This week everyone came in dressed in fabulous costumes to celebrate World Book Day - thanks to everyone who brought in a donation for Miss Verney's charity, WHIZZ KIDS!  We're all excited because she's going to run in a Marathon this year to raise even more money for this worthy cause. Wicken Fen is the beautiful nature reserve in Cambridgeshire we visited. It is open to the public and would be well worth a family visit. Our children had a day packed with discovery, exploration and scientific learning. We learned about the clay and peat soils and the types of plants that grow in this special environment. Everyone had the chance to pond dip; but, first, we had to break through the thin top layer of ice on the pond! We used an insect identification chart to match the insects we caught in the pond to the pictures on the chart; we learned the names of the different insects we found in the pond like the dragonfly larvae, water boatmen and water beetle and several more. In Numeracy, we have been working hard to understand what a fraction is and how we can find fractions of large whole numbers. Most of us can use our 2, 3, 4 and 5 times tables knowledge to help us work out 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 and a 1/5 of a quantity.  We hope our families will continue to help the children memorise all their times tables!!   HAVE A SUPER WEEKEND, EVERYONE!!          

Welcome back to the 2nd half of the Spring term! Kishan says ‘We have been learning the Polar Bear dance to get ready for the All Aboard! Keystage 2 production.’ Megan said ‘The Polar Bear and Penguin dance are fun because we work in a team to do it!” Leila explained that the people who are not dancing are practising their script and learning all the songs. Sophia was excited to tell everyone that we have been making 'awesome frames in D.T. for our family.’ In Numeracy, Jaydon reminded us that we have been learning how to tell time on both digital and analogue clocks. Elliot has learned that ‘a quarter to’ means the same as ’45 minutes past’ the hour! Kaavya explained ‘In Numeracy we have a new Layered Curricular Target – to divide on a number line’ We have spent a few days this week learning how to do this correctly! PLEASE EVERYONE LEARN THE TIMES TABLES BY HEART!! Szymon wants everyone to remember to get tickets to our production on March 13th for either the 2 o’clock or 6 o’clock show in the evening.   Have a great weekend!

Learning together, learning with a partner or learning on your own - what's your preferred style? Maybe you enjoy learning in one or more of these different ways - if so, then you're just like the children in 3H!  We invite everyone to stop by our classroom and read the children's brilliant display - it's interesting to read their explanations of the ways they like learning most while at school. Next week we are looking forward to our Parent consultation meetings. It is very pleasing to report that all our families have signed up for a slot to review their child's work and discuss the progress they have made since the Autumn term. This week, in Science we've learned much more about the 'hardness' of different types of rocks: igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. Our investigations showed that granite and basalt were the hardest - when we rubbed these rocks against sandpaper, these rocks hardly changed at all. The softer limestone and sandstone rock samples proved to be less hard - when they were rubbed against the rough sandpaper, pieces easily broke off, crumbled and left much more 'rock dust' behind! We have also been writing our own adventure story in Literacy: 'The Surprise Return of the Evil Shan-Yu!' - we're learning to add exciting adjectives, similes, adverbs and powerful verbs to improve our writing.  We look forward to a delicious Chinese meal on Monday to celebrate the Chinese New Year - The Year of the Snake - hissssssss! The New Year commences February 10th!  GUNG HAY FAT CHOY! Happiness and Good-luck to you and your family this year!  

Remember to come in ready to bounce to raise money for our P.T.A. - bring in your sponsor form!! All the money we raise goes back into the school to buy new books and exciting learning resources! This week has been very productive. We have assigned acting roles for the All Aboard! play about the travels of Captain Cook (our Key stage 2 production in March). Next week we will have our first run through. Everyone will have a part in the play, some will be speaking parts and some will have dancing parts. We are going to be so busy with rehearsals alongside our normal lessons this term! Our Year 3s are real troopers  and they are always up for a challenge! The weather has been a bit breezy but without the snow we have had many more days when we could get out at playtime and enjoy a good run around. In Literacy, we've been learning how to write rich descriptions of interesting characters in the Mulan storyl We have enjoyed seeing clips of the movie to inform and inspire our writing. All the children have improved their ability to 'break into' two step word problems, find the important information and use it to solve the problem. They have also done brilliant work learning how to use their understanding of place value to both divide and multiply numbers by 10 and 100.  KEEP LEARNING YOUR TIMES TABLES BY HEART - IT REALLY HELPS SPEED UP OUR MENTAL MATHS CALCULATIONS!! In Science, we have been researching and doing some fun and interesting investigations to learn the properties of different rocks which included how permeable and hard different types of rocks are like: marble, sandstone, pumice, granite and slate. Have a great weekend!

What an exciting way to start the week ... beautiful, fluffy white SNOW flakes falling from the cloudy skies above Bedford!  We have been trying our best to remain focussed despite the exciting change in our weather.  In Literacy, we wrote our own fictional playscripts about a Viking invasion based on the magic key adventures of Biff, Chip, Kipper book series. Mrs. Cope has been helping us learn many fun, new songs for our upcoming KS2 Captain Cook production on March 13th. Later this half term we will be sending letters home about costumes. In Numeracy, we have been challenged to use our understanding of place value to multiply numbers by 10 and 100 on a multiplication grid. That has been tricky because there are several steps (and lots of adding and checking of our sums) before we can find the correct answer. PLEASE CAN WE ALL BEGIN TO LEARN OUR TIMES TABLES BY HEART! I suggest we begin by learning these times tables first:  X2, X3, X4, X5, X10. Science 'Rocks and Soils' unit has helped us to begin to understand how rocks are formed and the different types of rocks: sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous. If you go on-line to a children's educational website like the BBC Science Clips (see link below): http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/7_8/rocks_soils.shtml  or to the library, you could read some interesting children's non-fiction books on this topic. Happy research and reading!