A wild week!

What a wild and exciting week we’ve had here in year 3!

On Monday Mrs Thomas was in with us, and we had a great time getting near the end of finishing off our rainforest dioramas – they’re looking fab!

From Tuesday, Mrs Gates has been with us and we have started the tough topic of using a column method to subtract – some of us are even moving onto exchanging to help us! We have been working really hard on this – and also on remembering our unbreakable maths laws, including: one number per box, lining up digits of the same value in the correct column and always starting adding or subtracting with the ones column – we’re getting really good at this now, and presentation and progress in books is great to see!

In English this week we have begun looking at poetry about rainforest animals – we have read the book ‘Rainforest Animals’ by Paul Hess. We have learnt some lines off by heart and performed them for the rest of the class. Next week, we are going to be writing our own poems about rainforest animals, and will be publishing them into our own class poetry book!

Performing poetry

On Wednesday, we went to Knowsley Safari Park – and what a wonderful day of weather we had!! Thankfully, we all had our coats – and lots of wellies – to keep us dry! The journey even as far as J36 was interesting, with lots of deep puddles for the bus to drive through, so we were a little late arriving. However, our guide Sue was ready for us and we had a fantastic classroom session learning all about different rainforest animals and their habitats. We learnt which layers of the rainforest each of the animals lived in and how they were adapted to that environment. Sue was really impressed at our knowledge of the layers of the rainforest, and that we know all about where rainforests are located around the world – near the Equator, most often between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn!

After the classroom session, we went to the gift shop for some real life maths – it was great fun working out which items we could buy with our money! Then, it was off for lunch and to see the sea lion display! The sea lions were called Roger and Arthur – and they had been trained to do lots of tricks! The could balance balls on their noses, clap, demonstrate how they’re different from seals (and do great impressions of seals), eat loads of fish and also hit a ball that was hanging really high out of the water – what fabulous animals!

After lunch, it was the birds of prey – raptors – and at least we were indoors again because of the weather! We got to see different species from owls to vultures (who only eat dead things because they are scavengers!).

Finally, we went on the safari drive. We knew that we needed to get back to school ASAP as we’d had a call saying all the roads were shut and people were being send home, so we rushed round with Sue showing us all the animals. Lots of the animals were hiding out of the rain, but we did see lots of deer, antelope, camels, lions, baboons – and even a baby Rhino! We got stuck in the lion’s enclosure for a few minutes because one of the lionesses decided to stand in the middle of the road and hold up all the traffic – we think she’d spotted a tasty snack in one of the cars! After that, we said goodbye to Sue and Mrs Gates got us all an ice lolly from the shop – just the weather for it! Thankfully, we managed to get back to school with only a few floods on the road – although it was exciting driving near the river Lune and seeing it so high and flooded across the fields! We managed to get home in the end!

Thursday and Friday have been back hard at work – although Friday morning there was a surprise for us all in class – Mrs Gill, one of our governors, brought her pet snake in for a visit! We learnt so much from her about Reggie – the lovely corn snake. We really enjoyed meeting Reggie, and we spent some time on Friday writing some facts that we learnt about snakes in the morning. A really huge thank you to Mrs Gill for coming and sharing all of her fantastic snake knowledge with us, and also to Reggie for coming and being so good for us!

Next week:

Everyday – Children need to have their planners in school each day so we can record when they are reading with us. Please mark in when you have read at home or when you have discussed the children’s books with them. For another copy of example questions, please ask Mrs Gates or Mrs Thomas.

Wednesday – Spellings – Blue spelling books required.

• After school Math’s evening – school hall. This meeting is for parents to go through the school’s approach to mathematics. Mr Jones and Mr Bromley will be demonstrating some of our calculation policy as well as looking at the progression between year groups.

Thursday – Outdoor PE. This week, Year 3 are going to be outside all afternoon (1-3pm) playing a tag rugby inter-house competition with Danny. They will be on the field come rain or shine. Please can you ensure children have suitable clothing and footwear – it is likely to be cold and muddy!

• Yellow homework due – needs to be in on a Thursday so it can be marked that evening ready to be sent home on a Friday. We have looked at maths homework and are using this now as a consolidation of the work covered in class that week, so nothing should be new to the children. Please encourage your children to ask Mrs Gates at the beginning of the week if they would like some help rather than waiting until Thursday afternoon! For handwriting – children should complete a full line of each of the spelling words to help practice both the spelling and the letter formation in cursive. Tracing over the given example to help with the letter forms can help before having a go on their own.

Friday – End of term. We will try to ensure PE kits etc are sent home on Thursday so that they aren’t left in school over the half term.

Have a fantastic holiday!