As some of you may be aware the Year 3 boys have this week been doing their ESB’s (English Speaking Board) exams.  This requires them to stand in front of the class and an examiner to read a passage from a book or a poem that they have rehearsed.  In preparation for this our next set of show and tells will be on the same theme.  You can either read a poem or a short section of a book lasting approximately 3-5 minutes.  You do not need to learn the piece off by heart but you will be expected to rehears the reading, remembering to use expression where possible.  Your day for show and tell next half term is included in your reading record.

The picture below is what we learnt as a class during our space topic, we even learnt how the different pieces of knowledge are connected.  I think you’ll agree you have crammed a lot of learning into a few weeks using our class time and homework grid.

This week in maths we are looking at different ways of sorting information.  So far we have looked at Venn diagrams which we also used in our science lesson.  Here are some pictures of us in maths sorting shapes into Venn diagrams.  Why not use Mathletics and see if you can find some games to test your new skills. We are looking at Carroll diagrams in the next few days.

The sunflower seeds we planted last week have certainly shot up in the last few days.  We have been looking after them really well by ensuring they have lots of natural light and plenty of water.  We will be sending them home at the end of next week so it will be your turn to have green fingers!

 

This week in art we had a go at painting our solar system.  We talked about the different colours that the planets appear to be and how we can mix different colours up to make these.  We also had to use our knowledge of the structure of the solar system to put the planets in the right order.  Some of us even included other space bodies such as asteroids, comets and even black holes.  Although thankfully there are none in our solar system.

This week we began an experiment in which we are testing the conditions that sunflowers like to grow in best of all.  The boys each planted a seed in a pot with soil , which we will water regularly and are in natural light.  However I planted one seed which we will not water, one that now lives in the dark and another that is in the light, gets watered but is not in soil.  By doing this we hope to discover the best conditions for plants to grow in.  Keep up to date on their progress over the coming weeks on our blog.

This week in our history lesson we looked at how space travel has changed over time, from the first rockets to touch the edge of space to how in the future the boys could be taking a holiday in space as simply as though they were going to Spain.  We also touched on the Moon landings and next week we will be focusing on this more closely.  We briefly looked at a website that has lots of photos, videos and information about the Apollo 11 mission.  Many of the boys were fascinated so here it is again in case they feel inspired this week and want to take a ‘small step’ towards finding out more:

http://wechoosethemoon.org/ 

We spent one afternoon this week building the solar system in the playground.  We had the Sun and all the planets represented by various objects, Earth was a drawing pin, Venus a pin head, Pluto a pencil dot and Saturn a cricket ball.  We developed our measuring skills as well as deepening our understanding of the structure of the solar system, especially our appreciation of how far away some of the gas giants are and the variety of sizes the planets come in.