National Portrait Gallery visit

Today was our trip to the Gallery.

Gallery tomorrow

In numeracy we had to answer subtraction problems. Children chose the best way to answer the problems. Was it best to count on, use column subtraction or a number line?
In Literacy we edited our own work, it was difficult to find our own mistakes. We then looked at our tenses.
Tomorrow we are going to the National Portrait Gallery so we planned our trip, and considered good behaviour for trains and the gallery. We then thought about ways to ensure that we would be kept safe.

Happy Christmas from Australia

Read all about it

In the afternoon we went into our topic groups and started writing stories for the next edition of Northwood News. We will have articles about our China, portrait Gallery and Deal or no deal videoconferences.
we started our new topic in Literacy "Instruction". We noticed that many instructions start with imperative verbs (like orders). We placed instructions in order for making beans and toast and added diagrams to help with any tricky bits.

Merry Christmas from Taiwan and Russia

A great big thank you and Merry Christmas from our friends in Taiwan and Russia. The cards they sent were absolutely fantastic.
In Literacy we researched and wrote about Christmas traditions in England. This information will be sent and used in our videoconferences with our American schools.

Tudor writing

How easy is it to learn about the Tudors from writing from Tudor times? It was very difficult as the writing was hard to read and some of the wrds were unusual and spelt differently. Their were very few rules to spelling so people spelt words how they thought they should be spelt.
We then looked at Tudor letters and wrote rules that we would make if we were king.

Build a house

Thank you to everyone who brought in a cardboard box. We used these to start to make our Tudor houses. It was difficult but we followed the instructions carefully and they were very good. We will soon have our very own Tudor village or maybe town.

Portrait Detectives

We became portrait detectives in the afternoon trying to answer clues about Tudor portraits. This was difficult but there were some great answers. In Literacy we wrote information reports based on information from our National Portrait Gallery videoconference. Keenan produced a fantastic report using beautiful joined handwriting and was placed in the good book.

Dolapo the poet

At assembly it was announced that a Northwood child had won a poem competition run by the Mobile Library. The winner would receive a Horrible History annual. Dolapo went wow to the person next to her not realising that her name was going to be called out. So congratulations to Dolapo.
Also at assembly all the children in Year 2 received a certificate from China for their videoconference.
In Numeracy there was some fantastic work on multiplying using grids. Some children were working out sums like 230 x 46.
We wrote about a Tudor painting in Literacy using the information we learned in yesterday's videoconference.
we thought, in the afternoon, about how King Henry Vlll would spend his day.

Tudor Videoconference

An expert from the national Portrait Gallery taught us about the Tudors using portraits. We learned so much information and asked excellent questions.
We came in late today because Year 6 were taking their SATS tests. We finished off the bleep test and then wrote a report about Henry Tudor.

Happy Christmas America

We opened two parcels from America which contained Christmas cards from America. In the afternoon we finished off our Christmas cards .
In the morning we wrote about Florence Nightingale and learned how to do the grid method of multiplication on our whiteboards.

Tudor research

In Numeracy we answered statements about odd and even numbers. we had to prove if the statements were true or false. Three children acted as reporters and went to watch Year 2 videoconference with China. The rest of the class used the Internet and books to research the Tudors and wrote information they found in their PowerPoints.

More bleep test

Our task in Numeracy was to add consecutive numbers to get totals of 1 to 20. We were unable to get the totals of 8 or 16 and think this is impossible. We found that it was much harder to find the even number totals.
We had some more excellent runs in the bleep test.

Welcome back

First day back of a new term. Yesterday the teachers went on a course about how to use music in the classroom. Today we saw the result, we skied and danced to different music.
In Numeracy we had had to count up in steps. We took it in turns working with a partner. One counted up in steps while the other checked on a calculator.
We looked at the Beaufort wind scale as our new topic is Information texts and our new afternoon topic is History and the Tudors.

Read all about it

In Numeracy we carried on with our work of finding fractions of numbers. We are now much better at this, this will be our Numeracy homework as well. In Literacy we were writing the headlines and stories for our newspaper.
We managed to finish our headlines and stories just in time for the newspaper to be given out at home time.

Bleep test

In PE half the class completed the Bleep Test. This is where children have to run between two markers before the next bleep. As the children get more tired the bleeps speed up. The children did really well with Brogan and Titi getting really good scores.

Caribbean visit

After Numeracy work on parts of fractions we went into the hall with Year 3 for a drama workshop about the Caribbean. All the children joined in with the dancing, singing and playing drums. It was great when children were swallowed by the big snake and had to be helped out by other children.
In the computer suite we thought about where we would like to travel to in the world.

Teachers TV

Today a film crew came and filmed our Numeracy lesson on decimals. The three crew were very friendly and were in the classroom filming for nearly two hours. The completed film will hopefully be shown early next year and will be about six minutes. The crew were very impressed with the children and of course Karen. When the film is completed everyone will get a copy on CD.

Times table challenge

We have set ourselves a very tough target. By the end of next week 3/4 of the children will know their tables up to 10 x 10. if we succeed we will get a big treat. Good luck everybody. In numeracy we combined coordinates and shape knowledge to solve questions. We investigated on the Internet information about Hinduism, different children had different items to research.

Cuptastic!

This morning we demonstrated cup stacking to primary and secondary schools all over London. Year 4 were fantastic speaking loudly and clearly. It was great to see people on the big screen cup stacking with us. We also saw other conferences including children using sign langauge, french children talking about cooking, and we listened to a soldier from the trenches of World War 1.

Fantastic children

We got a letter today about our videoconference with teachers in Bromley. It said:

Your pupils were outstanding in their contributions, I had many comments from the Teaching staff involved in the VC meet and they commented on how well the class behaved and how great they were. You certainly have a class of VC Gurus!!

So well done Year 4. As there was no singing on Friday afternoon we practised our cup stacking for Tuesday's London Live. We finished off our poems and began writing these on plain paper so they can be sent off for the competition.
IN Numeracy we had some word problems about length. These are always difficult. We looked at:

1. crossing out information that wasn't important
2. circling the numbers that we need to use
3. working out what operation we need to carry out
4. remember to include units in our answer (if needed)

Joined handwriting

It was National Poetry Day today. All the children wrote a poem about "myself" that will be entered into the Mobile library competition with a top prize of a £20 book voucher.
There were many different styles of poems chosen. Children wrote acrostics, rhyming couplets and poems with powerful language and repeating patterns.
What was really impressive was the fanatstic joined handwriting that everyone did.
In the afternoon we studied a spooky picture and thought about the sounds that could go with the picture. We then listened to a song, made about the picture, and in groups thought of souns that the group could add. The result was really good.

Newsround

We worked in groups today to write newspaper stories. We made up headlines and then wrote a report that answered the questions: who, what, where, when and why. In Numeracy we estimated and then measured the length of objects in the classroom.
We started our music topic in the afternoon where we listen to music and picture what is happening.

25 teachers

Well done to all the children for performing and teaching so well in our videoconference to teachers from Bromley. It was fantastic when we demonstrated Tia Chi and the teachers stood up and joined in. Everyone used big strong voices which made sure it was a success.

Read all about it

Yesterday we planned our newspapers, today we made our newspapers using microsoft word. We made and edited text boxes, inserted pictures and clip art, chose and changed fonts and many other skills.
There is a lot of interest from children to start a school newspaper. Watch this space!

Enthusiastically, the children used adverbs

There were some excellent examples of sentences starting with adverbs.
Cautiously, he opened the box.
Well done for some fantastic sentences.
Earlier we combined Numeracy and Literacy using poems to describe 3-D shapes.
In the afternoon we went into groups and designed our own newspapers.

Good luck Jason

We earned our stacker cups treat by lining up sensibly, not talking in class and completing our PACT books. Jason bought everyone some crisps and a drink as this was his last day at Northwood as he is moving to Norwich. I asked jason if he could let us know how things are going. He said that he would contact us via this blog so I hope you are reading this Jason.

Titi and Jesse top runners

To help with our science topic in P.E. all the children tested how long they could run using the 'beep test'. All the children did their best and Titi and jesse were just fantastic and were able to keep running and running. Children thought about why they had to stop runnng. Many children felt their legs were getting tired and heavy. Many could feel their heart beating fast and were out of breath. During science we talked about the exercise and did some assessment tasks to see how mch we leaned about movement and skeletons.
We practised our column addition and there was some very good work completed.

Well done shipmates

Today was pirates day and well done for Thomas who wore his pirates hat, hook and patch. We spent a few minutes thinking about how pirates speak and the vocabualry they use.
In numeracy we practised adding three or four small numbers and saw that changing the order can make the sum much easier.
In Literacy we started our new class book 'Double act' by Jacqueline Wilson. We compared the identical twins who had very different personalties.
Afternoon with Mrs Iqbal we started our work on muscles.

A camera, screwdriver and a phone

In Literacy we had to introduce a character by describing how they picked a screwdriver, camera and a phone. Amy produced a fantastic example which she read out to the class and for which she was put in the good book.
In Numeracy we used number cards to generate small numbers that we added together. We changed the order of the numbers to make the sums easier.
How many bones in your body?
How many bones in your hand?
These were some of the questions we answered in science.
We also measured different bones in our body to see how simlar our bodies are.
If you have the same site feet as another child will you have the same length of forearm?

Hong Kong

We had a fantasic videoconference with Hink Kong this morning. The kindergarten (nursery) children told us about Hong Kong and demonstrated Tia Chi. They showed us how to do the 'watermelon' and the 'crane' we joined in the movments with them. It was amazing to share experiences with children thousands of miles away.
We then told them about London and gave a presentation about the London Eye, Big ben, Tower bridge and English food. The videoconference was a great success. Our Chinese host Chun Bong was fantastic and said that this was the first international videoconference of young children in Hong Kong.
The homework was to write about the videoconference.
Then it was back to normal and some fantastic column addition sums by everyone. Some children moved onto adding three or four numbers. As long as we kept our numbers in the correct columns we were able to answer some very big sums.
It was also a day to say goodbye to Ian. His family are moving to Manchester and we will all miss him.

Origami

We spent a lot of the day preparing for our Hong Kong videoconference tomorrow. In pairs we made origami models of Tower Bridge and Big Ben. They were difficult and fiddly but there were some very good models.
We practised our presentation tomorrow and learned a lot about London and our traditions.

Class orchestra

Well done to the whole class for some excellent column addition especially reanne who worked out some very difficult sums. In Literacy we did carried out some research about famous London landmarks to prepare for our videoconference with Hong Kong on Friday. We put the information inside PowerPoint slideshows.
In the afternoon we listen to music and tried to work out what instrument accompanied the music. we then split into three groups and each group sung an ostinato. Different children had a go at being the conductor.

Sports day

In the morning we practised for Sports Day and chose the children for the different races.
At 10.30 the whole school watched and took part in Sports day with parents watching. There were three events: running, obstacle race and egg and spoon race. Every had a good time and Year 3's behaviour was fantastic.
In the afternoon we painted our salt dough football kits.

Greenwich Park

We had a fantastic day at Greenwich Park. We travelled there by train from Abbey Wood to Maze Hill. Most of the boys played football all day with Mr G. When it rained we danced to the Cha Cha Slide and some of Year 4 joined in.
A big thank you to Angie and karen for all of their help.

Letter about Greenwich

We spent a large part of the morning organising our trip to Greenwich Park. We discussed what we needed and then every child wrote their own letter to their parents. Even Karen wrote a letter to her mum.
In the afternoon it was salt dough time where we made football kits. These now need to be painted.

Famous people

In the morning we wrote letters to Year 2 children to tell them what it is like being a Year 3. Our letters were friendly and welcoming as we do not want the children to worry about going into Year 3. we also had a visit from Miss dean who talked to some of the children about our Visual Literacy Project.
In French we watched a video on Espresso which showed famous people from different countries. We had to identify the celebrities and their nationality and then try to translate this information from French to English.

Triple celebration

Today was Dolapo's and Mr Greenwood's birthday and American Independence day. Our friends from Beaver Falls, New York had sent us a pot of maple syrup which we had in the afternoon with waffles. We also found some information about Independence Day.
In the morning we placed fractions on a number line.

Triple celebration

Today was Dolapo's and Mr Greenwood's birthday and American Independence day. Our friends from Beaver Falls, New York had sent us a pot of maple syrup which we had in the afternoon with waffles. We also found some information about Independence Day.
In the morning we placed fractions on a number line.

Moving mechanisms

In the morning we started our Numeracy and Literacy topics for the week. In our fraction topic had to identify fractions of shapes and then in Literacy we looked at a variety of letters. we saw that their are common ways to set out letters.
We got into pairs in the afternoon and after a demonstration of pneumatics by Mr Greenwood and Karen we designed mechanisms that move using syringes.

Goodbye Peace

A very special day today as it was the last day for Peace and Precious at Northwood school. Their family has moved house so they are starting at Slade Green school on Monday. We hope that they will bth come to our Greenwich trip next week. As it was her last afternoon Peace asked if she could pick what we could do for the last bit of the afternoon. She said she would bring in her favourite film 'Mary Poppins' What could be better a whole afternoon singing 'chi chimanee' and 'supercali' . It's a pity peace forgot to bring in the video. We watched 'The iron giant' instead and had an ice cream. The children all wrote a message and drew a picture for Peace.

Sponsored Sports

All the children took part today in a sponsored sports day. In the morning Year 3 children joined Key Stage 1 children to take part in a range of sports. They took part in a penalty competition and a mini football tournament. They also took part in different relay games such as hopping, skipping and football skills.
In the afternoon they were spectators as Years 4, 5 and 6 took part in the same events.

Mrs back to front

We joined the infants in the morning to watch Mrs Back to Front. She did everything the wrong way which was very confusing but also very funny. This entertainment was provided by the Mobile Library Service to thank Infant children for being so sensible on the library bus.
We used the back to front idea as a prompt for a story in Literacy. We read the start of Back to Front Benjy and then wrote our own stories.

Calling America

We spoke to America this afternoon. The American children didn't know where we were. We read out clues and they had to work out where we were speaking from. They were very confused about our clue "We live close to some beefeaters." One of their children told us about maple syrup (it is made close to their school, Beaver hills, New York). Their principal also spoke to us. She is a Native American and wore her traditional clothes. Her Indian name was "one who wanders".
We saw a theatre company in the morning who taught us about recycling. In Numeracy we had to work out if angles were bigger than right angles, smaller than right angles or right angles.
We also had a game of rounders so it was a very busy day.

Blowing Bubbles

In the afternoon we use wire and paper funnels to try and make the largest bubbles. For numeracy we drew grids in our books. One axis we labelled with letters and the other one we labelled with numbers. We used out rhyme "Along the corridor and up the stairs" to work out which coordinate to use first.
In literacy we edited our Limericks.

Nepicar farm

Today we had a visit from Nepicar farm. We saw and stroked ducks, sheep, chicken and guinea pigs and learned about these animals.

Lovely Pizza

We all made our pizzas today. They were really great, we were going to bring some home for our parents but they were just too nice. While a third of the class made pizzas the rest of us took part in an e-mail detectives investigation where we learned how to use e-mail safely. In the afternoon we tried speed stack. This improves our coordiantion and gets both sides of our brians working together.

Lovely Pizza

We all made our pizzas today. They were really great, we were going to bring some home for our parents but they were just too nice. While a third of the class made pizzas the rest of us took part in an e-mail detectives investigation where we learned how to use e-mail safely. In the afternoon we tried speed stack. This improves our coordiantion and gets both sides of our brians working together.

Limericks

We had great fun writing limericks today. We might put some of the best ones on the web site. We added more information to our World Cup Wiki. In Numeracy we tackled some more measurement questions.
In French we worked on the French names for the World Cup countries. We finished our busy day by palnning our pizza.

Storyteller visit

A fantastic start to the day. Every class spent an hous with some visiting storytellers/musicians. Wonderful music and wonderful stories.
Those children who had their P.E. kit had a great game of rounders and were starting to work out the tactics of the game.
We planned what pizza we were going to make and made a list of the ingredients.

World Cup wiki

We started today adding information on our World Cup wiki. A wiki is an online encyclopaedia that peolple work together to write. Today Year 3 started to find out information about the countries playing in the World Cup and entered this information on the wiki. You can find the wiki on the world cup page on the Northwood site.
In Numeracy we tackled some difficult word problems. We will return to these tomorrow and Wednesday.
Our topic this week is designing and making pizzas. We are oping to make and eat our pizzas on Thursday.

Videoconferencing - Tudor sailor

In numeracy we did a variety of activities on capacity. We then had a videoconference with 'Dan Pew' a Tudor seaman. He told us how sailors were punished and how he was 'press ganged' forced to join the ship's crew. Some fantastic questions were asked and some great listening.

Charlton visit

We had a Charlton day today with each class having a session to practise their close control skills. We played lots of games and tried skills that we can try at home.

We carried on working on our Flat Stanley in space stories.

In the afternoon we had a philosphy lesson and discussed the 'miracles of Jesus'.

Videoconferencing

A very busy day today. We spent the morning finding out some information about Isembard Kingdom Brunel. Then we had a videoconference with the National Maritime Museum and spoke to "Mr Brunel." He was a very determined man and built railways, gigantic ships and enormous bridges. He often "Just because it has never been done before, doesn't mean that it can't be done." This led to a discussion about volcanoes. Can anyone explain why we have volcanoes?

In the afternoon we videoconferenced with a school but we didn't know where the school was. They gave us clues and we gave them clues to find out where the schools were. It turned out that the school was in Bexleyheath (St Josephs Primary School) Both classes enjoyed solving the clues and working out where the other children were from.

Moodle discussion

We did some more work on column subtraction and nearly all of us can do them now. In Literacy we used the Moodle to take part in forums. the forums included: How can we improve our handwriting? How can we learn our tables? Ideas for Flat Stanley
In the afternoon we had a visitors who told us about safety around pets. This was followed by French. Wow! What a day!
Thanks for your comments Dolapo.

Football Stanley

We decided today to send out Football Stanley's to schools around the world from countries taking part in the world cup. We drew some Football Stanley's and will hopefully send these to other countries.

Flat Stanley

In Numeracy we started work on column subtraction. We will have more practise tomorrow but most children found this method quite easy.
We read more of Flat Stanley in Literacy and wrote about Flat Stanley going to school. The story is really exciting. We maybe writing to schools around the world sending Flat Stanleys. One idea is to send Stanleys with football to all the countries taking part in the world cup.
We use 2sequence to make music in the afternoon. We included an ostinato and and tried to write music to tell a Flat Stanley story.

Thank you Dolapo

Well done to Year 3 as we finished our tests today. We had to write a letter to persuade a headteacher to hold a treasure hunt. Then we had to write about a playtime game.
Five children have finished their spies task for the library competition. on't forget to bring them in as soon as possible.
Thank you Dolapo for continuing to read and make comments on the blog.

testing, testing, testing

We spent all day testing today. Numeracy in the morning, a reading test after playtime and another reading test after lunch.
Guess what's happening tomorrow? hat's right more testing.

That's the way to do it!

In numeracy we tried a new way to do addition sums called column addition. Your parents may be surprise at this method as they may have done these sums differently. A note on our method will be included with numeracy homework on Friday.
We discussed and wrote instructions for our science experiments in the afternoon. It was very hard to think of a fair test to find out if a plant needed light.
On the mobile library bus we were told of a competition about spies. The winner will receive £20 in book tokens.

Pinnochio

Today we used a number line for subtraction sums using the same skills we used yesterday for addition sums. We carried on our letters to Mr Blair. We have so many questions to ask him and we would love to tell him about our videoconferencing work. We are writing formal letters and have tries to ask him to come in a polite way.
We practised our months in French and then followed instructions written in French to draw a picture of Pinnochio using coloured shapes.

Don't forget there is no school tomorrow or Friday.

Hello Mr Blair

We used a number line to work out addition sums today. We concentrated on counting in 10s to move along the number line. There was a lot of excellent work.
We worked in groups in Literacy. Our task was to write a letter to Mr Blair inviting him to videoconference with us.
In the afternoon we swapped our normal groups around and decided how we would carry out fair tests to find out what plants need to grow.

What is the difference between plants and animals?

In numeracy we practised adding 10 and 10 to numbers. We sometimes find it difficult when adding 10 across the hundreds boundary - 97 + 10.
We returned to speech marks in Literacy. We wrote dialogue and tried to follow the rules for speech.
In science we considered how we can test if something is an animal or plant. Some of our suggestions were:
Plants need the sun
Animals have privates
Plants cannot move
Animals can talk

We had an interesting time talking through these ideas especially 'animals have privates'.

Match of the day

More work with addition and subtraction this morning. We checked our subtraction sums by adding together the last two numbers. These should equal the first number. Yesterday we investigated a poem by Alan Ahlberg about a football match. Today we watched a match from match of the Day. We then turned the volume down and wrote our own commentary. We will do more commentating later on this week.
In the afternoon we drew the insides of fruits. We noticed that all of our fruits had seeds in the middle and a skin around the outside. We also looked inside a banana and these did not seem to have seeds in the inside. Does anyone know why?

Goal

Well done to Abdullah for winning our stand up challenge on the five times table. In Numeracy we found missing numbers in addition and subtraction sums using number lines and mental calculations.
In Literacy we read a poem by lan Ahlberg about a girl who was asked to make up the numbers in a boys football team who went on to score the winning goal. We wrote and discussed how the characters felt.
Last week when we started our topic on plants some children went yuk when asked if they ate plants. Today we listed the food that children eat and then thought about where that food came from. Wow! We were amazed how much of our food comes from plants.

Making magnets

We made magnets from paper clips. We turned the paper clip into a magnet by stroking it with a magnet. We watched Temi and Brennans "A day at Northwood School " video.
We went on the field for the first time this year.

Theatre trip

We went to the Orchard Theatre by coach in the afternoon. We saw the vile victorians. In the second part of the show, after our ice creams, we put on 3D glasses It looked like a rat was heading straight at us. It made a bridge fall on us and cannon balls shoot towards us. We thought it was scarey, exciting and cool.

Science live

Thank you to everyone in Year and Karen and Mr Lee. Today we took part in Science Live and showed schools all around London our experiments and gave tham a chance to predict results by taking part in polls.
It was hard work but all the children worked very hard.
Well done Year 3.

Thank you Dolapo

Dolapo has been very busy commenting on the blog and has been busy making a poster at home. We would love to see your poster next week.
On tuesday the class is taking part in a videconferencing event - Science Live. There are new pages on the web site that will show the activities we will be doing on Thursday. To go to the new page click on videoconferencing and follow the science live link at the bottom of the page.

What do we know about Islam?

Our topic next week is Islam. Can anyone find some facts and interesting information about Islam? We are lucky to have Abdullah as his religion is Islam and maybe he can share his religion with us.
Please remeber to return your letters to say your child can take part in our science videoconferencing day.

Who was William Shakespeare?

By the time I've written todays question on the blog the question has already been answered. Well done Emmanuel! Dolap you asked in your comment what is qasn? I wish I knew.
We had great fun in literacy today. We split into three groups one with Becky, one with karen and one with Mr Greenwood. Each group had to write and perform a version of "Ten little children". All three groups performed brilliantly. In Numeracy we investigated if certain statements were correct:
odd + odd = even
even + even = odd
odd + even = odd
Again we had some great examples.

How many countries in the world?

Well done to Damilola, Temi, Emmanuel and Dolapo for taking an active part in our challenges. This week in Art we have been making symmetric patterns. Maybe you could do one of these at home. Tomorrow we will be cutting out symmetrical patterns in our shapes and maybe some of these will go on display.
Literacy this week has been working on our Ten Little Children poems. There are some fine examples and some of these can be placed on the web site for all to see and maybe parts published on the blog.

Soduku

We had a Soduku challenge in Numeracy. A Soduku is a number challenge. In the example above the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, must be placed in each square, each column and each row. Mr Greenwood showed us how he would work one out. Everyone finished a Soduku with the numbers 1 to 4. The Sodukus with numbers 1 to 6 were much harder. No play today as it was snowing!
We made up some poems based on a "Three little children" poem. There were some excellent examples "Three little apes", "Three beautiful rabbits" and "Three little monsters".
For P.E. we used the high apparatus for the last time.A few people hurt themselves but this was on the low benches not from the high apparatus!
Our country today was England. Ten "English" pictures were slowly uncovered and we had to work out what the pictures were. Today Mr Greenwood will ask a girl and a boy how many they can remember. The pictures were: London Eye, White cliffs of Dover, Stonehenge, Buckingham Palace, A red doubledecker bus, Big Ben, Angel of the North, black cab, policeman and Blackpool Tower.

Does anyone know where and what is the Giant's causeway?

Watch yourself on the net

If you want to see yourself on the internet take a look at our videoconferencing page and click on the film link videoconferencing primary school
Have you worked out the design of the Union Jack? Today we learned about Scotland but do you know what tossing the caber is?

Wow well done Emmanuel the Flag was designed in 1603 for King James 1

Welcome back

Damilola worked out the early morning ask by solving the anagram ntltiingee to be intelligent. We solved numeracy sequences such as 23 27 31 _ _.
We started a new topic in Literacy of performance poems and we will be working on these for the next two weeks. We also did some work on the uffix -ly and will be working with other prefixes.
Our topic this week is the United Kingdom. We worked on learning where the countries where, there capital cities and their flags. Children were asked if they knew or could work out why the Union Jack looks like it does.

Don't forget

Don't forget tomorrow is non-uniform day.
We performed our myth at assembly and really enjoyed it. Thomas had made his own 'big eye' to play Cyclops and brought in a staff as well. In numeracy we worked with coordinates these are numbers or letters by a grid that tell us the position of something. In science we finished off our work on materials.

Eye Eye

Today Mr Lee helped us to prepare a myth for tomorrows assembly. We are going to perform it to the whole school. We are performing the Greek myth of Odysseus and his battle with the giant Cyclops.

More bangs

We repeated this afternoon our mass experiment. We repeated the experiment to make sure are results were accurate. Scientists often repeat their experiments to make sure their results are accurate. In Numeracy we did some more work on time, we looked at the different units of time. How many days in a fortnight? How many days in a year? Not easy is it?
More bangs in P.E. as we used the high apparatus. Some good safe jumps and excellent balancing especially from Reanne and Peace.

Afternoon mass

We had a great afternoon. We tested which paper was the strongest by putting weights on paper and seeing how much weight was needed to break the paper. It was great fun as there was a loud bang as the weights went through the paper. Our prediction were good but we were suprised how strong the papers were.

Hands up

In the newspaper there was a story about a primary school where they have decided that children should not put their hands up to answer questions. The idea is to include all children and not just the children who put their hand-up. We tried this today in Year 3. It was fun but very difficult to not put our hands up and we won't be doing that again.
In numeracy we estimated the mass of diferent object in the classroom, including Mrs Bennett, Karen and Mr Greenwood. Emmanuel weighed 30kg and Mr Greenwood weighed about 100kg.
We started a new myth in Literacy, we will be working on Greek myths today and next week.
For science we tested the absorbency of different papers. Not suprisingly we found that toilet tissue was the best for absorbing water.

Odysseus

We practised in Numeracy telling the time. In Literacy we looked at the Ancient Greek myth of Odysseus. He was a brave king who went on a long journey that was packed with adventures including being attacked by a huge one-eyed monster.
Our topic in science for the next two weeks is characteristics of materials. Today we looked at different materials in the classroom and used words like flexible, transparent and rough to describe them. Thank you Dolapo for continuing to leave comments on the web site.

Crystal Rainforest

We tackled coordinates in Numeracy. We were given the coordinates and how to draw a picture in the correct place on a grid. In Literacy we had to draw pictures based on the King Midas story.
More adventure with Crystal Rainforest. The advantages of using this simulation is that take part in such an adventure in real life it would be:
Too expensive
Dangerous
You can't just start again
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King Midas

Wouldn't it be wonderfil if everything you touched turned to gold. This is the myth of King Midas who thought this was wonderful until he touched people he loved and they turned to gold. Children planned their own versions of this story. In numracy we learned about directions.
After French we continued our Crystal Rainforest adventure.

Dreamtime

The aborigine story of how the world began was called dreamtime. The Rainbow Serpent was the first animal on earth as he moved he made valleys and mountains in the dirt. He then saw some big bellied frogs, there big bellies were full of water. The Serpent made the frogs laugh and all the water filled the valleys and becames rivers. The world soon became full of life. We read this story and had to answer questions on the story.
There was more work on the climbing frames in P.E. In the afternoon we had great fun playing Crystal Rainforest to learn about simulations.

Simulations

We finished off our myths this morning. Some excellent myths were written. In Numeracy we started our new Numeracy topic which is shape and space. We looked at the properties of 2-D shapes.
In the afternoons we started our ICT topic: simulations. If you want to learn how to fly a plane you wouldn;t be able to go and practice straight away in a real plane. You can get a similar experience using a compter. We used the Thamesville game on the Northwood web site to simulate the building of a new town. This week we will play a computer game called Crystal Rainforest. We will have to solve problems use thinking sklls to complete the game and find magic crystals.

More comments please!!

More work with number lines in Numeracy. This work should make it easier to solve addition and subtraction sums in our heads. Next week we are starting a new topic working with shapes. In literacy we worked with suffixes and we had to find a word in a wordsearch and add the suffixes. We then had to think of a word with an opposite meaning.
We had a very musical afternoon, we had singing in the hall with Mrs Medhurst and then we performed a space rap to finish our work on ostinatos.
Thank you to Dolapo for her comments on the blog. These were read out to the class.

Film stars

This afternoon we watched for the first time our videoconferencing film. This film will be used in schools to show the benefits of videoconferencing. The film was recently shown at an education show and seen by thousands of teachers. We looked closely and think we spotted every child in the video so we are all film stars.
We wrote the first part of our myth this morning and there were some excellent openings.

Climbing high

Today we planned our myths and some children had the chance to tell their myths to the rest of the class. In Numeracy we carried on with our work with money.
We know have one long P.E. session a week instead of two short sessions this meant we had time to use the high apparatus. the hardest things to use were the ropes as these needed a lot of strength. Jesse had a great technique and was able to reach the top.
In music we used instruments to perform an ostinato. We then split the class in half and each half played a different ostinato. This took a lot of concentration but we managed to do it.

Welcome back

The year 3 blog is back and will now be updated every school day. In literacy we started a new topic. Over the next few weeks we will be investigating and writing myths. If you want to see an example of a myth click on Tomi's myth. This myth was written by Tomi as a Year 3 and is an excellent example of a myth.
In Numeracy we have been working out how to give change.
We had fun in the afternoon singing ostinatos. An ostinato is a sequence of repeated notes. In groups we all had to become a farm animal. One person in each group performed the ostinato using an animal sound. The other children added their own anmal sounds to make a tune that they could repeat. There were some wonderful tunes, Ian and Thomas created wonderful ostinatos.