ST MARY'S CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL
St AUGUSTINE's Class (Year 3) - 2023/2024
Welcome to Year 3!
We hope you enjoy looking at our class page. This is where you will find all of the useful details about the year including curriculum information, important dates, and a diary of our learning.
Meet the team...
Miss Blackwell (Class Teacher)
Anabelle (Teaching Assistant)
Miss Eatherington (Wednesday PM)
PE Days
Tuesday and Wednesday. Please wear PE kits to school. No earrings (please!)
Equipment
The children are not required to bring any stationary or particulary equipment to school. If the children do choose to bring anything, please ensure they are aware that it is their responsibility to keep it safe.
Reading/Homework
Reading books will be changed on a Monday.
Please ensure you are reading with your child at least 3-5 times a week. This should be recorded in their yellow reading records.
Our Class Blog 2023-2024
We have been leading an enquiry into what family means to us. We have considered Catholic values such as love, trust, and peace. We explored different kinds of family, including our immediate family, church family, school family, and all other types of family that matter to us. We really enjoyed making a tally chart of the different countries our family come from and making this final piece to demonstrate what we have learned.
October 2022 - Cave Models
Last term the children were asked to make a cave model linked to our topic of the Stone Age to Iron Age. I was not expecting such wonderfully detailed projects! Have a look at our creative cave models.
Look what we did when we were in Year 2 - 2021/2022
June 2022
Year 2 have been learning about Grace Darling in history and her life living on a lighthouse with her family. We identified features of a lighthouse and in DT we decided to make our own 3D versions.
Term 4- Class trip to the nature reserve
St Elizabeth children are awesome habitat explorers! It is a joy to see these children so engaged, so knowledgeable and so considerate of the living things in the woodland habitat at Three Brooks Nature Reserve. We found woodlice, earthworms, wild garlic, cow parsley, ancient oaks and even a centipede! We spotted spiders’ webs, birds’ nests and what we think were badger footprints. It’s amazing what you can find in the woods.
Term 4- History.
We looked carefully at the geographical features of present day London. We discussed how many of the natural geographical features probably had existed in the past too, in London in 1666, like the sky, the River Thames and the trees and grass. However, the human geographical features in the present were nothing like the past.
Lastly, we came together and compared our Past and Present pictures. We could find evidence in the pictures to prove when it belonged.
Term 4 Art- Exploring colour mixing.
Japanese Food Tasting!!
Term 3 Science-
We’re learning about living things in Science this term. We went on a Science hunt around our classroom and outdoors to find as many items as possible. Then we classified them into: Living/Alive, Dead/Not Living, Never Alive. We were amazed at the list we made in our Class Science Book.
Term 3 English
We’re focusing on character descriptions this term in English!
We’ve started reading The Twits by Roald Dahl, and we loved the descriptions of the hairy-faced Mr and Mrs Twit. We made our own hairy-faced characters, some with ‘revolting tufts of hair sprouting’ from all sorts of places!
Term 3-
In Computing Year 2 have been learning about Data Handling how to create a flow chart.
Key Stage 1 Christmas Play- Strictly Nativity
Computing Term 2
On Thursday, we did so much Computing – we loved it!
We learned how to log on, using Capital letters and the delete key. We learned how to use a mouse to open a folder and application, how to drag and select items and how to draw pictures accurately. We began to learn how to save a file with a filename (this one takes a bit of practice as there are a lot of steps!) Finally we learned how to close all the applications safely and shut down the computer.
We realised there a lot of computers around us: our watches, the smoke alarm, the thermostat, Speedy’s light and heater – lots of small machines that follow instructions that we set them. In the afternoon, we practised using iPads to log on to our Times Tables Rockstars accounts. It was great fun!
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Science Term 2
In Science this term, we are learning about our Brilliant Bodies, and how to keep them healthy. We are doing an investigation about keeping our teeth healthy. Kavya, Dawid and Ted have kindly lent us their lovely white, shiny, healthy teeth. We are testing the effects of 4 different drinks on the teeth over 2 weeks: Coke, Water, Milk and Fruit Juice. We have already made some predictions about what will happen:
Ethan: I think all the teeth will change colour.
Naty: I think the teeth in the Coke will be black and broken at the end. Coke is fizzy.
Kavin: I think the teeth in the water will stay shiny and white because water is healthy for us.
Lilly: I think the teeth in the milk will be the whitest because milk is good for children, and it is a white drink.
Logan: I think the fruit juice is healthy for teeth because fruit is good for us.
Every 2 days, we will observe the teeth and see what changes have happened. We will record these changes in our Class Science Book. At the end of 2 weeks, we will look at our results, and decide our conclusion: which are the healthiest and unhealthiest drinks for our teeth and why.
Ask us how our investigation is going!
Class Reward
St Elizabeth Class have filled their marble jar yet again! This time, they voted for a giant game of football, so they brought in their boots, goalie gloves, jerseys and shin pads and prepared for the match! Miss Molloy was referee, and we had a monster game. Ethan made a great save, Maya was magic in defence and Kavin made some great passes. The dribbling and shooting skills were excellent, but so were the defensive skills – so much so, that the final score was nil all!
Children who weren’t keen to play football enjoyed making up rainbow tracks with the markers and playing with the parachute in the beautiful winter sunshine. What a lovely day to play outside!
In English this term, our quality text is Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.
We had our own experience of losing something, when we arrived into class one morning to find that Jigsaw Jo was nowhere to be found!
We searched the classroom, outside, in the dinner hall, up along the corridors and finally, we found her sitting in the library enjoying some books. Phew!
We had to recount to lots of people along the way what had happened and ask for their help.
We also talked about how losing something precious made us feel:
Worried - Bertha
Upset – Melisa
Sad - Oliver
Anxious - Ted
Determined to find her – Erik
It helped us to understand how the characters in the book felt, when we came to read it as a class.
Author Visit November 2021
Steve Gunning and Chris Wheeler came in to talk to us about their new book, ‘Santa’s Secret Agents’. It was so interesting to hear how it had taken them 4 years to write and publish the book, from start to finish. We really enjoyed reading it with them and asking them lots of questions. At the end of the visit, lots of children thought that they might like to become authors or illustrators when they grow up too. Thank you for visiting us and telling us all about your fascinating jobs!
November 2021
In Anti-Bullying Week this term, we did lots of activities to learn how important ‘one kind word’ can be. We made a Chain of Kindness. Every time somebody noticed somebody using a kind word or making a kind action to another person, they wrote it down on a link. We joined all the links together to make a chain of kindness. Miss Molloy said she was amazed because she only expected 4 or 5 links each day, but after just the first day, the class had about 50 links already! What a kind class of children we are! We were amazed to discover how easy it was to be kind, how good it felt inside to do kind things, and how kindness was contagious: once it started, it spread, like a good Coronavirus!!
Friday 17th September 2021 - Speedy, the Year 2 Snail!
We have a new class pet in St Elizabeth’s Class: Speedy, our Giant African Land Snail! He is about 15 cm long, weighs about 300g and lives in a tank under our Science Display. We took him our in class and looked at him very closely. We love our new pet!
We are doing a science investigation over the next few weeks to answer the question: What are Speedy’s favourite foods? We are feeding him lots of different foods and observing him closely to see which foods he prefers. So far, courgette is a winner! Do you have any interesting vegetables or fruits at home that Speedy could try? Bring them into class!
Tuesday 14th September 2021 - Our fantastic Flight Day
On Tuesday 14th September, St Elizabeth’s Class had their Flight Day! To celebrate and learn about our topic this term, the History of Flight, we all dressed up and did lots of fun Topic and Design Technology activities for a whole day.
The costumes were so imaginative: Theo was a pilot, Kavya was a rocket, Lilly was Mrs Butterfly and Ollie was a superhero! We introduced our different characters to the class and then embarked on our first flight mission of the day – to design and make our own flying machines.
In our flight team pairs, we designed a plan for our flying machines, labelling all the parts and making a list of the tools and materials we would need. Then we used all the junk modelling Miss Molloy had brought in to build our fabulous flying machines.
It was amazing to see all the team work, problem-solving and original ideas. They all met the success criteria: to hang, unaided, from our flight line. What brilliant inventors St Elizabeth’s Class are!
After lunch, we really enjoyed our class novel: Sophie takes to the Sky, all about the first balloon rides in France over 2 hundred years ago.
Then we decided to emulate the Wright brothers and make our own paper airplanes. There were lots of instructions to follow and we needed strong fingers to crease our paper. We brought them outside to test them and were thrilled to see them glide through the air. We even used trundle wheels to measure their flight distances.
We loved Flight day in Year 2!