The Big Idea

What on earth is happening beneath our feet? The tectonic plates that form the Earth’s crust are always moving. Even the smallest movement can cause huge earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis that devastate communities across wide areas. If we can understand what is happening underground, we can learn to predict and protect ourselves in the future. What can we learn from rocks? As stupendous Scientists, we will compare and group together different kinds of rocks on the basis of their appearance and simple physical properties, this knowledge will help us to describe how fossils are formed. As hands-on Historians, we will visit the Warren and collect fossils, like the esteemed fossil hunter Mary Anning. We will then use these artefacts to help us to describe and explain the passage of time. As amazing artists, we will develop our use of sketch books and consider how these can support us in refining our observational and sketching skills.

RE

This term in RE we have been learning about what different people about God. As part of this unit, we learnt about how Christians see God as the Holy Trinity, saying God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

We then created our own Holy Trinity’s, creating pictures to represent God in these three ways, just like a Christian would.

Hello Yellow!

We celebrated World Mental health day by coming to school dressed in something yellow. We also learnt about doodle boy and then as a school we created our own whole school doodle. We used lines and shapes to create things of our choice. Some of us chose to create doodles of our favourite food or favourite hobby, whilst, others decided to create different styles and patterns.

Topic 

We have been focussing on Geography in our topic lessons over the last couple of weeks. We have learnt all out the layers of the Earth and re-created these using different coloured playdough.

‘The crust is the top layer. We live on the crust.’

‘Underneath us is the mantle. It is very hot here.’

‘The outer core and inner core are made or iron and nickel. One of liquid and one is solid.’

Then we learnt about the tectonic plates and where they are in the world. We found out there are 3 different types of movements; divergent, convergent and transform. We learnt actions to help us learn these. Everybody was then collaborative cats to re-create the world’s tectonic plates.

Fossil Hunting at The Warren

In Creative Curriculum, we have been learning all about rocks and fossils whilst in English we have learnt the story ‘Stone Girl, Bone Girl’. We all went on a trip to The Warren in Folkestone to become fossil hunters like Mary Anning.

We found lots of exciting fossils and some of us were even chipping away at clay to try and get fossils out.

‘There’s lots of fossils in the clay. I’m like Pepper, trying to get the snakestone out.’

‘These fossils look like spirals.’

‘This one is a bit like a tooth.’

Everyone was a responsible raccoon and adventurous aardvark for the whole morning and had a great time being a palaeontologist for the morning.

Yoga

We have had our termly yoga lesson with Adele. We learnt lots of new skills as we have moved into KS2. We learnt the sun salutation and then played yoga Jenga to practice various yoga positions.

Everyone was a respectful rabbit and open-minded octopus throughout the lesson.

Creative Curriculum

As part of our creative curriculum topic, extreme environments, we created our own wormery. A group of children went to dig for worms whilst the rest of the class created the wormeries using sand and soil.

English

In English, we have been learning how to write a set of instructions. We were collaborative cats to build sentences using language through colour. Some of us were even adventurous aardvarks to extend our sentences using conjunctions.

Music

Year 3 are lucky to be learning how to play the ukulele this year. We have music lessons with Mr Cook and we have all been open-minded octopi to give it a go even when things are difficult. So far, we have learnt how to hold the ukulele correctly, strum and are now beginning to learn all about chords.

Learning Lift-off

To launch our topic of ‘Extreme Environments’ we learnt all about fossils. We created our own replica fossils using a variety of materials.

“The playdough was the seabed.”

“We squished it down in the cup like it was the bottom of the ocean.”

“The dead creature was the pasta and it sank to the bottom of the ocean after it died.”

“Over millions of years, sand or dirt covers the dead creature and it begins to rot.”

“Eventually, minerals filled these gaps and hardens.”

“This is the fossil.”

“I saw the print of the pasta shell to show the fossil print.”