Hello and welcome to the Puffins class blog page.

Here is where you can touch base and check out all of the exciting activities we are getting up to in year 3. We will keep you updated as we continue our learning journey and can't wait to share all of our successes and achievements with you all. 

Which adults are in Puffins class?

Mrs Smith - Class teacher

Mrs McHugh - Teaching assistant

Term 3 – Location, Location, Location

Buckle your seatbelt and hold on tight as we go on an epic adventure of discovery. Have you ever taken the time to appreciate the beauty of our environment or indeed the country in which we live? During this unit, we will learn about the many physical and human wonders that the United Kingdom holds and comparing it to a country in Eastern Europe. We shall use our developing compass skills and introduce the terms latitude and longitude. Toss aside your Sat Nav, brush up on your map skills as we journey around the continent of Eastern Europe. Where will we find our favourite ‘Location, Location, Location?’

 English – In reading this term we shall use the text “Varjak Paw” by S.F Said to develop our comprehension skills. In writing, we will investigate poems using adjectives and similes before focusing on “Mysterious Alleys” to develop our tension and suspense in writing paying particular attention to the plot within such narratives. Moving on with our year 3 English curriculum, we will continue to work on our use of fronted adverbials, noun phrases, adverbs and inverted commas.

Maths – This term, we will be continuing embedding our multiplication and division skills before moving into length and perimeter and fractions.

In DT today, we learnt how to use saws and the hot glue guns safely before we design our bridges. We also familiarised ourselves with creating working circuits as our bridges will have to include a light to warn vehicles of the opening bridge.

Today, in our DT work, we began learning about the Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and how his designs changed and defined the Victorian era. We looked at a variety of bridges and recognised what they used for strength. Then Mrs Smith set us a challenge! In groups, we had to build a free standing bridge using the knowledge we had gathered and a whole range of boxes, sellotape and scissors. That was it - nothing else. The results were interesting, as you can see. Some were successful, some less so but a brilliant learning opportunity as we begin our DT work on bridges.

Term 1 and 2 – Ancient Britain

 Take a moment to step outside and stand quietly and still. Turn off all your technology and try to forget the modern world. Imagine this place 5000 years ago. What would you have seen?

Experience life without modern tools and luxurious home comforts – would you survive? In our topic we will discover how people evolved from hunter gatherers to farmers and the beliefs these prehistoric warriors held. We will also investigate where and why humans settled in the places they made home and how some of these still exist in modern times.

English – During this unit, the children will explore poetry by creating acrostic and mesostic poems then later in term two, look at performance poetry. In Reading, we shall firstly use the non-fiction book “Find out about the Stone, Bronze and Iron ages “ to gather information about our topic as well as identify key features of non-fiction texts. We shall then be using Ted Hughes’ thrilling “The Iron Man” for both our reading and writing lessons. Through the exposure to this rich text, we shall be creating narrative as well as information texts and non-chronological reports. Children shall continue to build upon their writing skill such as, capital letters, full stops, conjunctions, fronted adverbials and apostrophes to name a few! They will then have the opportunity to apply this across the different genres of writing.

Maths – During this unit, we will be investigating the number system and ensuring our knowledge of place value is sound. We will look at the value of different numbers as well as attempting to order them and compare them. Following on from this, we will be recapping adding and subtraction practically before moving onto use of the formal column method. After, we will be focusing on multiplication and division where will be looking at different methods to calculate problems as well as continuing to gain confidence with our times tables.

We have looked at pointillism in Art this term through the work of Georges Seurat and Yayoi Kasuma. After experimenting with different paint types, we created our final piece showing Seahenge - a Bronze Age wooden circle found on a beach in Norfolk. We think they look dot-tastic!

This Wednesday, Sunita came to see us. She told us about the gods that Hindus worship and their importance in their everyday lives. It was very interesting looking at the pictures and seeing what each represented.

For Science Day on Wednesday, we were looking at materials and how they can change state. We took part in a variety of activities. We researched using the laptops about matters of state and presented our findings on powerpoints. We investigated different materials and their properties and we predicted what would happen to bread, cheese and chocolate when they were heated. We then carried out an experiment to see what happened.

We also considered what the Iron Man would be like if he were made of a different material. Would it have the same effect if it was the Glass Man ? or the Jelly Man?

It was fantastic fun, full of fun and learning.

This week, we have been creating our Stoneage inspired textile products. The design brief was that we needed to design and make something that could be used to collect foraging. We have tried to use authentic materials as much as possible and look forward to sharing our finished products with you when we have finished...

Today, we became archaeologists! Using the dig site, we dug up some interesting artefacts from the Stone Age and identified them.

A fantastic day visiting Flag Fen just outside of Peterborough. We investigated artefacts from the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, listened to a Bronze age tale around the fire in the roundhouse, created clay beaker pots and saw the famous "Causeway". A terrific day out to enhance our topic on Ancient Britain.