Tonga Class Year 3
December 2022
This half term we have been learning about the Stone Age. In English we have read the book ‘Stone Age Boy’ by Satoshi Kitamura and created our own narrative pieces based on this story.
In history, we have become archaeologists and explored sources of evidence to help us deduce certain information about the way Stone Age people lived. We have learned about the transition to the Bronze Age and have even explored the Amesbury Archer’s virtual grave!
PE has been really inspiring this half term. Our cricket coach has taught us a variety of skills including how to correctly hold a cricket bat and how to bowl. We braved the elements and great fun in the process!
In maths, we have continued to build on our knowledge and understanding of addition and subtraction using the formal column method. We are looking forward to exploring multiplication and division when we return after the Christmas break.
Tonga Class Update November 2022
After a well-deserved half-term break, it has been lovely to see that the children in Tonga class are happy and excited to begin our Stone Age topic. This half-term, we will be learning all about life in the Stone Ages and comparing how they lived back then to how we live now. We will be finding out about their houses, their clothing, what they ate and how they lived. In Art, there will be opportunities for the children to produce their very own cave paintings and they will use their colour-mixing skills to create Stone Henge silhouette artwork.
As a class, we have been reading a book, based on the Stone Ages, called ‘The Wild Way Home’ by Sophie Kirtley. It is a story about a boy called Charlie whose baby brother is born with a serious heart condition. Upset and afraid, Charlie flees the hospital and makes for the ancient forest on the edge of town. There Charlie finds a boy floating face-down in the stream, injured, but alive. When Charlie sets off to fetch help, it seems the forest has changed. It's become a place as strange and wild as the boy dressed in deerskins. Charlie has unwittingly fled into the Stone Age. How will he get home? Tonga class are gripped already!
In English, we have written instructions on ‘How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth’. We had to learn how to structure our writing to add all of the features we needed including the important imperative verbs. Thankfully, the children remembered to add the essential rubber duck to the bath with the woolly mammoth!
We will then be writing diary entries as if we were a child living in the Stone Ages. We will use all of our knowledge from our history lessons to help make these diary entries as realistic and factual as possible. Before we break up for the Christmas holiday, Tonga class will be writing their very own Stone Age story. We will be using the book ‘The Stone Age Boy’ by Satoshi Kitamura to inspire our writing.
In Maths, we are going to be continuing with our addition and subtraction unit. We will be introducing the column methods for both addition and subtraction and the children will be using exchanging, supported using concrete and visual resources. After a few weeks, we will be moving on to multiplication and division. Here the children will learn all about arrays, sharing and equal groups with the focus being on the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.
So far this half-term, the children in Tonga class have really enjoyed a new approach to their maths problem-solving and reasoning. The ‘Goal-Free Problem Solving’ lessons that we have completed have been really successful. In these sessions, the children are given some data/information to look at in small groups. They have to come up with different questions that they could ask about the information they have been given. This discussion encourages the children to think about the types of questions that they come across in their maths curriculum each day. It also instils confidence for when they approach their problem-solving and reasoning (PSR) questions in their independent work.
We are looking forward to another fun-filled half-term together!
OCTOBER 2022
In Tonga class this half term we have been exploring 'Place Value' in maths using a variety of resources to find different ways of representing numbers. We are now using our understanding of place value to add and subtract with a variety of methods. We have read the story of Fantastic Mr Fox and have been exploring the use of prepositions, verbs and adjectives, writing character descriptions and we are now enjoying completing our own stories. We really enjoyed the PSHE day where we learned about: the importance of sleep, friendship resolutions, some mindfulness strategies and took part in a Life Education workshop.
