What we are learning at the moment

English

Our English lessons are driven high quality reading texts and are designed above all to inspire a life-long love of reading and writing. Where appropriate, pupils continue to receive targeted reading interventions to help with word recognition and decoding skills following the Read Write Inc. scheme and the Precision Teach approach.

In the first half of the Spring term we looked at a fabulous non-fiction book called The Big Blue Whale by Nicola Davies, and we read this alongside Michael Morpurgo's fantastic This Morning I Met a Whale. In this topic we use a wide range of non-fiction texts to research all about marine mammals and what makes them special. We use all of this new knowledge to present an engaging podcast about whales. But while we want to celebrate these incredible creatures, we also want to think about the threats they face as an endangered species and what we can do to keep them safe. That's why we will be writing a persuasive leaflet all about plastic pollution in the ocean. We will be practising using subheadings to organise our writing, and a range of rhetorical techniques (like talking directly to the reader) to make them really convincing!

Mathematics

In Mathematics so far this year the children have been developing their understanding of place value in three-digit numbers. We have looked at addition and subtraction of three-digit numbers, using a wide range of mental and written strategies to help us, including column formation. We are now focusing on multiplication and division, introducing our new Year 3 times tables: the 3s, 4s and 8s. We then look at multiplying 2-digit numbers before moving on to new topics, including length and perimeter and fractions.

Science

We have some fantastic scientific brains in Ash Class!  Our first Science topic of the year was all about forces and magnets. We performed experiments to compare the friction produced by different surfaces. We investigated magnets and found out that they have two different sides, called poles, and that these sides can repel or attract each other. Like poles push each other away and different poles pull together. Then we made our own compasses using magnet sling and by floating magnets in water and found out that one side always points towards the North pole and the other side always points South! We also looked at light and shadow, thinking about how light moves and where shadows come from. We did some exciting experiments to find out more about how to make shadows bigger and smaller too.

Our first topic this Spring is all about rocks and fossils. We're going to be classifying rocks into different types and learning all about the 'rock cycle' and how they are formed. We'll also be investigating fossils and thinking about why we can find them in certain types of rocks but not in others!

Foundation subjects

Our Geography topic for this term is all about the United Kingdom.

In Art we're going to be thinking about patterns, taking inspiration from the wonderful William Morris and working on producing our own ink-printed wallpaper.

In Spanish we have been learning some key Spanish phonemes so that we can pronounce words in the right way and practising greetings. 

In Computing we'll be looking at how to find information on the internet and how to make sure that what we find our is reliable.