Year 3 have been continue to show great enthusiasm in their learning over the last few weeks. We were very lucky to have an RE workshop about Christianity. During the session, we spoke about the different symbols of Christmas and what a Christingle is. The children were also able to create their very own Christingle in a small group. They all looked wonderful!

We have also been hard at work developing our understanding of multiplication. This week, we spent some time exploring the column method for multiplying large 2 digit numbers by a single digit number (for example: 35 x 8=?). The children have worked really hard to increase their speed with their fluency as well as articulating how to solve the calculations. We have started to also look at reasoning this method; for example, we have had an example of a calculation having been solved by the column method and then explained whether it was correct or not (and why).

Our writing journey this week is looking at writing a persuasive letter to the local MP explaining that we want to protect the world by reducing the amount of single use plastic. The children came up with some wonderful ideas about how we can prevent the waste of single use plastic, such as: reusable bottles, more recycling bins, as well as reasons why we need to do this, for example: marine animals are eating the plastic, the oceans are polluted, the environment is dirty.

One of our favourite projects this week has been creating our model volcanoes using paper mache and recycled materials. Before we began making the volcanoes, we explored how to make them, planned the resources we would need and wrote a set of instructions explaining how to make them. This was really beneficial when it came to the making process as all children were aware of what they needed to do. Finally, we used the now, press, play headsets to consolidate our understanding of the water cycle.