We have spent time this week reflecting on inspiring individuals and their amazing achievements from our prior learning including Mae Jemison and Mary Seacole. In our reading lessons, we were introduced to other significant individuals including Rosa Parks, a very brave and determined activist and Guion Bluford, the first African American to go into space.

We discussed why ‘Black History Month’ is celebrated – to share, celebrate and understand the impact of black heritage and culture and that in the past, the achievements of many individuals has been overlooked or distorted.

We enjoyed researching other individuals and then sharing interesting facts about them and their incredible achievements with each other…

This week, we visited Moor Allerton Library to learn about the different types of books that we could borrow for free. We asked the local librarian questions and got a chance to read and explore new stories and information books. We love reading in 3BC!

This week in PSHE, we have been learning about boundaries. Boundaries are limits that help us understand what is acceptable behaviour and what is not, both for ourselves and for others. We role-played as a class this week, focusing on how to set positive boundaries when dealing with bullying. We want to take action and be empowered to be upstanders. We also listened to an extremely catchy song—take a listen!

3BC has been thinking about our big question this half term: ‘What links can you make between the Stone Age and now?’ We have been using our enquiring minds to think about similarities, differences, and how we connect our learning together.

‘Making links means when you already know something and you can add to it to make it bigger and better. There was three periods in the stone age, Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic. They used tools to catch animals but we used tool to build things. They used flint. Flint is sedimentary rock just like in the chalk pit in ‘Stig of the dump’ Sofia

‘Make links means making ideas. Thinking of something that links to something you already know. We still make houses out of wood like in the stone age.’ Amen

‘Making links means thinking about something that you already know about. I pick out an idea so then I can remember what information I have… I am good at making links because I watch archaeologists on TV and use this in lessons.  Stone age people communicate by cave drawing. We still do this but with paper.’ William

Have you ever wondered what is in soil? In Science, 3BC has been exploring all the different things that make up the ground beneath our feet. We discovered that soil is much more than just dirt! It’s actually a mix of tiny broken rocks, water, air, and decaying plants and animals. Take a look at our cups. Can you remember our ingredients for making soil? We also discovered there are many layers of soil and rock—can you name them all?

We are enjoying beginning to learn some Spanish in 3BC…

Over the past couple of weeks, we have learnt how to greet one another, how to ask how somebody is feeling and ask somebody their name. We can also respond to these questions.

We enjoyed having some short conversations with our friends in Spanish.

We are all hooked by our current History topic…learning all about what life was like in Britain during the Stone Age and how this changed over time.

This week, we were very keep to deepen our knowledge of the tools that were used, how they were made, their different uses and how they developed over time. We used some of the non-fiction books in our classroom and enjoyed sharing some of the facts we learnt with each other.

We also watched a video of a local historian explaining how tools were refined as the Stone Age progressed. For example, in the Neolithic period, it is believed that people began to ground and polish their tools to make them harder and sharper.

We have all really enjoyed reading the story ‘Stone Age Boy’ in our reading lessons and this has also linked with our history learning by helping us to understand how people lived during the Stone Age. We were challenged to use the text to find some information about how tools were made and used, how food was cooked and how animal skins were used. In order to find the relevant information, we ‘previewed’ the text. (This means we scanned over it, noticing key words and phrases).

To help us infer the main character’s thoughts and feelings, we worked collaboratively to act out different parts of the story. When doing this, we tried to consider our facial expressions and body language too.

What a super second week we have had in 3BC! We are all getting more familiar with the routines of Year 3 and have been excited to begin the first topics of the year. The children have wowed us with their enthusiastic attitudes.

In our writing lessons, we focused on the text ‘Tell Me A Dragon’ by Jackie Morris. We enjoyed creating our own dragon and then worked hard to write some sentences to describe it. How amazing they all are…

We kick started our place value learning in Maths and over the next few weeks we will be looking at numbers to 1000. We already know that 3-digit numbers are made up of some hundreds, some tens and some ones. To help us to develop a secure understanding of this, we have used the Base Ten to make different numbers and then used part-part-whole models to partition them.

We were all very excited to begin our first History topic! For this, we need to travel back a very very long time ago to The Stone Age. Life in Britain looked incredibly different to how it is today! To help us begin to understand how people lived during this time, we read the story ‘Stone Age Boy’. We were fascinated to learn how so many things could be made using flint! We already have so many questions about life during this time which we’ll hopefully find the answers to over the next few weeks.

We ended the week planting some wheat seeds with Mrs Wake…