We have been looking at some of the sounds we have learned and used them in our play. Our daily writing has been fantastic with great recounts, clear instructions and exciting narratives being written so far.

Our daily reading is focusing on fluency, understanding of the characters thoughts and summarising the main ideas of what we have been reading.  We hope you have had a chance to hear them practise their fluency at home too. The huge Giglets library will give everyone a chance to show off their skills Our library day will continue to be Thursday for the time being.

Some of  the class nominated themselves to become MMPs (Members of Maidenhill Parliament) and prepared campaign speeches and posters. The voters listened very well, considered their skills (and campaign promises) and voted.  After the secret votes were counted, Aasiyah was elected as our MMP. We are sure she will do a fantastic job! 

We have been using our target system to help us manage our time well (part of our Class Charter) and achieve our numeracy targets each day. We also co-create our own targets, usually with a partner or using a specific skill.  We are documenting our learning with photographs. 

We have been using concrete materials to support our visualisation of addition,  subtraction and place value.

We have been counting in 2, 5 and 10, ordering larger numbers and using what we know about addition within 10 to help us add tens and hundreds.

Our team working skills have been honed by playing and creating a large ship using wire frames in class, communicating and compromising to make it strong and manoeuvrable.  It's maiden voyage across the Atrium passed without incident!

We have been drafting and using our Class Charter in P3A (and doing our bit towards helping Maidenhill achieve RRS Silver status!)

We have been learning about what rights are important to our classroom (there are a lot of them!)

In class we talked together and decided the right to play, the right to have your opinion heard, the right to be protected from being hurt and the right to an education were the most important for our classroom.  

We decided what the pupil's should do and what adults should do to make those rights happen and then we all signed up to agree to try our best to do just that.  

The class has voted for Jessica to be our class Equality representative at school meetings. 

We have been developing our narrative writing skills further, focusing on creating interesting characters and settings in our stories. Our writing has included some fantastic descriptions of characters through their feelings, actions and physical appearances. We also created plots with turning points, using the word "suddenly" to make some exciting twists in our tales! 

In reading, we have continued to work on fluency and adding expression to show our understanding of texts. Children have demonstrated that they can use lots of strategies to decode words, such as familiar phonemes, onset and rime, and clues from the context, plot and illustrations. 

The class have participated in lots of group discussions this block, sharing their ideas and providing feedback to each other through asking and answering questions. We will continue to use these skills in the next block as we will be working on class presentations which will link in with our Space context.

We have been looking at the properties of shapes and identifying which shapes can tessellate. Pupils got creative exploring and making artistic tiled patterns through use of concrete materials, digital resources and by drawing them using dotted paper. 

In numeracy, we have continued to build on our knowledge of place value by working on carrying and exchange when adding and subtracting larger numbers. We have also looked at multiplication facts for the 2 and 4 times tables and discussed the link between multiplying and dividing, using lots of practical examples. 

A wide range of concrete resources are available to the class to choose from to support their learning when completing independent targets. A regular target in class is to complete our "Daily 10" calculations, just like the weekly half dozen homework task. This gives us lots of practice to hone our mental maths skills!

We have been talking about our feelings. We used the characters from Inside Out to help us brainstorm what each emotion looks like on the outside and how it makes us feel on the inside. The class worked collaboratively to create brilliant posters which were used to help us describe feelings in our narrative writing. We had fun using drama and music to portray different feelings and made plans of how we could manage our emotions in different situations. 

In PE, we have enjoyed playing hockey and have learned a range of different ways to pass and control the ball. 

In Science, the class looked at the Global Goals for sustainable development, and created "perfect countries" that showed what could happen if we help to achieve these goals. 

Since the start of P3, the class have worked hard to complete over 2000 targets! To celebrate this achievement we enjoyed a teddy bear's party before the October week, which included games, dancing and some tasty treats!