Class 3

About Class 3

Years – 3 & 4

Class Teacher – Miss Belinda White

Teaching Assistant (TA) - Mrs Jodie Needham

Teaching Assistant (TA) - Mrs Victoria Pursey 

This Term in Class 3

Birmingham Think Tank!  

What a trip! We were fantastically behaved and made the school proud. We arrived in Birmingham and headed in for our morning briefing, once we were briefed and our bags were safely away the fun began! Firstly, we visited The Past where we saw weird and wonderful feats of human design. It was really cool that we could even go on the steam train (not moving of course). Then we made our way outside in the glorious sunshine to the Science Garden. This area was full or interactive activities for us to try. There was water balancing experimenting, wind turbines, rocket shooters and much more. Some of us got quite wet but still enjoyed every minute! After the Science Garden we stopped for a well-deserved lunch in the lunch hall. This was a nice opportunity to share with our friends all the fun we had had and what we were looking forward to. After lunch we visited, We Made it, looking at what we have made. On this floor we also saw the water tipper tip gallons of water out which was awesome to watch. Next we moved up a level to Our changing planet and Wildlife these were super interesting and it was great seeing some gigantic fossils. Then it was time to leave. What a fantastic day!  

The penultimate week before the end of Term 5.  

This week with Church service fast approaching we prepared for our Pentecost recital. This week we have been eagerly practicing our lines, with the Year 4s learning facts as well as the sonnet that the Year 3s have also learned.

In Art and Design, we created fantastic, collaged flames that represent the flames that appeared above the heads of the disciples so that they could spread the word of God and Jesus. These were super fun to create, and we are really excited to use them in our performance!  

In Dance this week we continued perfecting our dance routine ready for the end of year performance. We were even able to practice alongside the Class 4 singing performance to see how well the two performances fitted together.  

English this week has focused on creative writing, and we have been thoroughly enjoying creating our stories that will displayed in our classroom ready for all to see. We are even going to be creating our food animal hybrid character to go alongside our narratives! In Maths, we have been continuing with time focusing on converting between different units of time and adding and subtracting times. 

This week in Class 3!  

What an exciting week, Year 6 were being superstars * completing their SATs which meant Year 5 came and joined us!

It was great having them with us for Maths and English they were really great at sharing their ideas. In English, we took inspiration from Cloudy with a chance of meatballs and created our own food creatures as well as a food themed setting. After deciding on our character and its habitat, we began to consider the problem our character might face and wrote the opening of our stories. The best bit was sharing these with the rest of the class- everyone had such creative ideas!  

In Maths, we explored time. We got to have our own clocks to work out different times and learnt Roman numerals to read some analogue clocks. The best part was definitely time bingo! There were even stickers to be won 😊 

In Music and Dance this week we have been working hard on our singing and routines for the end of year production- we looked and sounded great! 

Coronation week in Class 3!  

This week, along with the excitement for the upcoming coronation, we have been learning lots as usual!  

In Maths we have been finding the area of different rectilinear shapes. We have been using the formular length x width (L X W =) to complete our calculations and have even answered reasoning questions around the area theme. 

In Science, we have been testing our magnet game prototypes! These were so fun. We did a round robin where we were able to test each other’s games.  

Now we are dressed in RED, WHITE and BLUE ready for our coronation celebrations!  

HAPPY CORONATION WEEK!  

What a week! This week seems to have zoomed by in Class 3. We have got into the spirit of the upcoming royal coronation and drawn portraits of King Charles III. We had to follow instructions from Sam Barnet on our interactive whiteboard as he guided us through the portrait line by line. It was so exciting when our lines actually formed King Charles’ side profile! These were sent home for our parents to upload and to be joined by other portraits completed across our school and the country forming a collective King Charles. We are really looking forward to finding our portrait in the larger art project.  

In Science, we wrote rules and instruction on how to play our magnetic games. We ran out of time to get to follow the rules and play our prototype games, so are very much looking forward to putting the games to the test and seeing if they both work and of course are FUN! In Music, we have started learning how to play the recorder. We have even been given our own recorder which we have kept safely in our draws. 

Term 5!  

It has been fabulous to be back together in Class 3. Our first week back has been super busy and we have been learning loads. In Science this week, we have been investigating magnets. We were using magnets to organise objects into magnetic and non-magnetic properties, we were very surprised to discover that not all metals are magnetic. Our next lesson involved us designing a game that had magnetic components. We worked together in our table groups to decide what we wanted our game to do and then got MAKING. This was so much fun! We are now looking forward to testing out our prototypes and the prototypes of other groups. In Music we have begun preparations for our end of year production and started learning some of the songs which sounded great. 

During Maths, we have been learning all about measure. We had loads of different measuring equipment out and we compared length and height as well as converted between mm, cm, m and km. The most fun was when we drew around our partners on the playground and measured them in metres and centimetres. In English we have been writing diary entries from inanimate object perspectives. It has been so fun thinking about what a pencil does all day or how a sharpener is feeling! 

See you next week 😊 

Final week of Term!  

This week we have been really busy with Easter activities. We have excitedly made Easter cards (using finger painting of little chicks having a great time, some of us even added little party hats to show their fun!)

Easter bonnets (we created SUPER fluffy bunnies, which were very gluey and fluff got everywhere!) We have updated our light display replacing our super sunshine’s with our very own representation of the Northern Lights (these are located in the hall with our sunshine’s being moved to the outside our classroom door).  

We are all very excited to show off our Easter Bonnets at our Easter Bonnet parade in front of parents on Friday and we are giving ourselves a ‘Pep talk’ ready for the egg roll competition. We are all very much looking forward to these events.  

What a brilliant term! Well done for all your hard work Class 3.

Penultimate week of term 

Another learning filled week in Class 3!  

Super shapes 

In Maths this week we have been investigating shape and angles. ANGLES NOT ANGELS  We have been using the angles as a method of direction. This has been really exciting as we have directed our classmate around the classroom and played Simon says with 90, 180 and 360 degree angles. We cannot wait to continue this learning next week.  

Patron Saint of Ireland 

This week we have been looking closer at the life changing events in St. Patrick’s lifetime that shaped who he was and his teachings. We looked at the celebrations on Friday and looked closer at his life and the extraordinary events that happened this week. We were shocked when we found out that he was likely born to a wealthy Roman family in Wales!

Church service 

With Church service fast approaching we are ready and excited to share our fantastic rendition of our Easter poem as well as joining the rest of the school singing hymns and enjoying their performances.  

This week in Class 3 

Science this week saw us investigating electricity! After learning about mains and battery power we decided to create our own circuits using electrical components provided. We all managed to connect our electrical cell to our component and get it to work! We saw bulbs lighting, fans whizzing, and we even heard a buzzer sounding! We have decided to investigate the results of adding more cells to the circuit and if this will make a bulb brighter, keep it the same or will it become more dull? We are looking forward to our next Science lesson to investigate our predictions.  

In Maths, we have been looking at reflective symmetry and we all undertook a practical investigation into symmetrical reflection. We used paint and a butterfly. We had to paint a pattern on only one side of the butterfly (some of us even used quadrilateral shapes as the pattern) and when we folded it in half we watched to observe the results. We saw that the pattern was a perfect mirror reflection of what we had designed. I am sure we will now be more aware of the beautiful examples of symmetry in our environment.  

Music has been just as fun and exciting as usual. Mrs Harcourt has been teaching us to read music and accompany it with both our singing voices and musical instruments. We love these sessions and many of us have joined choir as a result. 

Snow again!  

Another exciting week in Class 3. On Tuesday we welcomed the Footy Kids coaches into school and were so excited to join them at their inflatable court. We spent all morning undertaking drills and learning new skills and then we finished with a friendly match Class 3 vs Class 3! It was so fun, but we were very tired after 😊 A big thank you to the coaches who came as they were wonderful and really helped us to have the best time.  

In RE we have been learning all about the Jewish Spring festival, Passover and the Christian festival of Easter. We have been looking closely at both events trying to answer our big question, ‘Does Easter make sense without Passover?’ This has encouraged us to think critically about the two religious festivals which has created some very interesting thoughts and questions.  

In Maths this week, as well as continuing our work on statistics we have also been working hard on our times tables. We created some fortune teller inspired times table origami as well as fact family multiplication and division triangles and we have also been trying to find the hidden images in multiplication mosaics!  

And of course the snow… As you can see from the pictures we have had tonnes of fun out in the snow this week!  

Another extremely exciting week!

World Book Day was definitely a highlight of the week with everyone coming dressed in fantastical costumes representing a range of different books! It was so exciting coming into school and spotting all the costumes of our classmates. We now have so many new ideas for books to read 😊.  

We started the day with a costume parade and different children (1 per year group) were awarded BEST DRESSED! A decision that was taken very seriously by Mrs Rennie, who due to the amount of awesome costumes, found this decision extremely difficult. Next our book cover poster competition was awarded and a winner per class was chosen. This competition was initiated by Mrs Rennie and the Librarians and it was fantastic fun! A huge well done to all who participated as you have made the wall outside Class 3 and 4 look wonderful with all your designs. After that we returned to class and completed lots of fun World Book Day activities which School Council had organised for us. They were all super fun although, the origami koala bookmark was reeeeeally tricky to make  . Meanwhile, to our amazement the super Mrs Rennie had also organised with the Librarians an excellent surprise. None other than the GREAT Michael Morpurgo appeared on our classroom screens! He spoke to us about a range of topics including his inspirations for writing War Horse. It was a thoroughly enjoyable session and we were absolutely inspired!  

In Science, we looked at push and pull freeze frames where our classmates had to guess which force was being used.

On Tuesday, some children went to St.Mary's Church in Banbury to sing in the Rotary concert - children singing for children.

Term 4: 

We were ready and eager to start our new term. At the beginning of the week we were so excited to compete in our Shrove Tuesday Pancake race! It was so fun watching everyone race with their frying pans and pancakes and it was even more exciting when we raced ourselves! We really concentrated on our 3 pancake flips we had to complete throughout the course. We flipped at the beginning, middle and had a victory flip at the end. We can’t wait until the next pancake race! 😊 

In Science, we wanted to complete last terms topic on Tremors. We investigated the force of different earthquakes, using different tectonic movements. We used felt to represent the tectonic plates; soil to represent the Earth’s crust and Lego to represent life on Earth with buildings, animals and people roaming. We found that two plates colliding into each other creating the force, pressure, resulted in maximum destruction of our Lego worlds. We are now very excited to start our new topic Magnificent Metals!  

In RE this week, we have been learning all about Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and Lent. We have been looking at the key pillars of Lent and have used images to spark thoughts and ideas about charity, praying and fasting, as well as the beginning of spring. For almsgiving (charity) we looked at the story of the Good Samaritan and created our own clay figurine versions. For fasting, we traced around our hands and drew an image of what we could live without. For Ash Wednesday, we thought about the representation of the start of spring and finger painted our own depiction of the spring month. 

(Please see latest news for photos of us joining in the pancake race)

Last week of Term 3! 

This week we have been having loads of fun with poetry. We first created an acrostic poem, with the acrostic title, volcanoes and used loads of different poetic devices to make them super interesting and entertaining to read. These are now proudly displayed in the classroom 😊 We even got to show them off to some of our parents who visited for open morning! Another genre of poetry we have been exploring is kennings. We have really enjoyed these as we were big fans of riddles anyway and kennings are basically a set of couplet words that are joined by a hyphen that describe something without telling you what it is. We have displayed the kennings that we created with the question, ‘what am I?’ so any guests visiting Class 3 can see if they can guess what our theme is. 

We have also been exploring earthquakes, looking closely at the forces behind them. We decided to focus on the force: friction. Friction in the context of earthquakes is created by the tectonic plates moving against each other, either in the same direction or opposite directions. We investigated how friction works by creating paper frogs that could climb up string. We noticed that the friction force created inside the straws between the straw and the string caused the frog to be moved up the string. The rubbing together of the two materials caused friction resulting in movement, just like earthquakes! 

Class 3’s Assembly 

It has been so exciting this week! We have had the opportunity to share what we have been learning about so far with the rest of the school and our parents. We shared facts and figures that we had learnt as well as sharing beautiful readings from both our diary entries and our non-chronological reports, displayed as a fact files. We were also able to conduct a live experiment of a vinegar and bicarbonate of soda erupting volcano as well as a Coke and Mentos volcanic eruption. We were very relieved it all went off without a hitch! 😊

Let’s experiment!  

We have taken our knowledge of fair tests down to Class 1 and 2 to demonstrate the force of a volcanic explosion.  

Experiment 1- Coke and Mentos eruption: 

We started with our makeshift volcano (Coke bottle) and then added our ‘volatiles’ (the Mentos) and saw a fantastic flow of bubbly liquid shooting out of our improvised vent. We compared the eruption height to that of real volcanoes and saw the similarities between how magma reacts to volatiles and heat like Coke reacts to Mentos and heat.  

Experiment 2- Lemon volcanoes: 

During this experiment we added bicarbonate of soda to a cut lemon. When we added the bicarbonate of soda, it started to fizzle and foam a little bit. Then when we mixed it more the lemon started foaming a lot more, bubbling up and over the sides of the lemon. Eventually the reaction slowed down and stopped. We used four lemons with a different colour food colouring per lemon, as an independent variable to see if it made a difference to the bubbly foam. There is still some debate about which colour was best!  

Experiment 3- Vinegar volcano: 

We saved our fantastic volcano models for our final experiment as we investigated the reaction between the acidic, vinegar and the alkaline, bicarbonate of soda. When we added these substances together the reaction between them released CO2 which caused bubbles, with the addition of washing up liquid this created the appearance of lava erupting from our volcano (which was great fun to watch!). 

We loved sharing our experiments with Class 1 and 2.  

Volcanoes! 

It’s the end of another fun packed week, in Class 3, we have been collating our knowledge of volcanoes to make our very own collection of active volcanoes. As part of our topic ‘Tremors’ we have investigated the structure of the Earth and how the movement below the Earth’s crust leads to the creation of volcanoes. During D&T this week, we created model volcanoes with papier-mâché (using the very generously donated newspapers), plastic containers (to represent the magma chamber, conduit and vent), cardboard boxes, child friendly plaster cast material (which was very fun to use!) and loads and loads of PVA glue. On Friday afternoon we will be taking one of our fantastic models down to Class 1 and 2 to demonstrate the magnitude of an eruption.  

In Science, we are looking at fair tests and will be making sure during our bicarbonate of soda and vinegar experiment that we only change one element (food colouring) to see if that makes a difference to the overall explosion. We are all extremely excited to see the results!  

It has been a fantastic start back to school and it is great to see the children so enthusiastic about starting the new term. 

Our term got off to an extremely exciting start with our New Year disco! We were able to play party games, learn dance routines and of course have loads of FUN! It was great to see the whole school together playing and eating treats- it’s safe to say we LOVED IT :D.  

We've had a very busy first full week back at school. We were very excited to discover our new topic of ‘Tremors’. We have already started investigating the structure of the Earth, how volcanoes are formed and looking at real natural disasters particularly the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. We have taken our time investigating the eruption in order to put ourselves in the shoes of the Roman citizens of Herculaneum and Pompeii and we wrote a diary entry as though we experienced the devastating event.  

Forest School was extra special this week as we received a treat! During Forest School we made delicious hot chocolate and were even given a chocolate digestive to dunk! YUM.   

We had some extra special guests visit this week as Dogs Trust came to speak to us about how to stay safe around dogs. It was great as Becky, the lady from Dogs Trust, asked us lots of questions and we were able to ask her lots too. We learnt lots about what dogs might mean when they do certain things and now we have a much better understanding about when it is appropriate to approach dogs.  

What a wonderful, jam-packed week we have had!  

Nativities:  

We have had the opportunity to attend all the KS1 nativity performances and thoroughly enjoyed their enthusiastic singing which made us want to join in! We also absolutely loved the creativity and seamless transition of the Class 4 performance of their three different pantomimes, which made us laugh and we also loved being able to BOOOOO. However, nothing could exceed the excitement of our very own performance! We had the opportunity to show off our backdrop that we had created to reflect both the dingy sewers as well as the vibrant town of Hamelin. Our pantomime programs that we put together during our English lessons that showed our brilliantly different back stories of each character. Teachers and pupils from across the school commented on our enthusiasm and the tremendous amount of effort that had obviously been put in to learn our lines and movements. I was so tremendously proud of Class 3 and their hard work really shone through with their incredible delivery to parents on the day!  

Classes mixing 

Throughout the week we had the absolute privilege to host multiple classes. We have really enjoyed teaching the Foundation and Year 1 pupils how to make different Christmas cards. We also loved the opportunity to be a part of Class 4 as we created tree decorations from lollipop sticks. It has been so much fun being able to have different children with us and we have shown what a caring and kind class we really are.  

SNOW! 

With snow there is always fun, and we made the most of the opportunity we had. On Monday we all waited as Miss Reynolds lined us up so we could all run on the untouched snow together and we were allowed all the way up the field. We made snowmen, snow sculptures and generally had a lot of fun! On Thursday we were even given the opportunity to slide down the mound (if we were wearing waterproof trousers) like a toboggan, which was so exciting.  

I don’t know how we were able to cram so much fun into one week, but we have! 

With the pantomime fast approaching Class 3 have been avidly preparing for our much-anticipated performance (We cannot wait :D). We have been diligently learning our lines and creatively expressing them with additional movements when we have practiced on a real stage! We have been feeling like real actors and it has been so fun. We have made sure our show is full of audience participation so that our parents, friends, family and village neighbours enjoy it just as much as us! Class 3 have also designed, painted and glued our huge backdrop which started as a mammoth task but has developed into a piece of art we are all incredibly proud of! It will give the show a real sense of atmosphere. Seeing as it is such an anticipated performance, we thought we needed to make it just like the pantomimes we see each year, so…we have created our very own program which we have written information for during our English lessons this week. We have even created some beautiful tickets so that friends and family can be admitted to see our show. We are so looking forward to performing and we hope you are able to make it!  

Year 3 & 4 Dodgeball Festival  

On Thursday 1^st December, Class 3 travelled to The Warriner School to take part in a multi-school inclusive Dodgeball festival. The whole event was based around inclusivity and respect. All teams were encouraged to congratulate each other at the end of each match and they willingly and excitedly high fived and positively commented on each other’s performances. They not only showed off their fantastic Dodgeball skills (for some of them it was their first time playing Dodgeball EVER!), but they also demonstrated lots of teamwork, sportsmanship and honesty. The children had a great time and should be super proud of their efforts. Well done all, we were all so proud of how beautifully you represented the school! 

We have also enjoyed spending time at Forest School this week.

Shenington CofE Primary School’s baby ducks!

During Term 1 and some of Term 2 Class 3 have been host to our very own little family of ducks!  

Our journey initially started with a mixture of 6 duck and chicken eggs arriving at school. Class 3 placed these eggs in an incubator at the back of the classroom. We eagerly awaited the arrival of our new classmates, counting down on our calendar for their arrival. These initial eggs unfortunately did not hatch, but a helpful mum from our class provided us with a new incubator where we placed another 6 duck eggs. These eggs successfully produced our first baby duck! Our helpful parent cared for the newly hatched duckling, returning the duckling the next day as soon as it was ready. This new arrival soon became the most popular member of the school, receiving visits from all staff and classes! 

Class 3 decided to ask the school to vote on a name for our first duck which the School Council expertly organised. After ideas were taken and votes were counted the School Council revealed to the school that our first duck was to be named Lucky Duck.

On Friday 21^st October 2022, the last day of term 1, which also happened to be on our school Open day. Our next 3 ducklings were getting ready to be seen. This created quite an event for our parents who had the opportunity to odal over Lucky Duck and see the first cracks appearing on the three other little eggs. The whole school were very excited to see our next duckling hatch which happened to be on Big Gaz’s Birthday (who became the name’s sake for one of the lucky ducks). The first little duckling (Little Gaz) was to be shortly followed by two more little healthy ducklings (Donald and Bingo)  

The children have loved this valuable learning experience and have been learning about the Life Cycles of ducks and other animals in class. This experience was a real ‘confidence giver’ to those unused to handling and caring for animals. The unforgettably beautiful and utterly sweet-natured ducklings intrigued and inspired topics across the school and throughout the classes. Class 4 even borrowed Lucky Ducky during their Darwin project to look at her beautiful evolving beak and wings. I am sure the children will agree that there are not many sights guaranteed to melt the heart faster than newly hatched ducklings.  

Ducks love water from shortly after they hatch, so we had the opportunity to swim them for the first time in their lives in a suitable water container, which was fascinating to watch. We even created an ‘island’ in the middle of the classroom– perfect for sitting the whole class around in a circle to observe their antics! We saw them go from tentatively exploring to very quickly and confidently diving and whizzing about! We watched their natural instincts kick in and it was truly amazing and very moving to witness.  

Because of their robust and docile nature, the ducklings were well equipped for all the love they received from our class and the rest of the school! It was an amazing experience that I am sure the whole school won’t forget in a hurry.  

The ducks have been recently relocated to a local farm where they have their very own pond and chicken neighbours. 

Class 3 Curriculum

The Curriculum Overview provides an idea of the whole school approach to the curriculum, while the Class 3 Curriculum gives more detailed information of what is going on in Class 3 during the term. Further information can be found in the weekly newsletters, at parents evenings, open mornings or pop in to school and speak to the Class Teacher.