What kind of mindset do you have?

We have finally narrowed our class rules down to just 3 rules! Look at all the ideas we had:

Our Class Rules are:

1. Respect everybody and everything.

2. Always listen to and follow instructions.

3. Put your hand up before speaking or getting up.

Our Attitude to Learning

Throughout the last 3 weeks of term we have been focusing a great deal on how we can become the best possible learners to help us through the rest of the year. During PSHE we discovered that a lot of us were afraid of how tricky the work would become as Year 3 continues, so we have come up with some things we can say to ourselves and to our friends when work starts to get us down!

"I love it when I make mistakes because every time I fix it, I can feel my brain growing bigger!" - Ethan

"You might find it hard now but if you keep practising you will get better." - Timo to one of his classmates.

Not only this, but we have been using Go Noodle to switch our brains on to learn straight away in the morning and after lunch!

One of our Go Noodle sessions!

English

We are all so proud of the progression our descriptive writing has made since the start of term. In our book "The Green Ship" by Quentin Blake, there was a fantastic storm which captured all of our imaginations, so before we read on we decided to write a description using our senses to explain the scene following the storm! We can't wait to share these with everyone and show off our impressive handwriting and illustrations to everyone after half term - some of us may even have earned our pen licenses already.

We used thesauruses to find better words for our senses!

We used special purple 'editing pens' to improve our work.

We used our English Targets to guide our writing.

We listened to storm music to help us imagine while we write!

Maths

Now we have completed our topic on place value and number, we are moving on to addition and subtraction. We have been sharing different methods of adding and subtracting in our heads and, although it is so tricky to write down our working, we have been putting a huge amount of effort in to doing so.

Theme

To conclude our history topic on The Victorians in Bristol, we have been doing a research project into the British Empire. We finished it off by creating some beautiful silhouette portraits just like they would have had in the Victorian times! Some of the homework we have received has been so impressive and I look forward to seeing what Peacocks come up with to share with us on our new topic next term!

Philip's K'nex London Eye

Adam's suspension bridge

Other Curriculum Areas

In computing, we all successfully created a computer programme on 'Scratch' (https://scratch.mit.edu/). I am currently looking to find out how we can share these on the blog so keep an eye out!

During PE we have been doing a mix of dodge-ball and square ball to learn about the Olympic Values. We initially had badges to award to everyone after each PE lesson but, as these kept breaking, after half-term we will hopefully have some stickers so look out for these when your children come home!

We have learnt so much Spanish this term that we were desperate to share - I have emailed to find out how to share some of the videos with you so check the blog regularly for an update including videos of Peacocks speaking Spanish! In the mean time, here are the phrases we have been learning:

Hello! - ¡Hola!

What's your name? - ¿Cómo te llamas? 

My name is... - Me llamo...

His / Her name is... - Él / Ella es...

How old are you? - ¿Cuantos años tienes?

I am seven / eight years old. - Tengo siete / ocho años.

Goodbye! - ¡Adios!

We took some class photos to send to the authors Kathryn White and Steve & Steve who very kindly sent us some free books for our classroom! We have written notes and asked them questions about their writing in the hope that we get a response!

Other News and Reminders

Well done to Liam, Frankie and Alex who won Class Dojo winners in weeks 5, 6 and 7!

Congratulations to all of the children in the GREEN reading team who won the 'home reading' challenge for 3 weeks in a row! Let's see if the other teams can catch up after half term!

Reminder: PE is changing to Mondays and Thursdays after half-term, please remind children to bring in their PE kit and try and encourage them to bring in shoes they can put on and do themselves wherever possible so we can make the most of our PE slot!

Please enjoy some pictures below of our extra play time and golden time that we recieved for earning 1000 Class Dojo points AND for winning the Calm School Code challenge in week 5.

Football during extra play

Enjoying the last of the sunshine!

Bug hunt!

Some LEGO creations we are proud of!

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From Algorithms to Dodgeball!

The last two weeks have been an exciting time for Peacocks and we have finally done some real Key Stage 2 learning! It's been challenging but thanks to our positive attitudes and amazing teamwork we have had an extremely successful start to Year 3.

Our attitude to learning

Every Friday we have reflection time where we listen to relaxing music and think about all of the things we are proud of from the week just gone and consider things we could do to improve our learning next week. It is going really well so far and many of us were able to look back on our aims from the previous Friday and say how proud we were to have succeeded in our aims.

Completing the (nearly) daily mile to switch our brains on!

English

Our main focus at the moment is descriptive writing. We learnt to use and enjoy finding new words using dictionaries and thesauruses. Now we all use them without even being asked to! It has drastically improved the vocabulary we use in our writing and it has made our writing so much better.

Using dictionaries to find out what "meandered" means.

Using thesauruses to improve our descriptions.

A huge congratulations to Sienna and Philip for practising their spellings so hard every day and getting 100%.

We are practising our handwriting every day at the moment and everyone in Peacocks has now mastered the new "f" we have been learning! A proud example by Dexter can be seen below!

Maths

Practising counting up in tens and hundreds is nearly at an end now and we have all successfully achieved our targets for this topic! Not only this, but we can all partition 3-digit numbers and compare large numbers using different representations!

Theme

We learnt so much about the Victorians last week and did a huge research session finding out many cool things about them. We will be sharing our findings on our display in class which will hopefully be ready by Friday for open morning!

Computing

In computing we have been creating our own computer programs. To start off, we learnt two very important pieces of vocabulary which have helped us in later computing lessons: "algorithm" and "debug". Below you will see the exciting lesson where we learnt about this using creating a jam sandwich to show the children just how difficult creating a computer program can be!

If your children enjoy computing, I would highly recommend them using the free program Scratch from home as this is what we are using in class!

Other News and Reminders

Well done to Sienna and Adam who won Class Dojo Winners in Weeks 3 and 4!

We have now started doing a class reading tower using Lego bricks. For every time children read at home and get it signed by an adult they receive one Lego brick for their team - this is not just for finishing books it is for reading in general! However, they will not receive a Lego brick for days where they do not bring in their book bag so please remind them to bring it in so we can read together too!

Congratulations to all those children who managed to walk to school once a week in September! Let's see if you can do it twice a week in October!

Reminder: PE is on Tuesdays and Thursdays, please remind children to bring in their PE kit and try and encourage them to bring in shoes they can put on and do themselves wherever possible!

Team 1

Team 2

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