Welcome to Class 3 - Lions!

The Lions are a split class of Year 3 and Year 4 children. Our class teacher is Miss Grant and our Teaching and Learning Assistant is Mrs Payne. 
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Spring 1, Week 5 

We have been perfecting our dance in preparation for the dance festival on Thursday - it's looking fab and hopefully you will get to see it very soon! We have been working on measuring in maths and converting cm into mm and vice versa. In English, we have learnt about fronted adverbials and the present perfect tense (both very tricky concepts!!). In history, we looked at some artefacts from the bronze age and made predictions using evidence. We have looked at Internet Safety and Children's mental health this week and created posters for staying safe on the internet as well as starting to organise an event to connect with the elderly in Baslow.

Spring 1, Week 4

Happy Friday and Happy Weekend! We have had a very busy week but had lots of fun! On Monday, we started the week by making our own natural paints using spices, leaves, mud etc. It was super messy!! We have finished the dance for the year 3 dance competition and we are hoping to organise a showcase for you to see it too! We have been learning about the stave in music and the notes that go in the spaces on the treble clef - FACE. On Friday, we did some amazing perspective art which I’m sure they would love to show you at home (if they can remember how to do it!). In English, they wrote some incredible letters which I would love you to see at open door and in maths, Year 4s are perfecting their 12 times table and short multiplication whilst Year 3s have been dividing using sharing (and finding remainders!). We have had an amazing world of work week with many special guests and a great trip to Young Voices. Follow along to find out about all the fun things we do on our instagram page @baslowschool
 

Spring 1, Week 3

I hope you're all well and looking forward to another week ahead! We have had a lovely week perfecting our grid multiplication, writing amazing newspaper reports and continuing to find out about Prehistory. We had a look at Skara Brae and asked questions and predictions for items in a stone age house. In PE, we are continuing our dance to Me Ol Bamboo from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - it's looking awesome so far! In music, we composed our own pentatonic scale piece of music and in topic we found out a bit more about Lunar New Year and their traditions.

This week we are having a World of Work week where we are welcoming some familiar faces into collective worship to tell us about their careers and hopefully inspire the school to find out about different jobs.

Spring 1, Week 2

I hope you're having a wonderful weekend! Here is an overview of some of the fun things we've been doing.
In English, we have been reading The Iron Man and planning for our newspaper report. In maths, we have multiplied and divided by 10 as well as working out the perimeter of irregular shapes and year 3 have started learning how to multiply 2 digit numbers by 1 digit. In music, we learnt about the pentatonic scale and played it on the glockenspiel. In art, we used charcoal to draw animals and in science, we experimented which material would make a good earmuff to block out sound.

Spring 1, Week 1

This week, we had our memorable moment day with an introduction into our ‘who first lived in Britain?’ topic! We did cave art under the tables, learnt a range of skills from javelin to braiding and found out about animals and the vocabulary. This week, we have also started multiplying by 10 as well as finding the perimeter of 2D shapes. In music, we looked at music associated with Chinese New Year and in science we started our topic of sound!
 

Autumn 2, Week 7

We have had such a fun week, we’ve been creating Pompom decorations, Christmas cards and of course the infamous chocolate bars!! We designed and created our chocolate bar wrappers and then wrote play scripts to advertise their bars! We performed our recorder piece to the WI on Wednesday and they LOVED it so we are very much looking forward to performing to you on Tuesday at the service. On Monday, we helped with the children from Cliff College and created activities for them to take part in!

Autumn 2, Week 6

We’ve had a fantastic week in the Lions! We’ve made some beautiful decorations ready for you to purchase at the Christmas Enterprise Fair tomorrow starting at 3! We have been designing our chocolate bars and created posters ready for making on Thursday. In Maths, we’ve had a big push on our times tables which are hopefully getting better and better the more we practise! In Geography, we’ve been looking at volcanoes and learning the technical vocabulary. Our jingle bells rendition is getting better but please bring in your recorders TOMORROW to keep in all week so we can practise as much as possible!
 

Autumn 2, Week 5

We had a great (slightly tiring) week last week! We learnt about adverts and what features are included for example alliteration, rhetorical questions, adjectives and slogans. In topic, we looked at OS maps and used the grid references to find things on a real OS map of Snowdonia. In maths, we looked at estimating in order for us to make a good guess and then started to look at multiplication. We created collages of volcanoes using a range of materials as well as continuing to learn our recorder. Thank you for bringing in your books for the advent - it's been lovely sharing our favourites!

Autumn 2, Week 4

In the Lions this week, we had a wonderful time exploring different maps focussing on OS maps and looking at Snowdon as part of our topic. We looked at map symbols and next week will have a look at the difference between mountains and volcanoes as well as other natural disasters. In art, we learnt about Frida Kahlo and then created our own self portraits with our favourite things in the background. In maths, we have been practising column subtraction as well as perfecting our 8 times table (one of the trickier ones to remember!). In RE, we looked at the importance of water in the Bible and found several stories which used water including Noah's Ark, Jesus walking on water and Moses parting the Red Sea. As I'm sure you will have heard, we have also been practising our recorders, hopefully our wonderful jingle bells tune is stuck in your head like it is mine too... We completed a big write in English to see what they remembered and show off their writing.

Autumn 2, Week 2

We had a lovely week celebrating remembrance, competing in a dodgeball competition with other schools and learning too! We have been learning about the importance of remembrance and created some great posters. In Topic, we have been learning about Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary and their first climb of Mount Everest. At the start of the week, we created a playdoh earth and labeled them using cocktail sticks. In maths, we have been practising subtraction and finding different ways to do this mentally, counting forwards and backwards and using a number line. In music (as you have heard - sorry again!), we are learning the recorder, they are doing really well and I can't wait to see the final piece... when we get there!

Autumn 2, Week 1

I hope you've had the most wonderful first week back! We have had lots of fun and have started our new topic - what makes the Earth angry?
This week, we started our new class story - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and we are loving reading this together with our own copies of the first few chapters. We have started to look at the characters in more depth and will be writing a character description next week. In maths, we have carried on practising column addition as well as problem solving and bar models. We created some beautiful bookmarks using the poem In Flanders Field and created watercolour poppies. We started learning how to read notation on a stave and spoke about high and low notes in preparation for learning the recorder this term. We will start using the recorders next Wednesday. If you have a recorder at home, please do bring that in. If not, we have a selection at school for you to borrow. We have continued with our Spanish learning and can now count to 10.
 

Autumn 1, Week 6

We have had another fantastic week in The Lions! In English, we have been perfecting our setting descriptions of a river. They had their own personal target as well as a challenge checklist with features to include in their writing. I can't wait for you to read them! In maths, we have started to look at adding 3 digit numbers to 1 digit numbers and multiples of 10. Year 4s have been perfecting their rounding and negative numbers. In topic, we have been focussing on different regions in Italy and finding out what makes them special. The cities we have been focussing on are Venice, Rome, Florence, Palermo and Milan. In Science, we have been learning about the water cycle and next week will be writing an explanation text about it.

Autumn 1, Week 4

This week in the Lions, we have been exploring Roman Numerals as well as trying to plot numbers on a number line. In English, we have finished our writing for Flotsam, describing the opening few scenes in a lot of detail whilst using onomatopoeias, fronted adverbials, prepositions and exciting words instead of walk, run, look and said. In music, we have started looking at notation on a stave in preparation for learning the recorder. We had a fantastic Spanish day, learning some flamenco dancing and names of food. In topic, we started to research and find out about a few of the Mediterranean countries.

Autumn 1, Week 3

Another fabulous week in the Lions! We have been writing a fantastic story using a slow writing method, going sentence by sentence about our book Flotsam. In Art, we took our lines for a walk describing different emotions and then listening to a variety of music to draw to just using line. In maths, we have continued looking at place value and finding 1, 10, 100 more and less than a number as well as Year 3s knowing how many days in the months and Year 4s using negative numbers.
 

Autumn 1, Week 2

We had a great time in the Lions last week (with a few tests involved). We learnt how to use the atlases and found some countries in the Mediterranean, we drew beautiful pencil self-portraits using a modelled version to see where we place the eyes, nose and mouth on the face. On Friday, we had a great time trialing for cross country and they all did a fantastic job of keeping steady and using the tips we created as a class to help us continuously run. In English, we are using the book Flotsam to write our own version of the wordless picture book.
 

Autumn 1, Week 1

It's been a lovely first week and I've really enjoyed hearing about their Summer's and getting to know all the new Year 3s. They have been wonderful, the year 4s setting a great example and the year 3s settling down to work beautifully and following our class promise. We started our topic this week with a memorable moment day around the question "Why do so many people go to the Mediterranean?" which was a fun filled day. We started it with a carousel of activities which included the sand pit, making boats out of lego to float on water and much more. We then created under the sea fact pictures in groups, practising note taking and finding facts in videos and non-fiction books.
After lunch, we attempted to make ice cream in a bag without a freezer however I don't think it fully worked... unsure what went wrong but we had fun shaking the bags! Finally, we mixed paint to create a gradient from white to blue. These squares were then cut up to make a big wave. Towards the end of the week, we created palaces out of dienes which was extra fun for working so hard in maths. We also created rainbow over Windsor pieces of art to celebrate the life of the Queen. I'm very much looking forward to another fun-filled week!

Summer 2, Week 5

As we get near to the end of term it gets even busier and a lot of preparation for our play, sport's day, leaver's service etc. is happening! We started the week on a high with our bee enterprise event and after costs were taken out we made £190 for the charity of our choice (we will choose this week together). Jenny came to visit us from Safe Supplies and gave us a great workshop on the different types of hive, the roles within a hive and how honey is made.
We also had a fantastic transition morning on Tuesday and hopefully had a great time in their class for September!

Summer 2, Week 3

This week, we have had a great time getting ready for our bee showcase on Tuesday, creating things to sell, finishing off our bee leaflets as well as learning how to tell the time. We have just about understood past the hour to the exact minute as well as digital (not quite 24 hour) and next week we will try again with to the hour - the hardest concept I ever have to teach so do please have a go over the weekend if you have time! We had a fantastic time showing you our charleston at the jubilee celebration on Wednesday and we hope you enjoyed it! The highlight of the week was definitely our trip to Chatsworth! We loved going into the kitchen garden to spot the different types of bumblebee and then going in the maze!

Summer 2, Week 2

We have had a lovely, sunny week full of fun and giggles (hopefully)! We have finished our tests this week and I'm really proud of them for doing so well. They can be quite tricky but they focussed and worked really hard. We have looked at weighing and estimating as well as recapping rounding, grid multiplication, column addition, fractions of amounts and measurement. In English, we have started creating information leaflets about bees ready for our project. In Art, we are competing in Norman's Art Competition with a theme of "The Queen's Jubilee" and creating A5 2D pictures. In PE, we are focussing on tennis and loving (and hating) my racquet challenge. In History, we learnt about Roman Gods and Goddesses and created top trumps for them.

Summer 2, Week 1

This week, we had a fantastic maths day on Monday. I really enjoyed seeing all the fantastic costumes and organising some fun activities as well as the workshop by the happy puzzle company. We have been recapping a lot of grammar skills and they are doing so well! In maths, we have been focussing on multiplying by 10 and 100 (and slowly bringing in decimals for the year 4s!). On Wednesday, we had another workshop with the British Museum finding out about Roman artefacts and treasures in the museum. On Friday, we made bar charts and pictograms about biscuits on a plate and answered questions.

Whitehall Year 3 and 4

Both year 3 and year 4 had a wonderful time at Whitehall! Year 3's day trip was filled with fun, sun and lots of activities from orienteering, bouldering to caving and ropes courses. 

Year 4 had a fantastic time on their first 2 night residential with Miss Grant, Mrs Payne and Mrs Clark. They did a variety of activities including canoeing, rock scrambling, ropes courses and zip wires. We experienced making our own beds, tuck shop and eating in a family dining style. 

Summer 1, Week 1

In the Lions this week, we have had a range of activities and lots of fun as always! We started the week with a Roman Memorable Moment day making laurel wreath headbands, learning Latin, orienteering and designing shields. We also had a great time recapping 2D shapes and finding out about their features as well as practising how to edit a piece of writing before finally looking at our new book for our topic - Escape from Pompeii (however, I am mean and we haven't even opened it yet, just teased with the blurb and front cover). On Friday afternoon, we learnt about light, how it travels, how we can see and started to look at shadows which we will continue next week!

Spring 2, Week 5

Week 5 has been a great - we've had many seasons outside, made a fantastic start to our newspapers and practised teddy bear rolling in gymnastics!

In English, we have been recapping how to punctuate speech to prepare for our newspaper reports on Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. In maths, we have been continuing to practise using fractions and starting to find fractions of amounts. I really enjoyed seeing them explore some different pieces of art about the Easter Story and become detectives to find which part of the story the image is presenting. In music, we have been working on notation and we were matching up the rhythms to the songs we have learnt. This week in art, we have been learning about Alberto Giacometti's sculptures and creating our own stick figures with matchsticks and thinking about sculptures to create next week.

Spring 2, Week 4

We have finished our double page spreads and I am in the process of photographing and putting these up on the website. In English we have been focussing on some grammar practise (they have done fantastically!) recapping subordinate clauses and the present perfect tense... I know - pretty tricky for year 3 and 4!! However, if you ask them to tell you this sentence in present perfect tense "I played in the playground" and identify the subordinate conjunction in this sentence "Poppy and Hattie went to the park after having an ice cream." and change so the subordinate conjunction is at the front - you will hopefully be very impressed!

In maths, we have been focussing on fractions ALOT! We have been learning about tenths and turning this into decimals as well as Y4s focussing on hundredths and fractions greater than 1. In topic, we found out about physical and human geographical features and looked at some pictures of modern day Egypt.

Oreo and Friends

We had a very exciting visit from Oreo and Friends and got to meet some of the wonderful animals including a fennec fox (a Class 3 favourite), a skink called Bertie, a tarantula, Milly the millipede and a very big snake! it was a great way to start off our science week!

Spring 2, Week 2

We have had a busy week in the Lions, completing tests, creating a double page information spread about life in Ancient Egypt and practising solving word problems in maths. In music, we started looking at rhythm and notation and created our own as well as playing the amazing "don't clap this one back game" (ta ta tete ta) and in art we created origami doves to celebrate peace for Derby Cathedral's project. We also finished our stamp designs which will be going on the display in the hall and had a fantastic time creating them on paint on the computer!

Spring 2, Week 1

I hope you've all had a lovely first week back at school! It's been a bit of a hectic one already with World Book Day and a non-uniform day. We have continued our Ancient Egyptian topic and we are currently finding out about daily life in Egypt including all the pets they had, food they ate and what their homes were like. We will be creating a 2 page information spread about this which I'm excited to get started. In maths, we have been recapping grid multiplication, dividing and column strategies for adding and subtracting. On Friday, we created our own tally charts about our favourite books or words found on a page. We had a very fun (busy) afternoon on Friday painting our rocks with a book theme (hence why the homework came on a sheet rather than stuck in - I'm very sorry!) - hopefully all their non-uniform came back acrylic paint free! In RE, we started to look at the Easter story and we drew symbols of Easter on a blank cross. On Thursday, I challenged them to look at some wordless picture books and predict/wonder/question what was happening by just looking at one page.

Y3 Cluster Dance Festival

Y3 had the fantastic opportunity to join other schools in the cluster to perform at the dance festival in Bakewell. We learnt a Charleston dance and also learnt how to jive whilst at the event. We had a fantastic time and it was made even better by winning the "Passion" trophy!

Spring 1, Week 6

Wow! What a great couple of weeks we have had! The final week was another highlight with the Year 4s having a little treat down at the park, Year 3's final forest school and finishing with the Year 3 dance festival in Bakewell where we won!

This week, we have touched on money and dividing (two big maths topics that they are starting to understand). We have also written fantastic mummification instructions using prepositions, time adverbials and adverbs. On Friday, we learnt about the Queen's jubilee and started to design stamps to go on our display in the hall. In science, we have been looking at magnets and experimented the strength of the school magnets by estimating and recording how many paperclips the magnet could pick up.

Spring 1, Week 5 

In Class 3, we have been learning lots of new things including how to write instructions, all about mummification and grid multiplication. We are also perfecting our Charleston ready for our Dance Festival. On Friday, we looked at British coins and notes and made amounts using different variations of coins. This is quite a tricky topic for us as we don’t use coins as regularly so if you have the time please do support them with this.

Spring 1, Week 4

We have had a fun week (as always I hope!) learning about prepositions using an emoji version of Miss Grant, recapping our times tables and mental maths knowledge and finishing off our Egyptian Cinderella descriptions.
On Wednesday, Mrs Payne helped them start their Blue Peter Purple badge form as well as creating magnetic games. The Blue Peter badge form is optional but a few of them have mentioned that they would like to get it. So sorry that it's so long!
We started designing a sarcophagus using hieroglyphics and a net as well as talking about the things we are grateful for and drawing/writing about these in their journals.
Year 3s have been learning the Charleston again this week.

Spring 1, Week 3

What a week! We have had an excellent week with lots of learning and fun (of course!). We are currently focusing on our times tables and I feel like we are smashing them! 9 times table can now be practised on our fingers and we have got the 3s (for the time being). We have been writing character descriptions of Rhodopis from the Egyptian Cinderella and they've all put a lot of effort and thought into them. Year 3 have started learning their Charleston dance for the dance festival and I hope they are practising at home and I have heard AMAZING things about the Year 4 swimmers!

Year 3 go to Blue Peter!

Year 3 had the most incredible opportunity to go to Blue Peter and sit in the audience and be ON TV!!!

We travelled by coach all the way to Salford on Friday afternoon taking our wonderful smiling (and nervous) faces and a packed tea ready for our shining moment!

The episode was amazing - Lunar New Year and we saw traditional Lion dancing (perfect for the Lion class!) and saw Ching He Huang make some veggie dumplings. 

We had an absolutely amazing time seeing the set, meeting the presenters and most importantly Henry the dog!

If you want to watch the episode you can find it here.

Spring 1, Week 2

In Class 3 this week, we've practised our times tables ALOT - outside, carousel activities, chanting, singing and dancing! We started coding on the laptops using hour of code which was great (but a little bit mad for only 1 pair of hands!) and Y3s started learning how to dance the Charleston ready for a dance festival in February. Our goal of the week was to be kind to each other which we have done so beautifully - taking turns, writing postcards to each other and complimenting. We finished the week by discussing emotions and how we can feel more than one emotion at a time.

Spring 1, Week 1

This week has been lovely having everyone back in the classroom. The week started with an Egyptian Memorable Moment Day where we made pyramids, learnt about hieroglyphics, found facts around the playground AND mummified tomatoes! Throughout the week, we've recapped column addition/subtraction, times tables and place value. We have also started our new book The Egyptian Cinderella. We ended the week reading about the Greek Gods and creating a watercolour background for our pyramid silhouettes.

Autumn 2, Week 5

I hope you're all having a lovely weekend so far, we have had a great week in the Lions (even with some tests thrown in there). We learnt all about the UK and Great Britain and which countries are included in both as well as looking at some of the cities and finding them on a map. We have been writing an incredible story based on our book The Last Garden which we have turned into our own version about the Pandemic - their vocabulary has been incredible and their ideas always amaze me! In maths on Friday, we looked at arrays which help our times tables and had a go at making some human arrays! As Christmas has arrived in Class 3, I challenged them to create the longest paper chain using only 2 pieces of paper (which also helped create more decorations for the classroom) and we ended the week by creating our own string printing pieces to use next week and create a repetitive pattern.

Autumn 2, Week 4

We have had an action packed week full of learning - in English in particular! We have learnt all about speech and how to punctuate, the present perfect tense (they HAVE the PERFECT teacher - just as a little hint to remember!!), imperative (bossy) verbs and finally conjunctions! Wow! I must admit all of these are really hard part of the Year3/4 curriculum and we will keep going over them to make it stick.
We have continued our learning about WW1, understanding how it's different from now and also learnt how to sort out any arguments using drama and talking to help us. As always, I have been really impressed with their understanding and enthusiasm!
In maths, we have continued perfecting our column addition and next week we will be beginning subtracting. We will obviously come back to column addition regularly however if you can also do this occasionally at home it will really help too!

Autumn 2, Week 3

What a fantastic week we have had... one of my favourite moments of the week was the debate over which came first when ordering key historical events - the dinosaurs or Neil Armstrong landing on the moon - hoping that they have understood now! As you have heard, we had an excellent time learning how to fox trot to Beyond the Sea as well as an excellent session learning some Judo moves!! On Friday, we finished the week with an excellent Children in Need and doing some lovely sketchbook work exploring colour.
 

Autumn 2, Week 2

We have been looking at a brand new book called The Last Garden (however Miss Grant is super mean and only reading a section at a time!) about a war-torn city with a beautiful garden hidden in the centre. We have started by describing the garden and city using abstract nouns and now writing an advertisement for people to visit the garden.
In maths, Y3 have been perfecting their adding especially mental maths/using fingers to count on whilst the year 4s have been learning how to round to the nearest 10 and 100 and recapping negative numbers.

We had some great fun listening to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (canons included), using macaroni as apostrophes for contractions (don't, haven't etc.) and creating a dance to tell the story of Diwali!

A special delivery also arrived with brand new books for our class library (I'm not sure who is more excited… definitely me…)

Remembrance Day 

As our topic is WW1, this year, we walked down to the churchyard and held a memorial service with all of KS2. We talked about the importance of this date and why we do it as well as listening to the last post, hearing a story called 'Where the Poppies Now Grow' and singing the song We Will Remember. 

It was a great opportunity to show respect and learn about the reason why we do this every year. 

Autumn 2, Week 1

We started the week by focusing on some vocabulary that we may hear when learning about WW1 which we then made into our own glossary. In the afternoon, we created lanterns with the story of Rama and Sita on to celebrate Diwali. On Tuesday, we had an incredible memorable moment day creating collages of trench life, pretending to be soldiers and a carousel of activities including flag matching, role play and code breaking. Throughout the week, we have been writing a descriptive sensory piece of writing using our experiences of being in a "trench" as well as the information we found out from our research. On Wednesday, we had a paper aeroplane challenge, weighing down the paper plane with coins to see if it could accurately touch the line in the hall. On Thursday, we had an excellent (but cold) session with Rugger Eds playing some tag rugby games. In maths, we are continuing to look at addition and subtraction however on Friday we looked at telling the time to 5 minutes - we have nearly got it!!! Woohoo! (please do keep asking your child what time it is using an analogue clock to continue developing this skill!) We finished the week by looking at the remembrance poppies and creating our own wreath. What a busy week!!

Autumn 1, Week 1

This week has been absolutely fabulous! We have had so much fun getting to know each other, discovering our joint love of French and music and creating some super memories.
On Monday, we created a time capsule to open at the end of the year to see how much we have grown and how we have changed! On Tuesday, we had great fun with Raven exploring the school garden and playing some forest school games. In maths, we made numbers using the equipment as well as seeing how much our initials added up to! On Wednesday and Thursday, we read The Lion Inside by Rachel Bright and Jim Field and started writing some character descriptions. On Friday, we ended the week with the question "What is art?" and running very fast around the field!