During reading lessons this month, 3H have been celebrating Black History Month! Through inspiring stories and real-life biographies, they are discovering incredible achievements and rich cultural traditions from both the past and present. It has been a brilliant way to help build their reading skills while also encouraging important conversations about empathy, diversity, and the wonderful world around us.

3H have loved exploring Stone Age art and cave painting. They’ve collaborated to create a joint Stone Age Cave Painting. Exploring chalk, charcoal, smudging, along with positive and negative space has meant they have experimented with a variety of implements and ideas.

Before 3H set off to the library we discussed road safety. We walked together down to Moor Allerton library.

We started off by listening to the lovely librarian explaining to us how the library works.

Then, we explored the library ourselves and read lots of different books.

We also were given a class library card where we can select library books to keep in the classroom. How exciting! We ended our library trip by listening to the story Pet Potato read by the librarian.

3H have thoroughly enjoyed learning their new model text ‘The Box’. You can see from the video how well they have internalised the model text and have been able to add expression into their storytelling. Throughout the week, we have also been exploring the text at a deeper level by asking inference questions, putting themselves into the story and discussing how a character feels and why. They’ve had brilliant discussions with their partners which has lead to deeper understanding.

3H have really enjoyed exploring our class novel this week. They have started to use some of the Big 10 skills like monitoring, preview and retrieval. The Stone Age Boy has also been a great link to our history unit of the Stone Age.

3H have been enjoying investigation rocks today as part of their science learning. They used scientific vocabulary like pitted, rough, speckled and smooth. They worked in pairs to discuss the properties of the rocks.

3H have had a wonderful first 2 weeks back at school. They’ve been settling into Year 3 routines well and have enjoyed playing and working together. We’ve made time to get to know each other, learn routines and work together collaboratively.

3H have made such brilliant progress across year 3. I have loved teaching them and seeing them grow and develop. On jump up day, they loved getting to know Miss Chadwick and had another fun day in Year 4. 3H have been an excellent class and are definitely ready for their next step up to Year 4.

See how they’ve grown!

3H had a wonderful Charlie and the chocolate factory day. They became Oompa Loompas and worked hard to help Mr Wonka by designing a pulley system for his factory. We started the day by giving ourselves Oompa Loompa names.

First, they used next to create 3D shapes to use as the basket to transport the sweets across different floors of Mr Wonka’s factory.

Next, they set to work on making their pulleys.

They had to collaborate to make their pulleys.

Here they are stood proudly next to their final creations.

Well done 3H on your hard work!

We are helping Mr Wonka to solve his dilemna.

A pulley solves a massive problem: it changes the direction of a force, making it much easier to lift heavy objects. Instead of pulling up against gravity (which hurts your back), you can pull down using your own body weight to help you. This will keep the Oompa Loompas safe while gaining their fitness back. It will also help move objects around the factory!

Here we are experimenting with using pulleys.