ambassadors also introduced us to 'Sci' the dinosaur, our new Science mascots. Each class has one and one child will be taking him home each week to carry out a scientific investigation to share with the class. 

We were also lucky to have a very special visitor in school on Tuesday: Joe Roebuck. GB Olympic swimmer Joe was ten times British Champion, double Commonwealth silver medalist, double European medalist and London 2012 Olympic semi-finalist. His events are the 100m and 200m Butterfly and the 200m and 400m Individual Medley.  All classes took part in a special fitness workshop and assembly. He really inspired us to follow our dreams and be more physically active!

On Friday, it was Comic Relief and we paid a visit to the 'Coten End Market' where we bought second hand toys and books. All of the proceeds went to Comic Relief and we were very excited with our purchases.

To finish our busy week, we spent Friday afternoon at a football tournament at Warwick School. We had a brilliant training session with their coaches and enjoyed playing some 5-A-side matches against their Year 3 boys. We were very lucky with the sunny weather too!

Week Beginning 7th March

This week we really enjoyed our Geography lesson, in which we recapped the names of the different continents. We learnt a really catchy song to help us! We also wrote some interesting facts about each continent based on some videos we watched.

We are really enjoying our weekly swimming lessons and the teaching assistants who take us swimming have been really impressed by our behaviour and organisation. Our weekly PE lessons are focused on flamenco dancing and football this half term so they are a lot of fun too!

In Computing, we have continued to learn about podcasts. This week we listened to a travel podcast and then started to generate some ideas about what we would like our own podcast to be about. 

In English, we are continuing to develop our understanding of prepositions and this week we wrote some super paragraphs about Paco the bull from 'Toro Toro' by Michael Morpurgo, making sure we used a range of prepositions. 

Our maths lessons have been helping us to gain confidence with short multiplication. We have realised how important knowing our times tables is so we are going to do our best to practise at home as much as possible.

We are really excited about Science Week next week and are going to be working on our Science projects over the weekend!

Week Beginning 28th February

We have really enjoyed the first week of our new learning theme, Viva Espana. The children have already created some beautiful Cubist portraits inspired by the work of Pablo Picasso. They look amazing on the front of our new topic books!

This half term, our Computing learning is linked to our English work as we will be writing travel guide podcasts about Spain. We started this week by listening to some example podcasts and identifying key features such as interviews, music and adverts. In English, we have started learning about prepositions in preparation for writing our travel guides. 

In Maths this week, we have started learning to use the grid method to solve multiplication calculations. Knowing our times tables is really important for this so we must keep practising these!

In Science, we learnt all about darkness and created our own dark dens in the classroom to explore what happens when there is an absence of light. 

We are also delighted to be able to show you our finished elephant sculpture from last half term that we created with visiting artist Ros Ingram. We have decided that his new home is going to be in the Hub. We are yet to name him so any suggestions welcome!

Week Beginning 14th February

In Maths this week, we have moved on to learning about 24 hour clock times which is really tricky! It would be really useful if parents could ask us about this regularly at home as there is so much to remember. 

In Computing, we are developing our coding skills by using the incredible Lego WeDo kits. So far, we have enjoyed building the glowing snail, Milo the Science Rover, Cooling Fan and Spy Robot. We have got much better at persevering when we are finding our learning tricky and have been impressing our teachers with our resourcefulness and teamwork. 

On Wednesday, the children in Year 3 took part in a Tribal Tales theme day to celebrate all their learning about Prehistoric Britain this half term. All three classrooms were transformed into caves and they wore some superb constumes! The children were taught a variety of skills to help them survive in the stone age and bronze age, including flint knapping (with soap), making 'grooved ware' pottery out of clay and weaving. They even went on a hunt at the end of the day and threw spears (javelins) at some giant beasts we had drawn on the playground. We all had a brilliant day!

Week Beginning 7th February

On Friday, we were really excited as we had a visiting artist, Ros Inram, in Year 3 helping us to build a huge elephant head sculpture using a wire frame and modroc. This was an enrichment activity linked to the elephant art unit we did last half term. Ros taught us some different tie-dye techniques and we have each tie-dyed some fabric to use as part of the elephant sculpture, which is made entirely from recycled materials. She is the same artist who created the wonderful woodland animal scultpures in the old Debenhams window in Stratford-Upon-Avon town centre. We will be finishing the collaborative scupture next week and displaying it somewhere prominent in school for everyone to enjoy!

In Maths this week, we have been learning to tell the time to the nearest minute on an analogue clock, including ones with Roman numerals instead of numbers! We also learnt how to use AM and PM to show what time of day it is. 

In English, we wrote innovated narratives based on 'Stone Age Boy'. We tried really hard to organise our writing into paragraphs and to use inverted commas correctly when a character is speaking. We also did lots of work on redrafting to improve our writing. We are delighted with our finished story books!

Week Beginning 31st January

This week, our highlight was definitely building our prehistoric houses. Each group was designated a house from a different period: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age or Iron Age. Having researched the different houses last week, we designed what our models would look like and what materials we would use for each part. We used wood, clay, sticks, straw, cardboard, leaves, fabric and wool to create them and they look AMAZING! Mrs Sheepy came to see them and wants us to display them somewhere prominent in school so that others can enjoy them too!

In English, we have continued to learn about speech punctuation in preparation for writing our innovated versions of the book 'Stone Age Boy'. We also did some work on sequencing the events in the story ready to do our story mountain plans.

Our maths work has been all about time this week and we particularly enjoyed learning how many days there are in each month of the year. We learnt a rhyme to help us and a special trick using our knuckles. We also solved some tricky problems using a 2022 calendar.

We were very shocked in Science when learning about the amount of sugar in different foods and drinks. We actually had the amount of sugar weighed out in bags and we had to match it to the relevant item. It has made us think twice about how much sugar we are consuming!

Finally, in RE, we created some fantastic artwork depicting some of the 99 beautiful names of Allah.

Week Beginning 24th January

It's been another busy week of learning here in Year 3! 

In maths, we have been continuing learning about fractions, including identifying tenths, representing tenths as decimals and even comparing fractions.

We have moved on to learn about using inverted commas to demarcate speech in English lessons in preparation for the narrative writing we are going to do in a couple of weeks. Starting off using speech bubbles has really helped us to identify the words being spoken. 

Our history learning this week has focused on how houses changed throughout the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. We are very excited about working in groups to create our own model houses next week. 

We also enjoyed finding similarities and differences between human and animal skeletons in our science lesson this week. 

In RE, we created some beautiful work outlining the ways in which Christians see God, including as father, creator, light, love and the Holy Trinity. We are looking forward to learning about Islam next week and how Muslims worship Allah. 

Week Beginning 17th January

This week we have spent a lot of time editing and redrafting our information texts in English. We then published our finished version, either practising using a handwriting pen or by typing them up on the computer (which we really enjoyed). We are delighted with our finished pieces of writing!

In Maths, we have started learning about fractions by revisiting our learning from Year 2. We are trying hard to remember all the tricky vocabulary such as 'numerator', 'denominator', 'unit fraction' and 'equivalent'. 

We had a lot of interesting discussions in our History lesson this week as we had to decide what the most important inventions/discoveries were in stone age times. A lot of us put making fire, building houses and farming near the top of our 'Diamond Nine' diagrams.

We are loving learning about human and animal skeletons in Science lessons, including identifying vertebrates ad invertebrates and looking at different types of skeleton. 

Week Beginning 10th January 2022

This week, we have enjoyed learning about life in the Stone Age and finding out about how historians and scientists have learned so much about life in Britain so long ago. In History lessons, we have been looking at dates and developing an understanding of what BC and AD stand for. 

In English, we have continued learning about how to use paragraphs and sub-headings to organise non-fiction writing. We had a lot of fun inventing our own prehistoric animals and writing a non-chronological report about them, including information about their appearance, diet and habitat. Read some of our work below to find out more...

We will be editing and redrafting our information texts next week to make them even better!

Week Beginning 3rd January 2022

Happy New Year!

The children have been very excited by our new learning theme 'Tribal Tales' this week and are working hard already to find out all about life in Britain in the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. They have created some wonderful cave paintings for the front cover of their new learning theme books using stencils and chalk pastels:

In English, we are working towards writing our own non-fiction texts about life in the Stone Age so we have been learning how to organise writing into paragraphs and use appropriate sub-headings. 

Our Maths work has been all about measuring mass and we had lots of fun doing some practical measuring. 

Autumn 2 in Year 3

Our learning theme this half term has been 'The Firework Maker's Daughter' which is an amazing fictional text written by Philip Pullman. 

In English lessons, we have continued to learn about different word classes and how to use them to make our writing more engaging. Practising identifying the subject and verb in a sentence is also helping us to demarcate our sentences more accurately. We have done a lot of work on the use of conjunctions to join clauses and extend our sentences, focusing particularly on how to use subordinating conjunctions. We used these to write a letter in charater as Lila from the story, explaining to her father why she had decided to run away.

We have also been doing lots of work on descriptive and persuasive writing. We wrote a description of a firework that we had invented ourselves and also wrote a radio advert for Rambashi's Jungle Grill restaurant from the story. Our use of advanced vocabulary was particularly impressive after some excellent thesaurus work!

In Maths lessons, we have been working hard on our written methods for addition and subtraction (column methods) and have also been practising our times tables and accompanying division facts, especially x3, x4 and x8. 

Our Geography work this half term has been all about mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes. We have learnt some of the different ways that mountains are formed, which tied in brilliantly with our learning last half term in Science about the different layers of the Earth. We used maps and atlases to locate the world's major mountain ranges and identify their highest peaks. After this, we moved on to learning about volcanoes, including where they are located and how they are formed and erupt. We were fascinated to learn that there is a volcano under the sea in the Pacific that is taller than Mount Everest! Additionally, we learnt how earthquakes occur which linked really well to our work on friction in Science. 

This half term, our Science learning has been all about magnets and forces. We have done a range of practical investigations to find out about magnetism and friction, including testing which material causs the most friction for a car travelling down a ramp. We focused on writing detailed predictions and conclusions based on our data. 

We have had a brilliant time improving our observational skills in Art this half term. We started by looking at the continuous animal line drawings created by Picasso and tried doing our very own continuous line drawing of an elephant. We then moved onto using value to create 3D form and add texture, using a range of grades of sketching pencil, to help us. We are delighted with some of our final elephant artwork, some of which can be seen displayed in Upper School Hall. 

Autumn 1 in Year 3

We have had a brilliant half term learning all about dinosaurs, rocks and fossils in our 'Fossil Hunters' learning theme. As part of this theme, we carried out a really fun DT project learning about different mechanisms when making pop-up books and developed our musical understanding when composing a new piece of music for the 'Carnival of the Animals' suite.

We began our learning theme by creating these fantastic learning theme book covers using the technique of monoprinting in Art:

In Science, we started our new unit by learning about the different layers of the Earth and we created these super lift-the-flap diagrams:

We learnt about properties of different rocks, and how igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks are formed. We also learnt about erosion and how soil is formed. When learning about how fossils are formed, we made our own 'mould and cast' fossils using clay and plaster of paris and also created these fantastic 'fossil spinners' to demonstarte our learning:

In Music lessons, we learnt about some of the elements of music, including pitch, timbre and dynamics. We listened to 'The Carnival of the Animals' suite and discussed how the composer had used the different elements of music to represent each animal that was being described. We looked in depth at the 'Fossils' piece and were excited to discover a well-known nursery rhyme hidden within it, representing the fact that fossils are very old. We thought the hollow, sharp timbre of the xylophone was a great way to represent bones. 

We also practised clapping different rhythms and learnt about musical notation, including crotchets and quavers. We created our own dinosaur name ostinatos to use within our group compositions of 'Fossils' from The Carnival of the Animals.

In our group compositions, we thought carefully about the timbre of each instrument and chose ones that we felt represented bones effectively. Some children in our class learn to play an instrument so these children learnt how to play a well-known nursery rhyme and hid this inside our compositions. 

In Design and Technology we learnt how to make pop-up books. We looked at a range of examples and tried to work out what kind of mechanism had been used to create the movement on each page. We then learnt how to create 'box folds', 'mouth folds' and use simple levers to create a moving element on the page.

The unit of work culminated in us creating a group pop-up book about dinosaurs using the range of mechanisms we had learnt about. 

Our English learning this half term has covered word classes (particularly identifying the subject and verb in each sentence), speech punctuation and using similes and metaphors when writing poetry. Pieces of writing that we have produced include a newspaper article about the discovery of a dinosaur egg in the school playground, a metaphor poem about a colourful dinosaur and a retelling of the story Tyrannasaurus Drip by Julia Donaldson. 

Our next learning theme is 'The Firework Maker's Daughter', based on the super text by Philip Pullman. We will be developing our skills as a geographer by locating and learning about the world's mountains and volcanoes and improving our observational drawing skills in an exciting art unit of work about elephants.