Class 3 - Year 3 and 4

Mrs Brown is the class teacher and she is supported by our teaching assistant, Mrs Overland.

In Class 3 we work hard to create a calm and positive environment where everyone can achieve their very best. The children will become confident, resilient learners who thrive on challenging themselves in all areas of the curriculum. They will meet a wide range of topics that are carefully designed to excite and engage them in their learning. 

PE days

Our PE days this half term are Wednesdays and Thursdays.  Children should come to school wearing their PE kit on these days.

Homework

Homework will be given out on Fridays and needs to be completed and handed in by the following Thursday.  Each week your child will receive a maths task and a grammar task linked to their learning in class.  They will also receive a spelling list and are expected to practise their individual times tables target.

Art 

Class 3 were challenged with creating visual notes about one of our focused artists. They all created some fantastic work!

Outdoor maths

Year 3 took their learning about measurement outside and used their knowledge of cm and m to measure different things in our playground.

Living things and their habitats

To begin our new topic, we went on a walk in our beautiful surroundings to search for habitats and any animals that might be there. We spotted birds, worms, cows, spiders, ants and even our resident ducks!

Gestural drawing with charcoal

Our art journey over the autumn term has involved appreciating artwork from Heather Hansen, Laura McKendry and Edgar Degas.  We have discovered how to make drawings that capture a sense of drama and performance using charcoal. At the end of the unit we created a huge piece of art using the hall floor as our canvas and used our whole body to create the finished piece.

Prayer

Class 3 have enjoyed learning about prayer this half term.  We have tried a range of ways of communicating with God including using our prayer wall in the classroom, using a sorry string, a jar of tears and lighting up the darkness with our hopes for the future using our doves of peace.

British Values 

During our autumn term, we have been exploring the british values of democracy and rule of law. We have learned about voting, campaigning and even elected our own class prime minister! Following on from this we have thought about the importance of rules using a range of games to aide our understanding.  Class 3 created their own board games and thought carefully about the rules.

Design Technology

Class 3 were challenged to make a tipper truck! They spent time researching their designs and working as a team to create a working tipper truck. Lots of great skills displayed by all of the children - well done class 3!

Religious Education

Class 3 have been learning about the Jewish festival of Sukkot. We used our knowledge to go outside and make our own Sukkah. We explained to each other what happens inside a Sukkah during the festival and what it represents.

Friendship week

During friendship week, our focus was respect. We took part in a BBC Live lesson all about respect and created some acrostic poems based on our learning, We decided that we should celebrate our differences and always work together as a team.

Art in Class 3

Class 3 have been exploring using charcoal in their current art topic. We have made charcoal palettes and used our fingers, fists and arms to create artwork.

Science

Our autumn topic has been light and we have completed a range of investigations exploring light and shadows.  

We were amazed by the results of our investigation to find out what happens to the enamel on our teeth when we drink different drinks.  We tried to brush the eggs with toothpaste to see if we could alter their appearance. 

Observations over time are one of the key building block in our Science curriculum and enable the children to make predictions, record their results, label drawings and think of further comparative tests.

The Water Cycle 

We have been learning about the water cycle as part of our Science topic about States of Matter.  We all made a water cycle in a bag and we will be observing them over the coming weeks to see the process of evaporation and condensation take place.  We have also learnt a song which helps us to remember what happens.

Geography

We had a super afternoon learning how to use a compass and playing games to help us to remember the 8 points of a compass.  We then used Google Earth to locate Howick Primary School as well as Antarctica which we have been learning all about.

Georgia O'Keefe 

Throughout our art topic we have been focussing on Georgia O'Keefe.  We enjoyed looking at some of her most famous paintings and exploring what we liked about them.  I have been so impressed by the creativity and attention to detail displayed by everyone.  We began by experimenting with different sketching techniques before moving on to creating different effects with paint.  Our final piece which was making and painting clay poppies.

Grouping and classifying

We took our learning outside today and thought about the different ways we could group and classify animals. Some children decide to explore nutrition (carnivores, herbivores and omnivores) whilst others chose to focus on habitats.

CSI visit

What an amazing experience! We were so excited to welcome the CSI team into Class 3 to learn all about solving crimes and what it would be like to be a crime scene investigator.  We learnt how to take fingerprints and footprints as well as making DNA bracelets based on our characteristics. 

Alexander Calder inspired sculptures

Class 3 have enjoyed learning about Alexander Calder and using his work as inspiration for creating their own wire sculptures. After recapping different sketching techniques, we drew self portraits and single line portraits before using these as an outline for our sculptures.  We are so proud of our artwork!

Galloways

Well done to Class 3 for a fantastic trip to Galloways.  We have learnt about sight loss and way to look after our eyes.  

Prayer

We have been experiencing different ways to pray in Class 3 and have made some new additions to our classroom as a result of our RE learning.  We had several prayer stations around the room for us to visit and experience, these included; quiet reflection, a bottle of tears to share our worries or sadness, planting a poppy to remember someone special, a drawing station and finally a prayer wall.  A clear favourite was the prayer wall which is based upon the wailing wall in Jerusalem where people write their prayers onto small pieces of paper and push them into to cracks in the wall. 

We are continuing to use our prayer wall and bottle of tears and are excited to try other ways of praying. We are excited to start using our prayer tree in the new year.

Sound investigation

As part of our sound topic, Class 3 made their own cup telephones to investigate how sound travels.  We had some fantastic discussions about how sound travels faster through a solid and a liquid or a gas.  We have enjoyed learning about sound and have explored pitch and volume using a range of musical instruments.

Dodgeball

Well done to our dodgeball team who were fantastic during the recent competition.  They all showed our Howick values, had lots of fun and came an amazing third!

Outdoor maths

Year 4 took their learning outdoors this week and created number lines on the playground.  They have worked hard to master calculating missing numbers on number lines to 10 000 and were excited to make their own challenges for their friends to complete.  

Howick Historians

We received an exciting delivery in Class 3 today, asking for our help to analyse the recent findings from a new archaeological dig site in Ribchester!  The children were shocked to discover that we had been selected to dissect poo samples to try and identify which period of history the dig site dated back to.  We were all up for the challenge and carefully dissected the samples and researched the diets of people living in different periods of history. After much discussion, we concluded that it was from the Roman times and we are excited to continue our learning about the Romans!

Find your happy!

 We loved reading Emily Coxhead's 'Find your happy!' and decided we wanted to spread our positivity throughout our school.  We made postcards of positivity filled with messages to give others hope and happiness.

We are scientists!

Class 3 were tasked with investigating the melting points of chocolate as part of our states of matter topic this week. We discussed how to make it a fair test and wrote some fantastic predictions. Lots of discussions took place about what we would do differently next time and also trying to understand why the chocolates had different melting points!

Geography 

We have been learning about the water cycle in Class 3 this half term and have made our very own water cycle in a bag.  By monitoring these daily, the children have been able to fully explore and understand the different stages of the cycle.  

Learning from experts is important at Howick, therefore we invited United Utilities into our class to help us understand more about water usage, waste water and the water cycle.  We all enjoyed the workshop and have been learning the water cycle song!

Citizenship

As part of our PSHE topic on Citizenship, Class 3 have been thinking about what it means to vote and how decisions are made in the local area . We role played being residents and councillors to try and decide what our priorities would be. We learnt how difficult it is to keep everyone in the community happy! 

Tennis lesson

Class 3 were full of energy and enthusiasm during their tennis session this week! We had the chance to practise lots of new racket skills ready for our next PE topic.

World Book Day

What a fanatic day we had celebrating World Book Day. Everyone looked amazing in their costumes! We enjoyed our writing workshop with an author as well as lots of opportunities to read our favourite books with a hot chocolate. The highlight of our day was inviting Class 1 to join us with their books so we could all share a story.

Exploring the meaning of trust

Our RE topic for this half term has led us to explore what is meant by trust and betrayal. We had a discussion to share our initial thoughts before having a go at some trust exercises. The trust fall really helped us to identify the barriers to trust and we then looked at examples of trust in the Easter story.

Science challenge

As part of our animals including humans topic, Class 3 accepted the challenge to create a life sized skeleton using resources they could find in the classroom. They did a fantastic job of drawing, building and labelling the skeletons. Lots of great teamwork and communication too - well done everyone! 

Judges Lodgings Lancaster

Class 3 were transported back to the Victorian era during our trip to Judges Lodgings and had the opportunity to live life as a servant, attend a Victorian school, as well as visiting a servant’s cottage and playing some Victorian children’s games. We all had an amazing day and we were impressed by the children’s enthusiasm and engagement!

Lancashire Day - active mile

To celebrate Lancashire Day on the 27th November, we completed an active mile with a twist! Class 3 were twirling, skipping, lunging, hopping and side-stepping their way round our track to complete their mile.

Maths World Cup 2021

Well done to everyone in Class 3 for taking part in the Maths World Cup competition. We embarked on a deep sea adventure led by Captain Brown and the Class 3 crew mates did not disappoint! Amazing energy throughout - combining times tables practise and keeping fit and all with massive smiles.

Diwali

Class 3 have learnt lots about Diwali, including the story of Rama and Sita, how it is the festival of light and what some of our friends are doing to celebrate this special time.  We made and decorated our own lanterns to display in our classroom. 

Breaking down barriers workshop

We had a fantastic day learning about different faiths and cultures.  We had the opportunity to ask lots of questions as well as celebrate our differences.  We had so much fun learning some new dances too!

Black History Month

We have enjoyed learning about Ruby Bridges.  We talked about her story, it’s significance, how she would have felt and her legacy., linking this to our school values.  Our writing shows how we have been inspired by her life.

Coding Week in Class 3

We have had a great week in Class 3 learning how to create programs to make objects move, make sound and draw on the screen.  We used the 2Code program on Purple Mash to program different sprites.  We then tested our code and debugged any errors.  Here are some examples of our work

Leon and the place between 

Class 3 were invited to a very special magic show this week hosted by Magician Brown! 

After receiving their ticket, they entered the magical tent through a sea of brightly coloured streamers before being seated with popcorn ready for the show to begin!

We had so much fun starting our new Literacy topic with lots of book talk and making predictions.  

We cannot wait to share our new story together and begin our writing.