Nightingales Class Page

Wednesday 4^th December

This week, the Year 3 students embarked on an exciting educational adventure, visiting the Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museums in Oxford as part of our Stone Age to Iron Age topic.

Our day began with a self-guided exploration of the Natural History Museum, where the children eagerly went on a discovery trail to find different parts of history. As they ventured through the exhibits, they uncovered a fascinating range of historical treasures, from ancient fossils and bones to intriguing rocks, all of which tied into the concepts we’ve also been studying in our science lessons too. Their natural curiosity shone through as they asked thoughtful questions, showing an impressive eagerness to learn and engage with the material.

After lunch, we made our way to the Pitt Rivers Museum, where we were immersed in a captivating talk about the evolution of tools and materials through the ages. From the Mesolithic to Neolithic periods, and through the Bronze and Iron Ages, the children gained valuable insights into how early humans adapted their tools to meet the challenges of their time. They had the opportunity to handle a variety of fascinating artefacts, including animal skins, spearheads, and cooking pots, carefully considering and debating which era each object belonged to, based on their knowledge.

To round off the day, we ventured to the top floor of the museum, where we delved deeper into the history of weapons and farming tools crafted from materials such as bone, bronze and iron. Our gallery hunt included looking for a bronze axe head, slingshots, a leaf shaped arrow head, a bronze sword, a bird trap, a metal spearhead and an Iron sword. The children’s enthusiasm and engagement were truly inspiring.

It was a wonderful and enriching day out, with the children demonstrating exemplary behaviour and being fantastic representatives of our school.

Today, the children focused on developing their cutting and peeling skills. They have previously learned how to use a table knife, and today they were introduced to a vegetable knife. This new knife is sharper than a table knife, making it better suited for cutting through tougher foods.

We practised two grips to cut the vegetables - a bridge hold and a claw hold. 

20.11 DT - Eating Seasonally 

In this DT unit, the children are learning about seasonal foods and will be creating a seasonal food tart to fit their design brief. 

Design brief: 

My name is Charlie, and I run The Four Seasons Restaurant. It is a popular spot because we celebrate the seasons. We pride ourselves on creating delicious dishes that not only taste wonderful but also support local farmers and our environment by using foods that are in season.

One of our most popular items is our seasonal food tart – a delicious pastry filled with the best of what the seasons has to offer.

This year, we are looking for some new and exciting ideas for our seasonal food tart and that is where we need your help! We heard that you are learning about cooking and nutrition, and we thought you would be the perfect team to help us design a new tart for our menu.

Your task will be to create a seasonal food tart using ingredients that are fresh in the UK during October and November. To do this, you will first need to explore, taste and understand the various foods in season during these months.

As you begin your journey of discovery, remember that the best designs will not only taste amazing, but also showcase the beautiful colours, textures and flavours of our seasonal produce.

We cannot wait to see your creations.

Lesson 1:

 The children learned that the different climates of the world mean that different countries can grow different foods. They used an atlas to locate countries where the foods are grown.

We discussed:

• Which country does the map show _____ coming from?

• What climate zone is it in?
• What is the climate like where this food grows? (Polar; temperate; dry; tropical; Mediterranean.)
• How does that climate impact the type of food that is grown?

17th-24th November - Road Safety Week

As part of road safety week, Year 3 children looked at what was meant by 'road safety' and discussed what they knew. Year 4 created road safety posters, which provided all the information you need to cross the road safely, and Year 3 then used the posters to cross the road carefully around Eynsham.

In this unit the children are learning 10 common instruments and will be introduced to the 1^st person singular high frequency verb ‘I play’ in Spanish.

By the end of the unit the children will be able to recognise, recall, and spell up to 10 instruments with their definite articles/determiners.

This is one of the first sentence building units where pupils will have the knowledge and skills to create short phrases with the verb ‘I play’ plus the instrument nouns and articles/determiners.

12.11 - Science, Rocks

This week in Year 3, we started our new Science unit - Rocks. 

We looked at sedimentary and metamorphic rocks in our first lesson. The children had lots of fun recreating these rocks using layers of white and milk chocolate to see how sedimentary rocks are formed. We then morphed the sedimentary rocks into metamorphic rocks by applying pressure and heat from their hands. 

To introduce our new text, Iron Man by Ted Hughes, the children explored various news reports and scripted a clear, concise and correct news report about the first chapter. In the first chapter, Iron Man was spotted at the top of a cliff, scanning the ocean with his eyes. He then toppled over the edge, breaking into hundreds of pieces. Using this information, the children pretended that they were a reporter, telling the audience about the potential spotting of the Iron Man, as well as speaking to an eye witness. 

Today in English we had our Hook lesson to introduce the children to our new writing unit, job descriptions. We identified lots of different jobs and skills people need to do them. After, we went to the marsh and became archaeologists. We discussed what the job was, what they do, and what skills people need to become one. 

In the drama, the children dug up and excavated lots of Stone Age items. They showed us that they needed to be curious, determined, careful, persistent, and have attention to detail. In the next few lessons, we will be exploring how to write a job description for an archaeologist. 

Stone Age Day

On Wednesday 25^th September, Year 3 had a fantastic Stone Age Day! It was an opportunity for the children to dress up and share some of the experiences of these pre-historic hunter gatherers. We learnt about the three eras in the Stone Age, the Palaeolithic Era, Mesolithic Era, and Neolithic Era in more detail, practised some Stone Age weaving, and created our own cave paintings.

Have a look at some of our photos from the day.

English 

Our first writing focus is to add a new adventure to a story using our class text, Stone Age Boy. The children have enjoyed learning the events in the story, drawing a story map and discussing the Stone Age references throughout. We have explored a model text and found examples of key grammatical features, including similes and expanded noun phrases. The children were then taught how to use these features in their writing. See below some examples of their work.

In the next few lessons, we will be planning and writing a new adventure for Luke and Om. We look forward to sharing some of our adventures with you.

Watch this space  😊

Hook lesson - cave paintings

We began exploring our new text ‘The Stone Age Boy’ by Satoshi Kitamura. We looked at our new class text, but it was wrapped up.  Our teacher then showed us cave paintings to help us infer what the text may be about. To hook us more into the text, we made our own cave paintings using chalk and paint and crawled under our desks to make our caves. 

Similes are a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more impactful. 

An expanded noun phrase is a descriptive phrase made up of a noun (naming word: person, place or thing) and at least one adjective (describing word). When more than one adjective has been used a comma is used to separate them.