Summer 1

The children’s final term in year three has been packed with a variety of amazing learning.

To begin with, our ‘WE ARE Garden Designers’ PBL Project saw the children collaboratively make two beautiful hanging baskets to excite their interest with plants. Throughout the project they tendered, watered and dead headed their achievements and saw the plants flourish and grow like themselves. They learnt about the different parts of a plant, designed their own gardens and actively raked, levelled and planted a variety of plants to achieve their outcome. This outcome was a raised flower bed that the children filled with tomatoes, herbs and flowering perennials within the grounds of Ainslie Wood Primary

In English, the children planned, drafted and wrote a narrative that was set in a garden in relation to their PBL project. They learnt a variety of grammatical content to add cohesion to their sentence structure and enjoyed editing their finished version.  Also, the children revisited different grammar areas in writing activities in the latter part of the half term.

In Maths, the children revisited and strengthened their understanding of multiplication and division strategies and have been applying them to word problems.  They have measured and calculated perimeters of shapes and extended their fraction knowledge.  The children have been telling the time and calculating durations using analogue and digital clocks.  Finally, they have been rounding numbers and estimating calculations.

SPRING 2

We are two thirds into our academic year and the children continue to make fantastic progress in their learning.

Our project this term has been ‘WE ARE TQ378921’.  These letters and numbers are the exact location of the school on the national grid. The children have enjoyed learning about using maps and researching the local area using a variety of resources including digital technology.  They have also explored the chronology of historical events that have occurred in Epping Forest from Ancient Britons to the present day.  Additionally, the children have worked collaboratively to produce an informative and persuasive brochure on the local area covering nature and wildlife, parks, sport and leisure, museum, art galleries and shops.  This will be printed for our school library.

In English, we started the term by becoming performance poets.  We enjoyed exploring various poets, the poetic devices they use in their writing and what makes a great performance.  This enabled the children to write and perform their own excellent poems.  Our focus then moved on to information texts where we wrote our own leaflets on tortoises as well as meeting Merlin – a huge tortoise!  The children further developed their information writing skills to research and write the brochure encouraging people to visit the local area.

Within Maths, we have learnt about Measures: length, mass and weight. The children have enjoyed using the metric system in practical lessons to read and compare a variety of scales.   The children have also become statisticians producing data on bar charts and pictograms for the brochure.  In addition, we strengthened our understanding of number work applying addition and subtraction strategies to word problems.

Spring 1

Autumn 2

What an amazing half term Year 3 have had! The children are in full flow with their learning and have progressed in leaps and bounds!

We started the term by celebrating a black pioneer of the Arts – the sculptor Edmonia Lewis.  The children produced fantastic fact files all about her life and made a wonderful collaborative painting of her at work.

In English, we have been focusing on Adventure and Mystery.   We used the book of Leon and the Place Between as a basis for some excellent learning including recounts, magical description, debates and persuasive writing.  The children then wrote their own exciting adventure stories set in the Amazon rainforest.

Our Maths knowledge has expanded with a deeper understanding of strategies to calculate multiplication and division, addition and subtraction.  We have explored the properties of 2D and 3D shapes, angles, position and direction.

Within our Project learning – ‘WE ARE on World Tour’, the children have been on a musical journey around the world!  After exploring the Science of sound with experiments and researching the traditional music in different parts of the World, the children have created their own compositions using the app ‘Garageband’ and a variety of instruments.  Their musical masterpieces reflect music from different countries. Click here for pictures! 

Autumn 1

Wow! It has been an exciting first term for Year 3. The children returned to school in September with a very positive attitude and enthusiasm for their learning almost as if they’ve never been away.

In English we have been focusing on two genres: Myths and Legends which have been linked to our current PBL ‘WE ARE Invaders’ as well as learning about play scripts. We explored a range of Myths and Legends, created our own mythical creatures and then wrote our own Viking myths by adapting a traditional Norse tale.

We are becoming masters of place value and we applied our knowledge to addition, subtraction and multiplication. During Finance Fridays, we have explored the use and value of money and how to be  savvy consumers.

The children have studied over 1000 years of British history in 7 weeks! Starting with Roman invaders, they looked at what the Romans built and invented and made their own mosaics.  We then explored Anglo Saxon invaders finding out where they came from and why they invaded.  Next came the Viking invaders where we explored Viking fashion as well as their shields and swords.  The Project outcome involved us becoming experts in Viking long ships, Roman mosaics, Viking fashion and Viking shields and swords. We even built our own Viking long ship and did a catwalk showcasing the Viking clothes we designed and made.

We have learnt a lot about people invading Britain however we have also discussed how Britain has invaded many other countries around the world. Click here for gallery