Year 3

Spring Term Literacy

One day, at the start of this half term, Mrs Hubbard remembered that she had forgotten to eat her breakfast. She decided to make some toast using the toaster form the kitchen. Mr Le Page of course then wanted some toast of his own so he had some too, which in turn led to all of Year 3 having some delicious buttery toast! It got us thinking, how does a toaster actually work?

We found an amazing book called Until I met Dudley written by Roger McGough that explained to us what happens inside a toaster. This book also includes detailed explanations of how other inventions work such as fridges, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners. There were some really funny, made up explanations as well as how things really work. We have spent this half term learning how to write an explanation text.

Spring Term Numeracy

This term in our Numeracy we have had a focus on place value and developing our understanding of what numbers actually mean. We have used a huge variety of resources to help us learn including Base 10, Numicon, number lines, money, Cuisenaire rods and number tracks and even things like cheerios and marshmallows.

Spring Term Science

We have been learning all about forces and magnets in our science lessons. It has been really interactive and engaging. There are so many cool things we can do whilst exploring forces and magnets. A lot of the time what we are doing looks like magic but in actual fact it is only science.

We learnt that a force is energy that causes movement. There are two main types of forces - contact forces and non-contact forces.

We investigated different kinds of contact forces (a force that needs direct contact to have an affect) including pushes, pulls, twists and turns.

A non-contact force is when an force causes something to move without touching it for example; Gravity and Magnetism.

We also learnt that magnets have a North Pole and a South Pole, just like the Earth. Opposite poles attract, similar poles repel. We investigated how magnets affect different objects and materials.

Spring Term - Other Curriculum Areas

Art - We have been learning a huge variety of different art skills in our art lesson so far. We began by looking at the the famous cartoonist Carl Giles. We practised how to draw an effective cartoon and learnt about how small changes to the eyebrows and mouth can change an expression completely. 

History - We started off this year by learning all about pre-historic times. We learnt about how people used to live and how the technology evolved throughout the Stone Age, The Bronze Age and the Iron Age. More recently we have learnt all about the Romans. We loved learning loads of interesting facts about the gladiator fighting, the different Roman Emperors, the invasions of Britain and the many Gods in Roman mythology. 

Geography - In our geography learning we have learned all about fieldwork. We've learned how to use a compass and what the cardinal points (North, South, East and West) and the inter-cardinal points (North East, South East, South West, North West) are and how people use these to navigate. We went out onto the field and created an enormous compass - then we explored what we could find at each point. We also learned about the difference between human and physical features of a landscape.

We have also learnt all about India and how it compares to living in Guernsey. It was fascinating to see a different culture's way of life and how living on a small island is so massively different to living in an Indian mega-city or a slum.

P.E. - in P.E. we have been enjoying staying active and enjoying the sunshine outside as much as possible. We have been developing ball control skills, learning how to jump and balance and we've applied what we have learnt whilst using the big apparatus in the school hall.