Year 3 were very busy last half term with their ‘Roman Invasion’ topic. Their historical enquiry question, ‘What did the Romans do for us?’, led their learning and they found out about the positive impact the Romans had on our country and explored all things Roman in lot of other curriculum areas too. The children especially enjoyed their art and DT lessons where they designed and made mosaics, shields, clay coins, pop-up models of the Colosseum and clock faces, using Roman numerals. They will be showcasing all of their wonderful work at an outdoor museum that they had to postpone, due to rain in the last week of the half term.
In English their class text was ‘Escape from Pompeii’, which was set back in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the city of Pompeii. The children researched this historical event using different sources, including books and the internet. They worked with a partner, and then presented their learning to the class, brilliantly. They had fun playing ‘hot-seating’ and imagined being Tranio and Livia, who are the main characters, at different times in the story and reflected on how they were feeling and what they might have been thinking. The children were great Collaborative Cats and worked brilliantly in groups to complete a role on the wall task and then wrote out their ideas in more detail. Their last task was to write a newspaper report about Pompeii, where they combined all of their learning together, including facts that they had found out, combined with their imagined interviews of the characters in the story, as eye witnesses to the event.
In maths the children were learning about fractions. They worked hard to develop their understanding of these and how they can represent them in different ways. The children progressed to finding fractions of shapes and amounts including halves, quarters and thirds. Their challenge task was learning about tenths! The children’s mathematical vocabulary has grown lots and they impressed their teachers with using the correct terminology. The children also worked hard on learning and recalling their times tables and playing board games and online games to support this.
In RE Year 3’s latest unit has been Pentecost, where the class created some beautiful art work for the class altar representing their perception of the Holy Spirit. They reflected on the story of Pentecost and how the disciples might have been feeling before and after the Holy Spirit came. The class split into two groups and performed this story through acting and music. The children learnt about the fruits of the Holy Spirit and how these help us to be followers of Jesus. They wrote some thoughtful prayers thinking about how they can use each fruit to help themselves and others.
In science Year 3 started a topic on ‘Animals Including Humans’. They learnt about human skeletons and the names of some of the different bones in our bodies. The class carried out investigations to find out more about our bodies and worked collaboratively to do this. We will be continuing with this unit next half term and comparing our skeletons to other animals’ skeletons as well as how we can take care of our bodies too.
As a class we have continued with learning about friendships in PSHE and how we can take of ourselves and one another. We have listened to Bible stories that give us examples of how to treat one another, including The Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan. We enjoyed acting these stories out and using freeze frames to reflect on the impact of people’s choices. In our class we use circle times regularly to share our thoughts and feelings too. Our Building Learning Power focus has been Resilience and have been impressing our teachers with our perseverance and enthusiasm for challenge.
