Year 3

Year 3’s inquiry this term has been all about how the discovery of new materials has changed lives throughout history. We have travelled from the Stone Age through to the Iron Age, learning about what people’s lives were like during each period.

The term started out with an exciting creative arts workshop where the children considered what natural landscapes are like. This led on to our provocation where the children started to think about what life would have been like when we only had natural materials for tools.

As we started delving deeper into our inquiry, the children wrote instructions for how to make Stone Age tools and practiced their spear throwing skills. They quickly realised that catching a mammoth would not have been as easy as it seems! They very much enjoyed reading Ug, a humorous take on life in the Stone Age, as well as our class reader, Stig of the Dump. In Science, the children investigated the characteristics of rocks and considered how Stone Age people would have used different rocks.

In mid-November, we headed out to Lesnes Abbey Woods for our trip. The children were able to handle Stone Age tools and had a go at making and testing their own tools. The afternoon was then spent digging for fossils in the fossil pit. The excitement was palpable as the children frantically dug, finding many shells and the odd shark’s tooth from the bottom of the former Blackheath Sea.

The end of the term has mainly been focussed on writing, interspersed with some sewing to create Iron Age bags. The children wrote narratives about ‘Bronze Age Boy’, our sequel to the book ‘Stone Age Boy’, which ended in dramatic cliffhangers. The final project of the term was a colourful double page spread summing up everything they have learnt about our inquiry. They were shared with parents via class dojo and, I’m sure they’ll agree, the children all did a fantastic job!