Captain Sir Tom Moore Memorial Maths Challenge

30th April would have been the 101st birthday of Captain Sir Tom Moore, the WW2 veteran who raised so much money for NHS charities during the 2020 lockdown.

In memory of Captain Tom, the children at Swan Lane have today been undertaking a number of different maths challenges, all centred around the number 100.  Year 3's challenge related to coins and measurement.  The children had to lay 100 1p coins in a row and work out how long such a row of coins would be, and how much it was worth.  They then had to do the same with 2p and 5p coins, predicting whether the lines would be longer or shorter.

Let There Be Light!

For our science lessons this half term, we will be learning all about Light and Darkness.  This week, we learnt about different light sources, and that darkness is simply the absence of light.  We also ironed out some misconceptions about the moon (it's not a light source!) and cats' eyes in the road (they're not sources of light either!).

Big Writing - w/b Monday 3rd May

For our next Big Writing we will once again be basing our writing on Ted Hughes’ ‘The Iron Man.’ We will be writing a newspaper report describing the first sighting of The Iron Man.  This is a two week writing unit, so we will complete our final Big Write on Friday 14th May.

It would be useful if you could discuss and practise the following with your child:

· using the word of the week ‘surreal’

· Talk about the features of a newspaper report: the headline, subheaded paragraphs, eye-witness quotes.

· Try to think of a catchy headline to describe the first sighting of the mysterious Iron Man.

Many thanks,

Mrs Vaqueiro

 

Crime and Punishment - Roman Style!

For our History lessons this half term, Year 3 will be undertaking a thematic study of Crime and Punishment through the ages.  To kick off our fascinating new topic, the children learnt the basics about the legal system introduced to Britain by the Romans - some of which is still used to this day!  For example, did you know that Courts, Judges and Juries were all Roman inventions?  

Thankfully, though, some aspects of Roman justice no longer apply: in Roman times, a person's social status had just as much impact on their punishment as the crime they had committed!  A noble criminal would be more likely to escape really dreadful punishment, while the poor slaves usually came to a sticky end.

Having had a whistle-stop tour of the legal framework, the children learnt about some of the gruesome punishments inflicted on Roman criminals.  In our class courtroom, six rotten Roman criminals were put through their paces by the rest of the class, who acted as the Prosecutors, Judges and Juries.

For the crime of spreading nasty gossip about someone, our noble criminal was exiled (sent away from the country forever), while a slave who merely overheard another servant talking about wanting to poison the master of the house ended up being sentenced to crucifixion!  A murderous Roman citizen was sentenced to be sewn into a sack with a variety of fierce animals and thrown into a river, while an arsonist was sentenced to being burnt to death.

We ended the lesson with time to reflect on the harshness of Roman justice, and a class discussion as to whether a person's social status should really make any difference to the way they are treated.

Big Writing - w/b 26th April 2021

For next week’s Big Writing we will be continuing our work on Ted Hughes’ ‘The Iron Man.’ 

We will be writing a narrative piece describing the moment when The Iron Man first appears to Hogarth.

It would be useful if you could discuss and practise the following with your child:

·  Using the word of the week ‘crepuscular’ (relating to twilight)

·  Talk about feelings and emotions, and how they affect the body e.g. knees turning to jelly when someone is afraid.

· Practise sequencing events by using different expressions relating to time e.g. Suddenly, Moments later, After a while.

Thank you,                                                                   

Mrs Vaqueiro

 

Our Wonderful Work!

This week in 3V we have been reading our new class book, 'The Iron Man' by Ted Hughes.  We have been looking at some of the different features of Hughes' writing, and today we've been comparing the opening section of 'The Iron Man' to the opening lines of some other famous books.  

We discovered some of the tricks that authors use to engage the reader's attention and entice them into reading further, and then we had a go at drafting our own opening paragraphs, trying to emulate Hughes' writing style by choosing powerful verbs to add depth of meaning, and using rhetorical questions and deliberate repetition for emphasis.  

Here are some examples of our work - Mrs Vaqueiro was absolutely blown away by how good they are, and we hope you are too!