Term 6 – last few days!

Yes, in the immortal words of Europe, ‘it’s the final countdown!’.  (well, for those of us who remember Europe that is).  Last two days of term, last two days of being with the lovely Year 3 crew before they head off to the dizzying heights of Year 4.  I am going to miss them terribly, I have absolutely loved teaching them (again) this year, what a treat it has been.  I have no doubt that they will ALL continue to shine as bright as they can along their learning journeys.

Today we will be immersing ourselves in plastic and the aim is that by the end of the day we will have produced two pieces of collaborative art – so watch this space for pictures.  I will also be giving any old books and work back to the children, so apologies if they come out of school with heavy bags!

Tomorrow (last day of term) the Year 3 children have the honour of attending the Year 6 leavers service at St Andrews Church in Congresbury.  They will go by bus and be back by lunch time.  It is a real treat for them, it is a lovely occasion to be part of.  Ms Hookham will be going with them, as I have my own sons’ Year 6 leavers service to attend, but I will be back ASAP and try and get to both!

We will make sure that all children have a reading book to take home with them over the summer, and would encourage as many of them as possible to sign up to the Summer Reading Challenge at your local library.  I have put onto SpellingShed all the Year 3 words for them to practice with over the holidays and the same will be there for TTRockStars.  PLEASE try and continue with regular practice for both times tables and spelling, it makes an enormous difference I promise you!

Artwork pictures to follow later on today.

Term 6 – Week 6

Welcome to another busy week with the Year 3 crew.  This week in English we are finishing off our letters to the council asking/telling them what could and should be done to help clean up our beaches.  Then we are starting on a new text, a beautiful Chilean folk tale called ‘Mariana and the Merchild’.  I am really looking forward to this as, by the end of next week,  the children will be writing their own folk tale.

In maths we will be over-teaching and deepening our understanding of any areas of maths that the children need in preparation for Year 4.  We will be going over all areas that children feel they need some extra time on to fully understand concepts, or dispel any misconceptions they may have.  If there is any area you feel your child needs to focus on, or that they have said to you they don’t quite understand, please let me know as we have this week (and some of next!) to focus on these areas.

There are new words ready on the spellingshed for you all.  I would like to say a huge THANK YOU for encouraging your children to practice their spellings, it is making is difference, it really is.  The same goes for TTRockstars

I have been encouraging children to use both of these in class and they are LOVING it!  If you have any problems, please let me know!  When your children are in Year 4 there is a National Times Table test that they will have to do and the format is very similar to TTRockstars, so the more they can get used to playing it and get better at their times tables the better.

It is shuffle up on Thursday morning this week, when your child will spend time with their lovely new teacher – Mrs Brawn.  Rest assured that Mrs Brawn and I have spent considerable time going through all members of the class, so she will know all about them.  I would also like to reassure you that she can also ask me anything after September – I may not be at St Anne’s in body, but I will be in close contact with St Anne’s – I promise!

Have a great week, my door is always open if you need/want to speak with me about any matter.

Term 6 – Week 5

REMINDER! NON-SCHOOL UNIFORM TODAY (Thursday 4th July)

IN EXCHANGE FOR A TOMBOLA PRIZE!

Well here we are again with just over three weeks to go till the summer break.  As it is finally feeling a bit more like summer (“about time,” I hear everyone cry) please remind you child to bring in a water bottle (with water in please, no juice or squash because the ants LOVE that and water is so much better for us); a hat and douse them in sunscreen before school.  Thank you!

This week is our assessment week so we will be doing lots of revision and over learning in all areas of both the maths and English curriculum.  If your child tells you they are unsure of ANY of our learning, please let me know as I want to help them – that’s my job, but if they don’t let me know…I don’t know.  My mind reading skills are improving but they are not that great – yet!!

We will be looking at word families this week.  A good resource for parents to clue themselves up on what I am talking about is: www.theschoolrun.com/what-are-word-families

Can I please also remind everyone that we are a healthy school, please no chocolate bars for snack time – fruit or a cereal bar is a much better option.  Healthy fuel (i.e. packed lunch) = healthy children = better learning.  We need to avoid that afternoon slump and the best way of doing that is making sure we all have a healthy lunch.

It is our school fete on Saturday (6th July).  It would lovely to see as many of you as possible.  I am so sorry but I can’t be there (clashes with my own childrens’ school fete) but I will be there in spirit!

Term 6 – week 4

I can’t believe we only have four weeks and 2 days left of the year – and what a lot of learning is happening.  Thank you to everyone who has brought it lots of plastic for our sculptures – we have plenty now so no more required thank you!

The Year 3 crew LOVED their beach clean up last week and have been talking about ever since.  This week in English we are continuing with our news report writing and I hope (if time allows) we may get to present our news items in a newsround-stylee!  The children are so passionate about this problem and are keen to share their messages far and wide – so watch this space and they may invade the website!

In maths we have been learning about mass (weight) we will be adding it and subtracting mass, and then we will be moving onto capacity  – measuring it, comparing it, adding and subtracting it.  Please keep your fingers crossed for some drier weather as we will making magic potions to clean up our seas!

Our learning theme continues with a look at comparing Weston now to when it became a popular tourist spot in Victorian times. PE is learning rounders (may have to introduce some Barker ‘house rules’!) and focusing on team work and communication skills. RE is all about Hinduism. The children are finding it fascinating learning about different faiths, “because if we know what different things people believe then we can all respect it and get along so much better.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

New spellings will be up on here tonight and available on the spellingshed.

Thank you all for your continued support.

Oh we do like to be beside the seaside!

Years’ 3 and 4 from both our campuses had a wonderful, educational day at Weston beach learning all about micro plastics and nurdles (ask your children what they are!). Despite the pouring rain, the enthusiasm for learning was undeterred.

A huge THANK YOU  to all our parent helpers, without whom we couldn’t make such memories.

Term 6 – Week 3

DESPERATE PLEA!  We are short of helpers for our trip on Tuesday next week (18th June) – if we do not have enough adults to accompany the children we may have to cancel – so if you can help PLEASE let me know ASAP!  Thank you!

For the rest of next week this is what it will look like:

Maths – we are starting a new area of mathematics for the next two weeks  – mass and capacity.  We start with mass and we will be learning the units of measure  – kilograms (KG) and grams (g), the children will learn how to read increments on scales, how to add mass before moving onto capacity which will involve litres (L) and milliliters (ml), capacity of vessels, volume of liquids etc.  It is very practical area of maths, so any involvement you can offer at home including weighing and measuring things around the house (cooking, gardening etc) will really help the children understand how we use it in everyday life.

English – after a wonderful few weeks of poetry we are turning our attention to news reports.  The Year 3 class will be budding journalists and writing news reports on a host of things – namely the plastics in the oceans following our Beach Clean Up on Tuesday.  They will be learning the feature of a news report (both for printed and multi media press).

New spellings will be put on the Spelling Shed for Monday!

Term 6 – Week 2

Yet another fun-filled week planned, including:

WELCOME BACK 

Term 6 – Week 1

Well here we are in the final term of the year (whoah, where did that go?).  We are really looking forward to seeing the Year 3 crew as we have a jammed packed term ahead of us – yep just seven weeks of this academic year that is going to be memorable, motivational and mind blowing.

This week we will be starting a new focus of learning on poetry in our English, we will also be publishing our new chapters of Edward Tulane; maths we will be continuing with time (duration, start and end times, time in seconds); in RE we will be starting a module learning about Hinduism; PHSE is all about Changing Me (transitions etc); and learning theme continues with ‘What Lies Beneath’ and this term we will be focusing on our (human) impact on the oceans of the world.

Key vocab: pollution, plastics, food chain, Hinduism, structure, rhyme/rhyming words, rhythm, contractions, apostrophes, tenses

Statement/Question: How does plastic get in the sea?

New spellings will be sent out tomorrow, and details will be available here ASAP.  If your child is having trouble logging into to www.spellingshed.co.uk, let me know and I will sort it out.

We need your help please!

We are heading to Weston beach for a Cool Seas day with the Marine Conservation Society on the 18th June.   We would love it if you could join us for the day as we need helpers for the day.  Please let me know if you can – 18th June 2019 (it’s a Tuesday!).

Until next time – have a great week!

Term 5 – Week 6

As we whizz towards the end of term, this week (week 5) the Year 3 crew will be:

writing a new chapter for Edward Tulane; learning all about time – including telling the time to five a one minute, days in the year (and leap years), am and pm, digital and analogue clock the 24 hour clock.; preditors and prey in the oceans, tidal ranges, harnessing the power of the tides.  AND if that wasn’t enough, we have our Family Worship on Monday at 2:30pm and not forgetting our sports day and family picnic to look forward to.  Oh, and we’ll squeeze in a ukulele lesson!

We are now using the SpellingShed (www.spellingshed.co.uk) for our weekly spellings.  Your child has a login at the front of their partnership book.  If you need help with this or have lost the login, please let me know.

Until next week, Mrs Barker and Ms Hookham

We are well into the swing of things post-Christmas excitement and we are learning all about ‘What goes in must come out!” as our theme for the next 10 weeks.  This term we will be focusing on animals (including us humans) and then, after half term it will be all things plants based.  The children have been really engaged in PE this term which is touch rugby and circuit training – in which they have designed their own warms ups and set themselves their own personal fitness challenges.

Our English work is based around the beautiful narrative (ask your children what narrative means) The Ice Palace by Robert Swindells.  So far this has included creating a Kennings poem about Starjik, interpreting a setting, prediction and within all that – lots and lots of vocabulary work (hence the suggestion above!)

Our maths at the moment is focusing on multiplication and division.  The children are learning new strategies to multiply two digits by one digit and recognising related calculations for instance.  PLEASE help your children learn (and I mean really learn, know inside out) their times tables – by Year 3 they are expected to be fluent in 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 8s – but of course if they can learn any of the others then – go for it!  If you are having trouble with Times Tables Rock Stars or Sumdog, please let me know.  Other places to go for activities to do is BBC Super Movers – choose a times table to dance along with – they are so much fun and the children love it!

As always, if there is anything you would like to talk us about, our door is always open to you.

TERM 2

Week 5

Yes, were are in December so we can officially mention Christmas! Just a quick reminder that the KS2 Carol Concert is on the 20th December at our West Wick campus, we hope to see as many of your there as possible in fine voice I trust?!

This is the final week of our learning theme and the children have really enjoyed learning about the Vikings, the Celts, The Iron Age, the Romans, and the Stone Age.  It has been a whistle-stop tour of quite a few thousand years of history but they are now making connections between the past and now and beginning to see how our country has evolved over time.

This week’s spelling rule is using the ‘dge’ sound in words – take a look at http://www.spellingframe.co.uk Year 2 rules# 1, 2 and 3 for help with this sound in different spellings.

Generally speaking I would say spelling is improving in the Year 3 class, so keep practicing and learning these rules as it is paying off.

Week 4

Phew! What a week! A huge thank you to everyone for making our trip to Caerleon such a great success. ALL the children from St Anne’s were outstanding and I for one was very proud to be with them.  Special thanks also needs to go out all our adults helpers, without whom trips like this would simply not be possible.  Needless to say the children (and adults)  loved it and learnt loads. Here are a few pictures from the day.

Week 3

HELP NEEDED! parents and carers of Year 3 we need your help.  We are an adult helper down for our school trip to Caerleon in Wales next week and desperately need a volunteer to come to our rescue! It is on Tuesday 27th November, all in school time.

Please let me know ASAP if you can do it.

Many thanks.

In other news, we had a fabulous time and the North Somerset ‘Raise the Roof’ singing festival today.  We were all so immensely proud of the St Anne’s Crew from both our Hewish and West Wick campuses, thank you!

Pictures to follow!

Week 2

This weeks spellings are all about plurals.  The children will be learning and revising the rule of how the ending change with regular nouns ending in ch, sh, s, x, or z .  The words we are using this week are: possesses, mattresses, watches, relaxes, addresses, buses, coaches, watches, glasses, boxes.  See this link for more information on spelling plurals.

We have had a great time cave drawing in an Ug-style fashion – the children learnt how to use charcoal to create the effect of old cave drawings from 2.5 million years ago.

This week is Children in Need so don’t forget to wear something spotty for a small donation.

Week 1

Welcome back to term 2, yes, term 2 already!  I do hope you all had a fabulous two-week break and are all ready and raring to go for the term ahead.  There are lots of exciting things happening  – our trip to Caerleon, Christmas Fayre, Carol Concert – let alone all the wonderful learning that happens each and every day!

As I said at out Learning Review Meetings, we are having a big push on spelling in Year 3 – this week we are focusing on compound words (for more information on what they are have a look at this) there are hundreds of compound words and here are 10 examples we have been working on: football, playground, farmyard, bedroom, blackberry, lighthouse, teatime, classroom, bathroom, sometimes.

In maths over the next few weeks we will be continuing with addition and subtraction.  We use the column method (click here for examples).  We will also be practicing missing umber problems and worded problems to ensure depth of maths knowledge.  All support you can offer at home helps – talking about what maths you use every day helps build knowledge and confidence in maths.  For example we use maths when we are shopping, getting to school on time, cooking etc.

Week 6

I have given the class logins for both Times Table Rock Stars  (https://www.ttrockstars.com) and SumDog (https://www.sumdog.com) which are great fun and lots of maths learning.  When using these websites and logins for the first time, your child will have to do a baseline test to see where they are (I will also be able to see this) can I please ask that you let your child do this bit on their own so it is true reflection of their understanding.  Thank you.  In time I will be setting tasks for them to do on these sites, but for now – login, have a play and get used to them!

Another resource that we use in class that I know some people have looked at at home is BBC Supermovers this is a fabulous ‘go to’ website for KS2 (and KS1) practice for times tables as well as SPaG help (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) we have been using the 3 x times table one quite a lot in class as the children need to know these (by the end of Year 3 they are expected to know 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 8s and 10s) so any extra practice will always be welcome!

Thank you to those of you who have volunteered to help on our trip to Caerleon next month, thankfully we have enough people to help us.

Next weeks spellings are: here, hear, heel, heal, main, mane, mail, male, knot and not – oh yes, those tricky homophones and near homophones (words that sound the same but are spelt differently with different meanings).  Take a look at www.spellingframe.co.uk  rules #21, 22, 23 and 24 are all good practice!

Week 5

Spoiler alert!  This is a sneaky preview of next weeks’ spellings: it is the ‘ear’ spelling that sounds like ‘ur/ir’.

Earth, early, learn, heard, earn, pearl, search, unearth, earl,rehearse.

Also I have trawled the internet and found this website to help you help your children learn this weeks’ rule and spellings.  www.spellzone.com

I hope this helps.

A letter went out last week about our exciting trip to Caerleon near Newport on the 27th November 2018 (it is a Tuesday).  We really need at least one more adult to help us on the trip, if you can help please let us know ASAP.  Thank you!

More later in the week…

Week 4

This week’s spellings are using the long ‘a’ vowel sound, using the ‘ai’ sound.  The words are : straight, campaign, contain, brain, waist, claim, praise, complaint, afraid.

This week we have begin to learn about the Anglo-Saxon as part of our ‘They came, they saw, they conquered – who were they?’ theme.  The class split into two families – Anglo-Saxons and British and discussed what they were going to do about the invaders and had a vote.  Needless to say they all decided to fight!  Here they are in action with their ‘chieftain’ taking control of the discussion.

This afternoon we also tried our hand at designing Anglo-Saxon jewellery.

Welcome Sheet and Learning Theme Hewish Year 3 terms 1 & 2  Please take a look at what we will be learning over the next two terms.  If there is anything you are an ‘expert’ in and would like to come in a talk to the children about, we’d love to hear from you.  

This week we have been archaeologists and uncovered some interesting artifacts from the six different eras we will be learning about. Some careful handling and clever detective work was used to match the artifact to the time period – good work Year 3 crew!

WELCOME BACK TO TERM 1!

Week 2

Wow, what a lot of learning last week! Due to technical hitches towards the end last week we weren’t able to have our first spelling quiz, I am sorry.  However fingers crossed all will be well this morning and we’ll start afresh with our weekly quiz.  In the meantime, I will be handing out new spellings today and here is a link to where you can practice them. https://spellingframe.co.uk/

Go to Year 3 & 4 and it is rule #2.

We will be working through each rule, each week.

This week we will be historians, geographers, writers, readers, mathematicians, artists, athletes, computing experts…the list goes on!

Our learning theme for Terms 1 & 2 is They came, they saw, they conquered…who were they? and we have kicked off with the children learning about chronology and time lines going way back to the Stone Age.  The children have been investigating artifacts and other resources.  This week we are building on this with recapping our knowledge on the British Isles as well as making some Viking shields.

In maths this week, we will continue to focus on place value and really understanding what this means and how we use it in every day life.

You will notice that some of the words I have highlighted, these are key vocabulary words that we use in class, ask your children about what they mean – great way of finding out from them what we actually do in class!

Week 1

I can honestly say I woke up this morning very excited about coming into school and welcoming the new Year 3 crew into their classroom.  What a treat to see such eager faces beaming with enthusiasm for the year ahead.

Starting our year off we have introduced three simple school rules.

Respect yourself.

Respect others.

Respect the environment.

Over the course of this week, as a class we will be unpicking what this means to the children.  I will be updating the website later on this week with our curriculum overview for terms 1 & 2.  Just to remind you all my door is always open to you and your children, if there is anything you want to have a chat with me about I am always around.   In the meantime, this is for your children: