We're All Going on a Summer Holiday

The time seems to have flown by and it is hard to believe we are into our final week of the academic year.  

It has been a real pleasure and a privilege to teach your children in Year 3 at Barnham Primary. We have enjoyed a hugely busy and successful year.  Highlights have included the visit of the cave men, Forest Schools, trips to the allotment, swimming, performance poetry and French songs in sharing assemblies, making Anglo-Saxon shields and houses, visiting West Stow Anglo-Saxon village, making Aztec masks and performing human sacrifices, learning the recorder, starring in the Christmas play, enjoying the school Christmas dinner, being joined by the parents for maths lessons, growing and selling tomato plants, persuading Mrs Arnold to promote Fairtrade products, bird-ringing and bat-detecting with Phoebes' parents, planting under polythene wither Emily's dad and visiting the Country Farm and Fair, rearing our own chickens, planting trees along the perimeter of our new school field and learning something new and amazing every day.

I would like to thank Mrs Lee for her much-appreciated assistance on Mondays and Tuesdays and to Mrs Pointer for her energy, enthusiasm, expertise (and patience with me!) who I have been fortunate to work with from Monday to Friday each week.

Thank you, parents, for your invaluable support since September and thank you for your very kind cards and gifts.

Good luck to Abbi and Joshua at your new schools - we look forward to hearing your news next term.  I also look forward to seeing how everyone continues to flourish in Fox Class next year.

We hope you will be able to join us in the final sharing assembly this Friday where Badger Class will be singing 'We're All Going on a Summer Holiday!'

Have a wonderful summer! 

Very best wishes

Mr Holman

Week beginning 15th May

In maths lessons this week we have been busy multiplying pairs of two digit numbers.  We have written some amazing recounts of the Bolivian story ''The Armadillo's Song" - ask your child to tell it to you!  We enjoyed making bunting to represent the flags of the countries of South America and have made some wonderful pictures of animals found in the Amazon Rainforest using pastels.

Week beginning 8th May

This week we have had great fun exploring mass and capacity in maths.  We enjoyed using the scales to weigh different objects in the classroom and used rulers and tape measures to measure one another and to find the width and length of the room.  We especially enjoyed using measuring cylinders to measure different amounts of water.  We have since gone on to solve word problems involving mass and capacity.

In our topic work we have learned about legendary monsters of South America and in English we have recounted a Bolivian myth called 'The Armadillo's Song' which we thought was an excellent tale.  

Week beginning 2nd May

We have been busy in Maths this week solving problems involving the measuring of time.  We have also been finding fractions of amounts using the bar model and have explored equivalent fractions.  In our English lessons we have been learning about the features of non-fiction books and in our topic work have been using atlases to find out why some countries are hotter than others and to investigate which countries in South America are on the Equator.  

Welcome back! We hope you had a lovely Easter.

In Badger Class this term we are excited to be learning about South America as part of the s whole school topic 'Flaming Hot!.'  The children have come up with their own enquiry questions.  We would like to find out what animals live in the Amazon rainforest, who the Incas and Aztecs were and why some countries are hotter than others.  

This term we will be doing our Forest School sessions every other Wednesday afternoon as I will be taking Year 4 for swimming lessons on Fridays this half-term and Year 3 will be swimming on Friday mornings after half-term.

For the next four weeks we are lucky to be joined by Mrs Milner who is In her final term of teacher-training.  We have thoroughly enjoyed the lessons she has planned and taught so far and think she will make an excellent teacher.

Week beginning 20th March

We have made some incredible shields using card and paper- mache.  We loved painting our shields and are looking forward to showing them in assembly next week.  We have completed some complicated maths work this week.  We plotted a bar chart to show the amount of electricity consumed in our school each month. We found out that February was the month when most electricity was used.

Week beginning 6th March

We have been working on multiplication and division in maths this week, including division with remainders.  In English, we have been concentrating on punctuating direct speech and have using Thesauruses to find interesting alternatives for 'said.'  We had great fun in our Forest School session and were very pleased with our weaving. 

Week beginning 27th February

It is Fairtrade Fortnight!

We were delighted with our amazing muffins, which we enjoyed making with Mrs Lee using Fairtrade bananas.  The money raised from selling the muffins at playtime will be given to the Fairtrade Foundation which campaigns to give the world's poorest farmers a fair price for the food they grow.  

Week beginning 20th February

We have been learning about Anglo-Saxon weapons and warfare and have enjoyed designing a shield for an Anglo-Saxon warrior.  In maths we have been getting to grips with equivalent fractions and in English we have been learning how to use apostrophes for possession.  In French we have been learning to how to respond to the question, 'Quelle age as tu?'

Week beginning 6th February

Tuesday was E-Safety Day at school.  After Miss Goatham's assembly about keeping safe online, we had a circle time session in class and then made pictograms to show the electronic devices that we have access to at home.  

On Thursday we had a wonderful hands-one learning experience as we were driven by tractor and trailer to see how and and why farmers plant under polythene.  It was fascinating to discover how the soil needs to be at least 6 degrees for the seeds to germinate.  When we tested the soil with a thermometer it was 5 degrees under polythene compared to 3 degrees in the nearby woods.  We were also shown how machinery is used to loosen the soil and clear it of stones to help the carrots to grow more easily and to grow straighter.  Thank you to Mr Hawthorne and to Ian for giving us such an interesting and memorable visit.

Week beginning Monday 30th January

The highlight of the week was taking our amazing Anglo-Saxon houses outside to form villages.  We thought carefully about how to position the houses so that the villagers would have easy access to water and the forest.  We also positioned them so the villagers would enjoy the warming sun in the morning.  What do you think of our photographs?  We also wrote some excellent evaluations of our models.  

Week beginning 23rd January

Badger Class have thoroughly enjoyed learning about how the Anglo-Saxons used natural resources to build their houses. We were fascinated by a video clip showing the process of constructing walls with wattle-and daub. We then got stuck into making authentic model village houses using the sticks we had gathered from the field and the straw kindly brought in by Mrs Hawthorne. It was brilliant to be joined by ten parents on Thursday to help us with the project. The children are delighted with the fruits of their labours. We are looking forward to sharing our work in assembly next Friday.

Week beginning 16th January

We have been investigating the properties of 2D and 3D shapes this week.  We enjoyed using the ipads to draw and describe regular and irregular polygons and we are looking forward to making models of 3D shapes with sticks and clay at our Forest School session on Friday.  We have also had fun making life-size cut-out figures of Anglo-Saxons as part of our learning about the clothes worn in Anglo-Saxon times.  Another highlight was a surprise visit to the class by a dragon-slayer's wife together with a baby dragon!  

Week beginning 9th January

We have been consolidating our understanding of place value in maths and particularly enjoyed playing a maths game with dice against our partners to find who could buildi the biggest 4 digit numbers. We also wrote some wonderful adventure stories in our English lessons. Well done to everyone who made and wore a crown for the church service for Epiphany.  

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.  We are looking forward to learning a lot and having plenty of fun in 2017.  This term's topic is titled 'Seeds of Change.'  We will be learning  about the life and times of the Anglo Saxons and plan to visit West Stow before half-term.  We will also be finding out about the farming year and, later in the term, will sow some seeds in pots on the window sill to plant outside when the weather warms up later in the spring.  We will also embark on some further Forest School adventures - Mrs Pointer and I have lots of ideas for cooking on open fires!  

Week beginning 19th December

After working so hard all term, we have been concentrating on having fun on the last two days of term!  The class loved making cards with Mrs Pointer and mini chocolate rice-crispie Christmas puddling with Mrs Lee yesterday and have enjoyed playing board games toady.

There is no official homework for the holidays but do keep practising telling the time and learning your timetables. Thank you for all your kind cards and gifts. Have a wonderful Christmas!

Week beginning 12th December

We had a terrific Forest School session today.  The highlight was cooking marshmallows, waffles and crumpets on the fire.  We all sang along with Nat King Cole as we roasted chestnuts on the open fire.  We also had great fun on the rope swing.  Thank you, as always, to Mrs Pointer and thank you to Mr Brooks for joining us today.  As you can tell from the photographs, the adults had almost as much fun as the children!  

In between play rehearsals and the our astounding performances, we have fitted in some more work on fractions and learned about acute, obtuse and right angles in maths.  In English we have been learning how to use inverted commas to punctuate direct speech. Our writer of the week is Kelis and the mathematician of the week is Dejay.  

Week beginning Monday 5th December 

This week we have been busy getting to grips with fractions.  We have also assessed and peer-assessed our play-scripts and have planned our own play-scripts.  In Science, we have been learning about skeletons and exoskeletons.  However, the highlight of the week was learning about the importance to Sikhs of langar.  We created our very own langar kitchen and made delicious prem preshad biscuits, tasty fruit-salad and popcorn garlands before sitting side together to enjoy the fruits of our labours.

Forest School, 2nd December

Wow!  What an amazing time we had today!  We loved making a fire with fire-steels, hay and kindling before toasting marshmallows and crumpets.  We were also excited to try roasted chestnuts, kindly provided by Mr Mitchell.  Most of us had not tried them before and we thought they were delicious!  

We also made some wonderful video recordings of our role-plays inspired by 'Horrible Histories.'

Week beginning 28th November

We really enjoyed using lots of practical apparatus on Thursday to explore fractions.  In English we have had great fun writing and acting our own 'Horrible Histories' play-scripts.  In RE we have been learning about values that are important to Sikhs and also to Christians.  On Monday we are looking forward to creating our own 'langar kitchen' to prepare and share food as is custom in Sikh gurdwaras.  We are also looking forward to cooking and sharing food during our Forest School session on Friday.

Week beginning 21st November

We have really enjoyed measuring the capacity of a variety of containers and recording  their results in litres and millilitres this week.  We have also enjoyed learning about the features of a play-script and have written our own scripts inspired by Horrible Histories.  In our topic work, we have been putting events into chronological order to make timelines.  

We are looking forward to our next Forest School adventure next week. Lots of the children are planning to make pots out of clay found at the site.  Thank you to Mrs Brooks for helping out last week and for patiently supervising the children on the rope swing and thank you to Mr Mitchell for making such a fabulous tarpaulin shelter to help keep us dry in future sessions.  And well done to Mrs Pointer for lighting a fire with nothing more than a fire-steel and a handful of hay!  

Week beginning 14th November

In maths we have been busy measuring this week.  We have also revised using the column method to add pairs of numbers.  In English we have been editing and improving our excellent descriptions of Stig's den.  We have conducted a very interesting experiment in Science to investigate what happens when cupfuls of different soil types (sandy, clay and loamy) are put into jars of water.  We have also been busy rehearsing for the school play. 

Week beginning 7th November

We have worked hard this week learning to tell the time.  We have done really well and have even managed to read clocks with Roman numerals!  In English, we have been improving sentences by including adverbs.  We also wrote some firework poems featuring nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. In PE we practised our dribbling skills in hockey.

Week beginning 31st October

We have been hard at work telling the time and comparing and ordering times in maths this week.  In our English lessons we have been using conjunctions to link clauses with subordinate clauses.  We have enjoyed learning a song in French to practise responses to the question 'ca va?' We performed the song to Mr King and he was extremely impressed. Painting our fossil casts in art was another popular session and so too was making clay figures which we plan to make dens and caves for during our eagerly anticipated Forest School session on Friday.  

Forest School

Despite the rain, we had a great Forest School session.  In fact, most of us enjoyed the rain as it gave us an excuse to get extra muddy!  We made some wonderful caves and shelters for the clay figures we made earlier in the week.  We also had lots of fun moulding the clay we dug up from the former clay pit.  We were lucky to be joined by Mr Mitchell this week.  He helped us to rig up a tarpaulins to give us some shelter but I think some of our clay figures had cosier dens!  

Learning at home: 3rd November 

The class has been asked to keep practising telling the time and to practise spelling the following maths vocabulary: hour, half, quarter, minute and second and to put the words into sentences. The children were also given the words of our French song to practise at home and as an extra challenge, to translate it into English. 

Week beginning 17th October

We have had another busy week.  In maths we have been exploring the link between multiplication and division.  We have also been using the bar model to solve multiplication and division word problems.  In English we have been writing sentences containing subordinating conjunctions (such as'before,' 'after' and 'while').  In science we have been learning how soil is made and in ICT we have been working as computer programmers with the 'Scratch' program. We had tremendous fun this afternoon playing a lively game of bench-ball!

(Homework is attached below.  Mathletics codes have been glued into the  homework books).  

Well done Badger Class - you have worked hard this half-term.  Have a great holiday!  

Week beginning 10th October 

We have been using arrays to help us understand multiplication in maths this week.  We went onto the playground and made human arrays!  This helped us to see that, for example, (3X2) + (2X2) is equal to 5X2.  Meanwhile, we have been creating mind-maps to prepare for writing poems about Autumn.  We have also enjoyed playing games of pairs to learn our French vocabulary.  

Week beginning 3rd October

Well done Badger Class for singing so beautifully in the church at the Harvest Festival! And well done for performing our Harvest Festival poem so confidently in sharing assembly this morning.

Thank you to the parents who came along to our maths lesson this week.  We have another 'drop-in' session next Wednesday at 9.00am so do please join us.  We will be working on multiplication.

Our first Forest School session was tremendous fun and we were so excited to discover the bones and antlers of a deer and the bones of a hare!  The children are already eagerly looking forward to the next session in a fortnight's time.

Other highlights of our week have been making our own paints with rowan, hawthorn and blackberries before making our own cave paintings using sticks and feathers for brushes.  We also greatly enjoyed using clay to make our own fossils. 

Learning at Home

Keep practising your times tables  - especially the 2s, 5s, 10s and then the 3s and 4s.  Once you have learned them by heart, progress to the 8s and the 6s. 

Read at home every night and keep your reading record up to date.

Additional work, which links to our learning in class, is set on Thursdays and is collected on Tuesdays.  This week's learning is attached below:

Week beginning 25th September

Wow!  What an amazing experience!  Two cavemen travelled through time and invited us into their cave so that we could learn all about life in the stone age.  We learned all about hunting and gathering and how to make fire.  We even tasted mackerel cooked before our very eyes on an open-fire, discovered how to make paint using berries and found out what we could learn from bones and fossils.

In science we had great fun hunting for fossils which Mrs Pointer had hidden in our digging area. back in the classroom we discussed our findings and watched some video clips to learn how fossils are made.  

Meanwhile, in maths we have been tackling subtraction in ou and have worked hard at regrouping.  We have been, using dienes and pictures to help us.  

We have been using the laptops to word-process our instructional texts in English.

We were also the star performers in this week's 'Open the Book' assembly - well done Badger Class! 

Week beginning 19th September

We have been developing strategies for adding several numbers quickly by using our knowledge of number bonds and our knowledge of doubling.  Keep practising your double of numbers up to 20 at home.  

We have been learning about woolly mammoths in our topic work and have been inspired to write instructional texts about how to wash and groom a mammoth - examples to be published on this page soon!  

Mrs Burton led a very thought provoking 'Godly play' session in which she used visual aids to help the children learn about and reflect upon the fruits of the spirit. The children listened most attentively.

'Archaeological Dig'

Wow!  What a wonderful time we had searching for sticks, stones and bones on our allotment site!  We unearthed lots of flints, plenty oi stones of varying colours, an ancient nail, some coal, an ancient nail, some fossils, a piece of pottery and some animal bones which we will do our best to identify.  The children were absorbed in the activity and worked extremely cooperatively.  They were thrilled to share their discoveries with Mrs Arnold when we returned tired, hungry but still full of enthusiasm in time of lunch.

Week beginning 12th September

We have been busy identifying the features of instructional texts and have written some marvellous guides to making Mrs Arnold proud (and she was certainly proud of our efforts!). Well done to Zara and Abbi for reading out their work so confidently in sharing assembly.  

Maths

THis week we have been consolidating our understanding of place value.  We have been using Diennes and whiteboards to count to 1000 in ones, tens and hundreds and have also partitioned three digit numbers.

Science  

Our science topic is 'Rocks and Soils.'  We have worked in groups to compare and sort different rocks.  We have some budding geologists - especially Fred and Zara who seem especially fascinated by fossils.

RE   

this half term the focus of our RE lessons is reconciliation.  We used role-play to explore how friendships can be repaired.  We have also started to explore how Chriistians can show reconciliation towards God and towards other people is important.

Music

We are learning a song of celebration from Ghana for this year's Harvest Festival.  Follow the link below to practise singing along at home:

Welcome back!

I hope you have had a fun-filled summer holiday and are feeling refreshed and raring to begin Year 3.  We have lots of exciting learning opportunities to look forward to and I am especially keen to start work on our new topic 'Sticks, Stones and Bones.'  I am also excited about doing some Forest School sessions - details to follow.

This year I am fortunate to have the expert support of Mrs Lee and Mrs Pointer.  They cannot wait to get back in the classroom to help you with your learning.    

This term we will have PE on Mondays and Thursdays so don't forget your kit!  If you wear ear-rings it would help to leave them at home on the days when we have PE.

If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to ask.

Very best wishes,

Mr Holman

FIrst day back

We have all enjoyed an extremely positive first day.  We had fun doing a quiz to find out what different activities we had enjoyed over the summer before discussing our holiday highlights in a circle time session.  We have also written some wonderful post-cards which we put on display in the classroom this week.  To cap a bust day we have also had fun developing our passing and catching skills in a tag-rugby session led by Mr Green.