Autumn 1: Welcome to Class 3!

What a wonderful first half term we have had so far in Class 3! We have settled in well and got straight back to learning and playing with our new friends. Mrs Roberts thinks that the children have coped amazingly well with all the changes to the school day and is very proud of them indeed.

Our new display walls and reading area were all set up, ready to be filled with learning resources for our topics as well as super examples of children's learning.

Reading:

This half term the children have really enjoyed our class story time. So far we have read The Twits, Detective Dog and The Nothing To See Here Hotel (which we're still reading). We've really embraced chapter books with the intrigue of predicting what might happen in the next chapter as well as seeing the story progress with its twists and turns.

The children have continued with their RWI phonics lessons and are learning and recapping new sounds every day with the help of Fred the frog. They are all working very hard and it is great to see their confidence in reading develop.

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Maths:

In Maths we have been learning all about Place Value. We have been partitioning numbers into tens and ones and exploring different ways of representing numbers. The children have enjoyed using a range of maths equipment including base ten, tens frames, Numicon and part whole models to help extend and clarify their learning.

Following on from this, we have used this knowledge of place value to help us compare numbers.

We are now part way through our addition and subtraction topic and are enjoying learning different mental and written methods to aid us in our calculations.

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Writing:

This half term the children have written a setting description of a Gingerbread House, taking inspiration from the book Hansel and Gretel by Bethan Woolvin. They collected a an interesting collection of adjectives to use in order to paint a picture in the reader's mind.

Following this, we read an extract from George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl then wrote our own set of instructions on how to make a magic potion. The children chose some truly gruesome ingredients such as juicy zombie's brains and squishy frog's eyes to add to their concoctions. 

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Geography:

In our topic, Where Do I Live?, we explored our local area as well as looking at the UK, Europe and the 7 continents. We learned about capital cities and looked at a range of different maps. The children particularly enjoyed looking at their houses using Google Street View.
We began to look at maps in more detail and had a go at drawing our own. We used coordinates as well as compass points to pinpoint features on a map.

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Science:

Our Science topic in the first half term was Materials. We learned how to differentiate between different types of materials, describe their properties and talk about their suitability for different purposes.  We experimented to see which materials were waterproof and to round up our learning, we had the task of building a raft to carry the little man across the water.