Welcome back

First day back well not quite for Karen, unluckily she is stuck in the sun of Corfu as her plane was cancelled.
We had an enormous box of coins to count in Numeracy. Before we counted we guessed how much money there was and Lauren's guess was closest. Everyone realised that the first task was to sort the coins out and place all £1 coins, 50ps etc together. Then we saw it was easier to put the £1 coins in piles of 10 to make these easier to count.
We had no P.E. today as nine children had no kit so apologies to those who brought in their kit. It was a pity as it was a wet lunchtime so it would have been nice to get some exercise.
In Literacy we looked at non-fiction books (information books) and saw that many of them have an index, glossary, contents page and diagrams. a diagram is a picture that shows how something works.
Our topic in Science is rocks and soils so this afternoon we found out what rocks we can name and listed things that are made from rock. When we finish this topic in two weeks time we will know a lot more!

Last day of half term

In Numeracy we drew 3-D shapes on special paper. This is our homework as well. We finished our work on Bill's New Frock with another cloze procedure exercise. Mr Greenwood and Karen have been very pleased with the more mature and sensible attitude of Year 3 so after singing we had an ice cream and watched part of Finding Nemo.
Next term we will be doing science work for the first four weeks. Two weeks learning about rocks and soils and two weeks learning about teeth and eating. In Literacy we will investigating information books so if you have spare time you can head down the library and look for information books about our science topics.

Yoruba photos published

The News shopper was published today and included the story of our Yoruba videoconferencing day together with a picture of a smiling Peace. Other photographs of the day can be seen by following the Yoruba link on the school website www.northwood.org.uk
We were in the computer suite for Numeracy and played the ancient Chinese game of tangram. In tangram you have various shapes that you must turn into pictures.
We practised the Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check method. We did really well and we were able to spell some difficult words. We made sure we looked at the "tricky bits" in words. With our French teacher we practised saying our numbers in French.

Bill's New Frock

In Anne Fines story, Bill's new frock, Bill wakes up one morning looks in the mirror and sees that he is wearing a frock. The book shows how people, who think he is a girl, now treat him differently. We discussed (carefully)a big problem. Which toilet would he go to. Most of us decided he would go to the boys toilet. We then did cloze procedure on the text (predicted missing words).
We used our polygons mind map to explore the properties of shapes. In our groups we were given a description of a shape. From the clues we had to the shapes. Try this one: what shape has no straight lines and no right angles? Peace made up this clue for a shape: this shape is in the circle family and has been squeezed?
We made some calligrams on computers. The calligram below was made by Reanne and Connor.

Future poems competition

We used our polygons mindmap in Numeracy to work out the properties of shapes. To look at the mind map click on the mind maps link to the right of this page. We found the words equilateral and quadrilateral real tongue twisters.
We made some future poems in Literacy for a competition being run by the library bus. Connor's poem is below.

Car of the Future
Car car travel far. Why?
Because I want to go to Planet tar
Why? Because I want to
And I'm out of petrol
Oh you are silly

In P.E. we did synchronised forward rolls and jumps. Courtney and Brogan did theirs exactly the same which looked fantastic.

Wow what a week!

We learnt the names of 2-D shapes. We learnt that a right angle is like an L shape where a horizontal and vertical line meet. We now know that a square is special because all four sides are the same length. A square has four right angles.
In Literacy we used adjectives to describe rooms in houses. We need to describe our settings so a reader can picture the story. For topic work we made stories in groups using Indian hasthas.
At celebration assembly everyone in Year 3 was placed in the good book for their fantastic effort on Tuesday, sharing the culture of Yoruba.
Mind maps of our Victorian work are now on the school web site. Click on the Year 3 door or on the link to the right of this page.

Indian hasthas

Today we explored symmetry. We looked at horizontal, vertical and diagonal symmetry (diagonal was the hardest). We used cloze procedure in Literacy. This is where words are missing from the text. We had to guess what the missing words might be. We came up with many different words but as long as they made sense they were correct.
When we looked on the web site we saw some photos taken on our Yoruba day.
In the afternoon we watched some Indian hasthas (hand dances). We were able to guess what animal the dancer was pretending to be. We then used our hands to pretend to be different animals.

Yoruba day

We showed other schools in England, by videoconferencing, our work on Yoruba. We taught them to sing and perform a Nigerian song. We then performed a traditional Yoruba tale. The children showed them how to say hello in different ways. Some children wore Yoruba clothes and danced in them . The Yoruba children explained the meanings of their names. When we demonstrated the dance we looked up at the big screen and saw the other children taking part . A photographer came and took some pictures of the children. These photos will be in the Newshopper next Wednesday.

Poetry Day

To celebrate National poetry day in literacy we made a magnet poem by mixing up words about games. At assembly we listened to a poem and then Year 6 performed a rap poem. In Numeracy we answered time questions about Television programmes. In the afternoon we practised our Nigerian song and listened and acted out a Yoruban tale about why a Toroise has a shell and hides inside when people come near.

Bonjour

We used Jelly James to practise telling the time. In Literacy we added speech marks to sentences. In the afternoon we had our French teacher who taught us the French sounds and showed us actions for each sound. Some children from Year 4 taught us a Nigerian song. We learnt the Nigerian and English words and the actions that go with the words.

Memories of Yoruba

Can we tell the time to 5 minutes? That is our aim for Year 3. We practised telling the time this morning and we are getting much better. In Literacy we wrote a story about a bully and used adjectives to describe the characters. Our topic this week is Yoruba. Ten of our children are from Nigeria. Children shared their memories of their life in Nigeria. They said that if children were late for school that they would be hit with a big stick. The children have seen whole families who lived on the streets and had no food or shoes. To find out more about yoruba please visit our web site www.northwood.org.uk

Florence Nightingale

Lesley from the National Portrait Gallery told us about the life of Florence Nightingale. She got her name from the place she was born, Florence in Italy. She was a nurse who wanted to help soldiers who were fighting in the Crimean War. She was called the Lady of the lamp because at night she would walk the wards with her lamp. The soldiers would touch the shadows and say "God bless you." She had a pet Owl that she got from her trip to Greece. It has been told that she would not let Mary Seacole help her look after the soldiers because she was black.

Mary Seacole

The National Portrait Gallery used portraits to tell us the story of Mary Seacole. She was a black nurse born in Jamaica. She wanted to help injured soldiers fighting in the Crimean War. Florence Nightingale refused her help, some people say because she was black. In her protrait we saw three medals that she won. She was voted the most important black person.

Thomas Crapper

Last week our topic work was about the Victorians. We learned about the lives of three famous victorians using videoconferencing.
Our first videoconference was with Thomas Crapper, a plumber who was one of the first makers of a flush toilet. In early victorian times many people would throw their "waste" into the street. A lot of waste ended up in the Thames and it became known as the big stink. In the slums a whole street would share the same toilet. The toilet would be emptied at night by a nightman. Young children sometimes worked as Toshers. They would use a shovel and sticks to clear sewers if they were blocked with muck.