Year 3

CRC Article 28 – All children have the right to an education.  

CRC Article 19 – All children have the right to play and rest.  

Welcome Back 3H! 

Wow! What a busy few days we have had in Year 3H. The children have come back to school, after a long 6 weeks holiday, with a smile on their face, ready to learn.  

3H have already started some learning: we have written a recount about ‘our ideal holiday’ to show Mrs Lockey how fantastic our writing skills are. We have also played about place value- thinking about the position of a 3-digit number.  

We have also created our charter for our class. We have chosen an underwater theme and cannot ait to show you at parents’ evenings in October.  

CRC Article 12:  All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29:  All children have the right to be the best that they can be.  

Welcome back 3T, we have had a great start to the year, the children have used their pupil voice to create our Class Charter and to talk about their aspirations for the coming year.  

We have had our first art lesson and enjoyed learning to trace, we are studying the work of William Morris, so the children will be looking to nature for inspiration in their artwork.  

We are raring to go for the autumn term.  

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.  

CRC Article 17: All children have the right to find out information. 

This week in 3T, we have had a great start to our new History topic – The Stone Age. The children have used a toilet roll to visualise how long 5000 years of history would be. We counted back in 100’s from 2024 C.E. all the way to 3,200 B.C.E. 

We found out about when different civilisations arose and fell, then added them to our Timeline.  

We are raring to go for the next lesson.

Year 3 Pedestrian Training 

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education. 

CRC Article 19: All children have the right to be safe. 

Year 3 children have participated in pedestrian training this week. We had a speaker who came to visit us in school and talk to us about the Green Cross Code. We found out that a pedestrian uses a footpath as well as the different types of traffic that can be found on the road. We then discussed and watched a video about crossing the road safely and put that into action by going out of school to practise crossing the road, whilst also looking out for hazards.  

We need to remember to:  

• STOP! LOOK! LISTEN! THINK! 

• Check sneaky driveways (driveways where you can’t see clearly.) 

• Look for drivers in cars as they could begin to move.  

• Look right, left and right again.  

• Cross the road in a straight line.  

We can’t wait for next week’s pedestrian training lesson to show our trainers what we can remember and show our right to be safe.  

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.  

CRC Article 17: All children have the right to find out information. 

In our Science lesson this week, we have investigated the effect that friction can have on different surfaces.   

We worked in teams to create a fair test to see how far a vehicle will travel on different surfaces.   

It was fun seeing how the different teams used the equipment to make their ramps steeper. Then we measured and recorded our results.  We are ready to write up our experiment and analyse our findings in the next lesson.  

We are proud to be super Scientists. 

French 

CRC Article 28 – All children have the right to a good quality education. 

CRC Article 30 – All children have the right to learn and use the language, customs and religions of their family.  

Bonjour! Year 3 have had the fantastic opportunity to learn French with a native French speaker, Nathalie Paris, this half term. We are very privileged to have Madame Paris working in our school and Year 3 have been super excited to have lessons with her. They have been learning how to say hello and goodbye. They have also been practising listening to simple classroom instructions. We have played lots of games to cement our knowledge and improve our French listening skills. It’s a tricky language to learn but the children have enjoyed it and taken to it like ducks to water. J Bravo, Year 3!  

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously.

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.

CRC Article 17: All children have the right to find out information.

CRC Article 30 – All children have the right to learn and use the language, customs and religions of their family.

Madam Paris has been teaching French in Year 3. We have learnt how to ask what a person’s name is and introduce ourselves in French, as well as some classroom instructions.

This week we have been learning about French landmarks. We used actions to help us remember each one.

Can you work out which action is for each landmark?

Le’ Arc de Triomphe, le Louvre or la Tour Montparnasse.

Au revoir!

Religious Education 

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education. 

CRC Article 30: All children have the right to learn and use the language, customs and religions of their family.  

This term, in RE, Year 3 have been learning about Hinduism. This week, we have learnt all about Diwali and the story of Rama and Sita. The children have acted out the story as well as retelling in in their books.  

This is the story of Rama and Sita… 

Hindus believe that a great warrior prince called Rama once existed who was married to a beautiful, strong woman called Sita. They were living a happy, peaceful life until the terrible demon King, Ravana, started causing trouble. He lived nearby and yearned to marry Sita himself. He was a fearsome-looking creature, with a chilling ten heads and twenty arms. In an attempt to have Sita for himself, Ravana whisked Sita away in his mighty, flying chariot. 

In order to save his wife, Rama sought out the help of Hanuman, the monkey king, who found Sita imprisoned on Ravana’s island. With the help of many monkeys, Hanuman and Rama built a bridge to save Sita. On the island there was a great battle and Rama shot Ravana with a magic arrow.  

Happily reunited, Rama and Sita began their journey home. So that they could find their way back, everyone in the kingdom lit an oil lamp to help guide them. Once they made it back, everyone celebrated their safe arrival. 

In the story, Rama, Sita and Hanuman represent goodness and light, whilst Ravana represents darkness and evil. Year 3 have learnt about how good defeats evil.  

We are looking forward to next week when we have a Hindu visitor in school! 

3T Week 7 Diwali Workshop 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.  

CRC Article 17: All children have the right to find out information. 

CRC Article 30 – All children have the right to learn and use the language, customs and religions of their family. 

Year 3 had a very interesting morning finding out more about Diwali. First we took off our shoes and sat on the mat and listened to some Hindu music. After looking at some musical instruments Zeb had a turn being a Bansuri musician.  

Ezra and Leveah showed us the Aum symbol and Sanskrit writing, which is the language of the Hindu deities.  

We then heard the story of Diwali and Beau, Grayson, Harry-John and Frances got dressed up to play the parts of Rama, Sita, Laxman and Ravanan. 

 Afterwards we got our faces painted with beautiful designs.  

Definitely a lesson to remember. 

Physical Education 

CRC Article 6: All children have the right to be healthy. 

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education. 

Year 3 have had their first lesson this week with a gymnastics coach. We really enjoyed learning about how to make different shapes with our bodies. We learnt about the pike, straddle, tuck, star and stretch and we were able to complete these moves by playing a game. We also learnt 2 ways to travel. We travelled like a gymnast, with outstretched arms and walking on our tiptoes, and travelled in a bunny hop.  

English  

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education. 

This week in English, we have been learning about the poetry form: haiku. We have learnt that this is a form of poetry which is traditional in Japan. A haiku has a syllable pattern of 5 – 7 – 5, and each haiku is 3 lines long. They are usually about nature or seasons. We wrote our poems about bonfire night. Here are a few great ones from Year 3 … 

Beautiful colours 

In the sky like a rainbow 

Crack, pop, whizz, fizz, bang! 

By Millie

Sparkle in the sky 

Explosions of red, blue, green 

Lots of people scared. 

By Freddie-Joe 

Delicious hotdogs 

Sparkling rainbow colours 

Pets barking around.  

By Mason-James 

November is here 

Guy Fawkes fireworks fizz, whoosh 

Bangs scare all the pets. 

By Lillyarna 

Exploding rockets 

Marshmallows, toffee apples 

Whizz, whoosh, crackle, zoom! 

By Jasper 

Fireworks go BOOM! 

Bangs, explosions scare the pets 

Do you get very scared? 

By Harper 

Pink, green, purple, blue 

It goes boom, zoom, bang, crackle 

Zooming in the sky 

By Lillie B  

Bang, flash, sizzle, fizz  

Fireworks bang loud noises 

A hundred colours.  

By Kamille 

Crackle, fizz, boom, bang 

Red, orange, pink, purple. WOW! 

A thousand colours.  

By Lillie F 

Science.

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education.

This week in Science we have been learning all about magnets. We have discovered that magnets have 2 poles: a North Pole and a South Pole. We experimented with bar magnets and found out that the opposite poles attract and the same poles repel. We have then started to have a look at which materials were magnetic. We discovered that metals can be magnetic but not all metals are. Iron, nickel and cobalt are 3 of the metals we found out were magnetic. We did a fantastic job sorting the materials into magnetic or non-magnetic.  Take a look at this game we played… Science4Us Games.

Year 3 Pantomime Visit.

CRC Article 31: All children have the right to play and rest.

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education.

On the 27^th November, Year 3 had the fantastic opportunity to go to the pantomime at Durham Gala Theatre. This year’s theme was Beauty and the Beast. The children enjoyed the story even more as we have been learning about different fairy tales in English. A brilliant link to our other learning J. The children were commendable to the school: extremely respectful, polite and well mannered. They really enjoyed themselves and enjoyed dancing along and singing to the songs throughout the play. There were lots of tired children at the end of the day, on the bus ride home. A great time was had by all!

Music

RRS Article 28: All children have the right to an education.

This term, we have been practising our Christmas songs for our church performance on the 11^th December. The children have worked extremely hard to perfect the songs. We have been singing a range of classic Christmas carols to modern Christmas songs, such as: Away in a Manger, It was on a Starry Night, Jingle Bell Rock and Merry Christmas Everyone. The children cannot wait to show the parents their singing, along with their actions, on the 11^th December.

3H end of term update.

RRS Article 28: All children have the right to develop their talents and abilities.

RRS Article 28: All children have the right to quality education.

RRS Article 19: All children have the right to play and rest.

The children have all worked extremely hard this term, with lots of progress made in all areas. The children have settled well into routines and expectations of a new classroom and a new key stage. We have had a very busy term learning all about place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as well as reading many stories ranging from fairy tales to more traditional stories and poetry. This last week we have been wrapping up our learning about forces and magnets by playing a quiz, we have been drawing shapes in computing using a probot and we have been learning how advent and the Christmas story are connected. We have also had fun at our Christmas party, playing party games and dancing to songs, old and new. We have enjoyed making our Christmas calendars, cards and completing Christmas activities. Wow, what a busy term we have had. The children certainly need a well-deserved rest. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

English

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education.

What a great start to this half term! The children have come back to school ready and excited to learn, which is fantastic to see.

Year 3 have been busy with poetry this week. Our text was a narrative/performance poem called ‘Chocolate Cake’ by Michael Rosen. This poem is about Michael, as a child, sneaking downstairs to eat some chocolate cake which was left over from the night before. We have also been learning about onomatopoeia words. These are words which make sounds. Michael Rosen often uses them in his ‘Chocolate Cake’ poem. We had lots of fun learning about onomatopoeia by playing a game where our groups needed to guess which sound we were drawing or acting out.

You can watch the ‘Chocolate Cake’ poem below… 

Chocolate Cake | POEM | Kids’ Poems and Stories With Michael Rosen

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously.

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.

In our Art lessons this term we are learning about Prehistoric Art. The children are very keen as this builds on from our History topic – The Stone Age.

This week, we have looked at changing the tone and shade of a colour and how to create a tinted colour.  The children then used their new colours to paint prehistoric animals. Next week we will be using twigs and sponges to paint with!

Year 3 visit to St John’s Church

RRS Article 28: All children have the right to an education, including educational visits.

On Wednesday, Year 3 visited St John’s Church in Shildon. This was to identify the features within a church. Reverend Frances spoke to us and took us on a tour of the church, explaining the different items you would find. The children were very respectful listening to Reverend Frances and asked some fantastic questions. We are visiting Shildon’s Methodist Church in the next two weeks, and we look forward to comparing the two churches, seeing their similarities and differences.

3T Week 4  

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously.

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.

In our English lessons this term we are learning about Narrative writing and have been reading ‘The Minpins’ by Roald Dahl. The children have enjoyed reading and investigating the text and used the ideas to create and write about their own monsters, come up with their own plans to escape and have begun to use speech in their writing.

We had a lot of keen authors, who were keen to keep on writing.

Well done to everyone. You have all tried hard to improve your handwriting by making it neater and joining when you can which is great to see.

What will our new text be?

Religious Education

RRS Article 28: All children have the right to an education.

This week, as part of our ongoing RE topic of Christianity, Year 3 visited Shildon’s Methodist Church. Reverend David talked to us about the features of a church and we enjoyed comparing them to those we saw at St John’s church. We have really enjoyed being able to see our learning from the classroom, brought into real life. We have been able to identify: stained glass windows, font, altar, lectern, pulpit, a cross and a dove.

PSHE/Children’s Mental Health Week

RRS Article 28: All children have the right to an education. We have been learning about worries in PSHE this week. We read a book called ‘A Huge Bag of Worries’ and discussed that everyone has worries, children, adults and even teachers. But the only way to make ourselves feel better is to speak about our worries with trusted adults or friends. We then made our own bag of worries. We wrote our worries inside the bag, decorated it then we were given a chance to talk about them and ‘throw them away’. Talking about our worries, and knowing that others might have the same worries as us, helped us to understand these worries and help us feel happier.

3T Week 6  Cooking

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously.

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.

On Thursday we had the wonderful opportunity to do some cooking with Chartwells.  As the celebrations for Chinese New Year/ Lunar New year are coming to a close, we were shown how to make spring rolls.

The children had a great time learning chopping skills and all about the different ingredients that go into spring rolls. They used the bridge and claw method to hold the vegetables and how to hold the knife safely.  The children listened attentively and followed the instructions, helping each other and passing the vegetables safely around the table.

We had to wait for them to cook and so took them home on Friday, some children ate them before they left and said they were delicious.

They are now looking forward to Design and Technology in the summer term when we do cooking. Well done everyone.

Art and Design

RRS Article 28: All children have the right to an education.

RRS Article 29: All children have the right to develop their talents and abilities.

Take a look at our finished Prehistoric art. The children have worked extremely hard on their project.

First we created a wash using water colours to stain the paper to make it look more like a cave. Then, charcoal was used to create the images drawn. We used charcoal as it is a natural recourse that could possibly have been used in the Stone Age as it comes from the ground. We tried smudging the charcoal to create a different effect. We are very happy with our finished designs. As well as our individual paintings, we created a class painting of ‘The Cave of Hands’. This is where we recreated the famous cave painting by painting over our hands using finger prints, twigs and sponges.

3T World Book Day 

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.  

  On Thursday, we had a great time celebrating World Book Day.  

We had some fantastic entries in the Potato Character Competition. Throughout the day we completed different reading activities. We shared our favourite books then designed new front covers for them. We wrote book reviews and designed Book Day tokens.  

In English, we have been reading the conversation poem ‘Please Mrs. Butler ‘ by Allan Ahlberg, so today we became poets and composed our own verses for the poem. A lot of interesting ideas were put forward as to what the teacher should say! 

In the afternoon, we had a scavenger hunt to find Wally and even a visit from Timothy Tiger, before settling down for a story with hot chocolate and marshmallows.  

Fantastic reading everyone.

Online Safety

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be. 

CRC Article 19: All children have the right to be safe. 

This week, Year 3 have been learning about the importance of a healthy, balanced lifestyle when using technology. We discussed in class that it is very important to be able to get plenty of sleep so that our body can grow and our brain can process our information from the day. To get quality sleep, it is important to have a health balance of technology and no technology after school. Technology can be fantastic for some things, including TTRS, Spelling Shed, TimeTables.co.uk and for fun games. However, it is beneficial if children are not on tablets all the way up to bedtime.  

Children looked at a grid, which included healthy activities to complete after school and unhealthy activities. The children rated them and then noted down which activities were important for us to become the very best that we can be.  

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be. 

  In our Design and Technology lesson this term, we have investigated different types of money containers and designed our own.  

This week we built on our sewing skills, learning how to thread a needle, tie a knot and to use a running stitch. The children showed their resilience and perseverance as these are tricky skills to master. By the end of the lesson, everyone was pleased with their progress, some children were very good and helped their classmates showing them how to loop the thread before threading the needle.  

Next week, we will begin to sew using felt.  

Well Done, Year 3.  

French  

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education. 

This week, we have been very busy working hard on our end of Spring Term assessments. The children have completed their Maths assessment, Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling assessment and their Reading assessment. Well done for trying your very best Year 3! 

In French this week, the children have been learning about French monuments around Paris. They have been putting them into sentences and even including the conjunction ‘and’ to join two monuments together. See some of the children’s writing below. Bravo, Year 3! 

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to develop their skills and talents. 

  In our Design and Technology lessons this term, we are making money containers. The children were very enthusiastic to start their sewing this week.  

To begin with, we cut out our felt to the shape we wanted and then stitched on a button. This was quite tricky and everyone showed great resilience, remembering how to thread the needle and to be careful not to prick our fingers. We all managed to sew on a button with four holes. This is a great skill for life. Well Done, Year 3.  

Year 3 Music and PE 

RRS Article 28: All children have the right to an education. 

RRS Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be by developing their talents and abilities.  

This term, year 3 have been completing some dance in dance. Our theme was ‘around the clock’. We create our dance using movements of a clock and the different times of day. We danced to the song ‘Rock Around the Clock’. Check out 3H’s dance! 

In music, we have been singing ‘Lesley was a dragon’. This is a song all about kindness and finding friendships, without discrimination. We have been practising the G note on the recorders also. This week, with it being our last lesson on this particular song, we performed our song using recorders and singing the chorus in a round.  

CRC Article 12- All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29- All children have the right to develop their skills and talents. 

We have started this term with poetry and have looked at The Trouble with my Brother by Brian Pattern. The children have really enjoyed this poem and had lots of fun performing it. To begin with, we read the poem and looked at the different features: format, syllables in each line and rhyming words. The children then went on to write their own stanzas to perform together. We had some very interesting items that Thomas ate! 

Why not ask your child to read the poem with you? 

We are Poets! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ni37SRGrY

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be and participate in extra-curricular activities.  

This week, Year 3 have had the opportunity to visit the Locomotion for a STEM day. Stem means Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. We were excited to find out the skills which an engineer might need, as this has linked to our PSHE about jobs and skills. We found out that a lot of skills we use in the classroom are needed for a job in engineering. When we were at the locomotion, we participated in 4 activities. Mrs Lockey showed us how to create our own working windmill and a sycamore flag, which was used to guide trains. We then had a guided talk from The Auckland project who taught us about the lanterns which were used by workers going down the mines to collect coal. We made our own lanterns out of card, lollypop sticks and cellophane. We really enjoyed our last talk of the day by The Bowes Museum, who showed us their automaton swan; then we created our own movable swan. We had a great day! 

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right be the best that they can be and to develop their skills and talents. 

We are developing our athletic skills this term. We have looked at different skills including running, jumping and this week, throwing. We have considered how to improve our performance and how different starting positions and stances can improve our aim. We had great fun throwing the bean bags into different hoops, as we had to increase the amount of force used and correct our aim as it was quite windy.  We all made the howlers howl as we threw them.  

You will see us demonstrate these skills on Sports Day! See you then.  

We are Athletes! 

Year 3 Computing and Art

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be by developing their talents and abilities.  

Wow! What a busy week Year 3 have had. We have been busy creating another sculpture- a pot. The children choose which type of pot they wanted to create and could choose from either a clay pot or a coiled pot. We have lots of fantastic designs and the pots were much better this week after lots of practise in the previous weeks. Take a look at us working on our clay pots. We cannot wait to paint and evaluate them when we return after the holidays, then we can take them home to show our adults at home.  

We have also enjoyed creating posters on Microsoft Publisher during our Computing time. The children have inserted WordArt changing the size, font and colour of it. They have also inserted a text box and created a border around it. We have used the keyboard to type in information about bees. Check out some of our creations! 

CRC Article 12: All children have the right to be listened to, give their opinions and be taken seriously. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to develop their skills and talents. 

We have had a lot of fun with poetry this week and we have been looking at shape poems. The children have really enjoyed this type of poem. We have been finding adjectives, verbs and similes to describe pictures. We then looked at a butterfly and composed a descriptive poem. We used our artistic talents to create butterflies with our writing.  

Of course, we had to cut out our butterflies and we are sure that they are going to be flying around our classroom.  

Why not ask your child to read the poem with you? 

We are Poets! 

Religious Education and E-Safety 

CRC Article 28: All children have the right to a good quality education. 

CRC Article 29: All children have the right to be the best that they can be.  

What a busy week we have had in Year 3 this week. On Monday, we took part in a second Hindu workshop. This time we learnt about the Hindu Gods and Goddesses and their purposes within the Hindu culture. We learnt that Hindus do not eat any cow products as this is a sacred animal. Some Hindus eat chicken, however it is rare, as Hindus are usually vegetarian. We had fun dressing up as the Hindu Gods and having our faces painted.  

In Online Safety this week, we have been learning about our digital footprint. We learnt that any websites or games we visit online leave a digital footprint, which means that it can be traced and found again. We looked at which information is safe to share online. We decided that our personal information (full name, school, address, usernames and passwords) should be kept secure and private, away from the internet. Other information, such as our hobbies and interests, are fine to post online.