This afternoon, Woodpecker class were lucky enough to have the lovely Margaret pay a visit to our class. She taught us a Kiswahili song, some greetings and even a game she plays with the children in her school.
We had a great afternoon with Margaret and learnt a lot about the food, animals and education in Kenya!
Wow, what a day we had yesterday!
Year 3 had a visit from an Ancient Greek, who taught us all about what life was like in Ancient Greek times. We had lots of different activities to get involved with, played some Ancient Greek games and even hosted our own mini Greek Olympics, after looking at lots of Ancient artifacts and trying on some battle helmets.
It was a fantastic day to complement our Ancient Greek topic this half term, which all the children are working extremely hard on!
Have a look at our slideshow of pictures:
Wow, what an amazing year!
We have absolutely loved teaching you all, Woodpecker class. We have had some great fun this year and learnt lots and really hope you have a wonderful, restful summer. We’ll see you all again in September- we know Mr Ind is looking forward to getting to know you all!
Have a great summer,
Mrs Joice, Mrs Howe and Mrs D’Aoust
This week, Year 3 and 4 had some very exciting visitors to school, from Pfizer pharmaceuticals. We were lucky enough to have an entire afternoon of science activities, including testing our skills of different types of medicines (and learning about why they are locked away in a medicine cupboard), making our own medicines and washing our hands whilst singing Happy Birthday (we’ll explain that one..)!
We learnt about different formulations (types of medicines and what they are for), all about how important it is that medicines are made exactly the same every time, and also some interesting facts about how to keep healthy.
For example, did you know we are all supposed to wash our hands for the length of time it takes to sing Happy Birthday… twice?! Have a go, next time you wash your hands!
It was a very messy afternoon but we all had a great time and are very proud of our new class certificate :)
Yesterday afternoon, as part of our Urban Pioneers topic, Woodpecker class were learning all about famous landmarks from around the world. We looked at The Spinx, The Statue of Liberty, The Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, The Pyramids, and many more!
Then, we took to the field to sit and practice drawing some of these intricate structures.
Yesterday afternoon, Woodpecker class made the most of the glorious weather and had our English lesson outside!
We sat and enjoyed the fresh air and the sound of the birds singing as we wrote our personification poems about cities.
The poems were inspired by the poem we have been looking at in class: ‘Last night I saw the city breathing’ by Andrew Fusek Peters.
As part of our Urban Pioneers topic, this half term, we have been looking at graffiti in urban environments. Our debate today was whether graffiti is art or vandalism. We had lots of different thoughts, like is it still vandalism if the building is abandoned or if it’s an old railway bridge? We thought about how we’d feel if people drew graffiti on our properties…
We looked at some fantastic artwork though, and were impressed by the messages the graffiti artists were trying to put across.. we then discussed if there was a better way of sharing these important messages though…
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be trying our own graffiti style art (but not on buildings!)
Year 3 had a fantastic day out at our visit to Browning’s Farm yesterday!
We enjoyed learning all about the tools and machinery used, the wind turbine, the habitats in the woods and we even helped Mr Nicholls measure the fields so he can order new fencing!
Our top three highlights were probably: making shelters for the wildlife in the woods; talking to the cows and our performance of our class song for Mr Nicholls and Mrs Allfrey in the woods!
A massive thankyou to Mr Nicholls and Mrs Allfrey for having us and also to the parents who made it possible for us to go, by driving us all there! Thank you from all of Woodpecker class :)
We really enjoyed welcoming our VIPs for VIP morning and the children did a fabulous job of measuring items in the classroom and calculating their perimeter! A massive thank you to all who managed to come in!
We are thoroughly enjoying sports week in Woodpecker Class. We got to try New Age Curling and a variety of Paralympic sports - wheelchair basketball, blind football and sign language bowls. They all presented their own challenges but we all enjoyed them immensely. I was so impressed at how quickly the children mastered the skills of a wheelchair!
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In Woodpecker class we got straight out into the sunshine this week with a walk around Plaistow. Our new topic is all about our local area and being pioneers of it. We made sure we looked at Plaistow with new eyes and saw what made it special and important. The children were brilliant at explaining what they saw and why they thought it was important, they even wrote some excellent explanations in their books about different photos as well. We are very lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the country and the children seem to be realising that too!
Even though it may seem an odd photo, the children were quite captivated by the thought of a phone box, a throwback to life before we had a mobile phone!
This week is very exciting for the Woodpeckers because are writing our own raps. As a culmination of our topic on Heroes and Villains we are writing raps to celebrate famous heroes from history. The children have researched current raps, made their own beats and rhythms and now they are working on lyrics to accompany them. We can’t wait to hear how they turn out!
This week we started to look at a true hero - Rosa Parks! She was an ordinary woman but she stood up for the rights of black people in America in the 1950s and sparked massive changes. It was so inspiring to see the children completely enthralled by her story and incensed at how unfair it was. It is wonderful that they have such a good sense of equality. We are going to be researching her further this week and writing our own biographies of her, which I am already excited to read.
This afternoon in Woodpecker class we discussed how everyone has an invisible bucket and how important it is to be bucket fillers and do nice things for other people and make them happy, whether that is through a smile, a kind word or a helpful hand. We also looked at how bucket dipping can be very damaging and upsetting both to the people we are making sad and to ourselves.
We then had a lovely time filling everyone’s bucket in the class, writing down nice things about everyone else. This could be something kind, something the other person is good at or something they enjoy doing with them.
We have all decided to try and be bucket fillers and not bucket dippers.
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Mrs Howe didn’t quite make it into school on time today because she got bundled into a box by the despicable and villainous Cruella de Vil this morning and was bound for South Africa before she escaped. Cruella proceeded to storm the Woodpecker classroom this morning demanding to know where her stolen dalmatian puppies were. She searched the classroom, interrogated the children and tried to teach them to be her protege before disappearing in search of more puppy fur for her coat collection.
This well timed visit was a great way to start our new topic of heroes and villains although we hoping she doesn’t visit again!
Woodpecker class showed some teamwork this week as we all worked together to make beautiful thank you cards for the parents who helped out on pizza day.
We used our finger prints to paint bunches of balloons and wrote a special message on the cards, too.
Have a look at the final result- we think they look great!
Well, what a day we’ve had!
Firstly, we’d like to say a massive thank-you to all of the adults that came in and helped with our pizza day- you were a great help and we really enjoyed having you!
Today, Woodpecker class made their very own pizzas, from scratch!
We made the dough, rolled it out, shaped it, created crusts, seasoned passata, grated cheese and assembled our pizzas! All the children did fantastic and all thoroughly enjoyed making (and, of course, eating) their tasty pizzas.
Well done, Woodpeckers!
Check out our slideshow of the day :)
During all the parent consulation fun this week, Woodpecker class got some time to hone their times table skills and compete against each other on Times Tables Rockstars!
We have been particularly focusing on the 8 times tables in class at the moment, with our catchy 8 times table song!
Have a look at our slideshow :)
As part of our topic, The Mediterranean, we were learning about different climates today and did some map work using atlases. We’ve learnt all about the different continents, surrounding oceans and the climates they all have.
To celebrate all of our hard work, we got to have golden play using the new painting done on the playground, today. We really loved the Twister and the big challenge in the middle of the playground, which at one point we managed to get the whole of Year 3 going around at the same time!
Have a click through our slideshow to see some pictures :)
Year 3’s costumes were fantastic, today!
We are definitely a class of Harry Potter lovers- we had so many Harrys, Hermoines and Ginnys!
In the morning, we spent time writing versions of the story ‘Inside the Villain’ from the perspective of the villain, then after break we did some drama-acting out the stories we had shared. Finally in our arty afternoon, we had a go at making our very own flip-art like in today’s book.
Well done for a fantastic day, Year 3!
