Grayling 3’s Blog

We had incredible experience from our visitors and it has been a fantastic way to start our non-fiction Eagle work. We have had some amazing ideas and facts we have been able to put into our work!

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been settling into our new routines in Year 3 whilst starting to enjoy some new topics. During this time we have been slowly working through our lists of spellings to evaluate where each child is with their spellings. We do this so throughout the year we can offer completely individual spellings that are at your child’s level and should give them a small yet manageable challenge each week, working towards their own goals. 

These spellings will be ‘quizzed’ at the beginning of the week and then new ones sent home on a Wednesday (there are a few exceptions to this, for instance if we have a trip). Please can you make sure your child brings their spelling book in on a Tuesday so we can glue the spellings for the week.

Spellings will look like this with 5 of our common exception word spellings that they need to work on. This is different for every child. 

At the bottom of the sheet you will notice the ‘phonic family’ words. These are graphemes that we have noticed they do not spell consistently. It is important to notice the sound and spelling being the same in each word as it helps pattern recognition. 

It is important to remember that this is a challenge, and one that we often find the class love, but if they are really starting to struggle as their spellings get a bit tougher please do contact Miss Mansell on the Year 3 email as we can make some changes to help. 

Below are some ideas of different ways to support spellings at home:

A short message from Miss Baker:

Hi everyone

Friday 22nd September is the ‘No Car Day’ version of  Bling your Bike! Children who have brought their scooters or bikes to school decorated in the theme of ‘colour’ can join Miss Baker for a parade to show off their bikes or scooters. There will be a prize for the best dressed scooter/bike in each class! 

Thanks! From Miss Baker

Welcome to Year 3, it was a super hot start to Year 3 last week! Hopefully the sun will continue to shine this week (just with a slightly cooler temperature!). What an amazing start to our new year!

Last week we began exploring numbers to 1000 in our Maths learning and really enjoyed partitioning numbers using the part-part-whole method.

Hope you have an amazing week, Miss Mansell 🙂

Welcome back everybody – I hope you all had a lovely and relaxing Easter break!

Since we’ve been back in class this week, we have all really enjoyed going to the pond to do some pond dipping to see whether or not we could catch a Bog Baby! This is the text that we are currently looking at in literacy. The children had a lot of fun fishing for pond creatures and we were even lucky enough to be able to (very gently!) touch a frog. We’ve used this experience to write a short recount and to write some instructions on how to pond dip successfully.

In maths, we are continuing our learning on fractions. We have been learning about halves, quarters and thirds and have started to look at which fractions can be added together to make one whole. A couple of links that may be useful at home are:

https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/fruityFractions/index.html

https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/firepitFractions/index.html

In science, we have been reviewing our learning on reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds and fish and have started to look at life cycles.

Next week, we will be talking about our class pledge in assembly. We have decided to plant our own sunflower seeds (the theme being cycles) and we will be using recycled materials as planters. If anybody is able to bring in any empty egg cartons or tin cans, that would be wonderful!

Have a very happy weekend!

Miss Hosking

We had a lovely time celebrating World Book Day this week, sharing stories in class and looking at all of the amazing potatoes that the children brought in. You can see some of them below!

In literacy, the children have worked SO hard on their fantastic non-chronological reports about Emperor penguins. They’ve finally been put together and we are looking forward to sharing these together next week.

In maths we have started to look at measuring temperature and reading the scale on a thermometer. We measured the temperature of water which had been left in different locations to see how this varied too. You might want to continue using ‘Hit the Button’  to practise number bond recall. We have been using this to investigate what happens when we add odd and even numbers. What patterns do you notice?

We have enjoyed looking at symmetry and using both pencil and pastel to create our final pieces of artwork ready for display. We are really proud of our tiger artwork!

This week in Grayling 2, we have been continuing our learning about multiplication and division. We’ve been learning about these invserse operations and how they link together. For example:

10 ÷ 2 = 5
10 ÷ 5 = 2
2 x 5 = 10
5 x 2 = 10

In literacy, we have been writing our own adventure stories which the children have really enjoyed. We’ve also really enjoyed sharing them with our friends.

In R.E., we’ve been learning about Judaism and important Jewish symbols (synagogue, Star of David, the Torah) as well as the Passover festival and how this is celebrated. We’ve also been thinking about our favourite celebrations.

In Topic, we have just finished our learning about the polar regions which the children have thoroughly enjoyed since starting this at the beginning of the Spring term. We have loved sharing everybody’s home learning, so thank you for your support and encouragement with this! We will soon be moving onto learning about different polar explorers.

Have a lovely weekend everybody and see you next week!

This week in Grayling 2, we have just finished our learning on multiplication. We’ve been looking at arrays and word problems which incorporat the 2, 5 and 10 times tables. The children have been enjoying playing Hit the Button to practise these, too, which can be found through the following link:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

In science, the children have enjoyed looking at different habitats and the animals that live in them. They had a go at designing their own habitat for a local insect or animal with a friend and have started to learn about adaptation and how different plants and animals have adapted in order to be able to survive in their habitat.

I’ve been blown away by everyone’s home learning over the past few weeks! It’s lovely to see how much the children are enjoying their Topic learning on the polar regions. We’ve loved adding our Rockhoppers and Blue Penguins to the many Antarcticas that have been brought in with the children recently!

The children also really enjoyed sharing their learning with you at our Stay and… session this week. Thank you to all of the grown ups who attended – it was lovely for you to be in our classroom again. Have a happy weekend everyone!

What an exciting week we’ve had in the Grayling 2 classroom – from beautiful sunshine to a short-lived downfall of snow!

In the classroom this week, we have been continuing to learn about and practise our times tables. We’ve now practised our 2, 5 and 10s! This week’s home learning will be to practise these at home. For an extra challenge, the children have been encouraged to have a look at these two songs:

In literacy, we have been looking at expanded noun phrases, for example:

the glorious, bright sunshine and the tall, icy mountain

At the beginning of next week, we will be having a go at rewriting the first part of Lila and the Secret of the Rain, incorporating our learning on expanded noun phrases.

We had a visitor in class earlier this week and enjoyed learning about how plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces and makes its way through the river catchment to our rivers and streams before ending up in the sea. We then had great fun looking through water samples and looking for different invertebrates under a magnifying glass. We have also started learning about living things in science and what helps us to identify whether or not something is alive, once alive or never alive. We had fun and went on a walk around the school grounds, trying to identify these things with a partner.

Enjoy your weekends, Grayling 2 – fingers crossed for some more snow!