Spring 2
Science
This half term the children are exploring light and darkness. They have discovered that darkness is the absence of light, light is what lets us see things and that the Moon is not a light source because it reflects the Sun’s light and does not make its own light!
Today the children explored how light travels in straight lines and how it reflects off objects. In particular, they looked at how light reflects off mirrors and how we can use this fact to see around corners. Can you spot who is hiding using the mirrors?
In this lesson the children completed an experiment looking at how the height of a shadow changes depending on how close it is to the light source. They found that as they moved the torch closer to the glue stick, it’s shadow got smaller!
Art
We have started the Spring term by looking at the work of local artist Norman Cornish. He is a world-famous sketcher and painter who was born and lived in Spennymoor. His paintings show the life of a mining town and are an important part of Spennymoor’s history from a time before cameras.
Last year would have been his 100th birthday so the council installed a Norman Cornish trail around the town which shows some of his most famous artworks next to the real places that inspired him to create them. The children had the chance to go on this trail and answered questions on the different artworks as they went.
As part of our work on the artist Norman Cornish the children had a visit from his son and daughter-in-law John and Dorothy Cornish. The children had lots of fantastic questions to ask and it was amazing to be able to hear about Normans life from his own family.
After talking to the children John and Dorothy challenged the children to complete one of Norman Cornish’s self-portraits. They all did an amazing job and worked hard to get the proportions and shading right.
Green Flag day
First, the children were all split into their coloured houses to complete tasks on how to reduce their carbon footprint before we all gathered outside to celebrate achieving our green flag award by raising our very own green flag on the school flag pole!
Inter School Games
The whole school took part in a sports competition which pitted the different school teams (Red Eagles, Blue Wolves, Green Dragons and Yellow Lions) against each other. They competed in a range of different obstacles set up by the team captains from Year 6.
Science
This half term the children are exploring animals including humans. In this topic they have looked at the different food groups, the different nutrients that a body needs to stay healthy and the different amounts of nutrients that humans need as well as other animals like cats, dogs and parrots.
Also in this unit the children have explored the human skeleton and now know that there are different types of skeletons in the animal kingdom – endoskeletons, exoskeletons and hydrostatic skeletons. Here are the children examining some of the animal bones we have in school.
English
The children worked in groups today to explore different persuasive texts. They will be creating their own persuasive advert next week!
P.E.
As our P.E. topic for this half term the children have been learning the core task Run the Loop which is designed to develop skills that would be used in sports such as rounders or cricket. The children have been practicing their throwing accuracy and catching ability.
D.T.
Our topic for this half term was to great our own freestanding photo frame. Here are some pictures of the children creating them from the designs they had come up with. They all did a fantastic job! Their finished frames will be on display at the Rosa Street Art Gallery Event that will be held later this year so make sure to come along to have a look!
Autumn 2
P.E.
We are exploring gymnastics this half term so will be developing our ability to balance, roll, travel and jumps.
Science
The children explored the fascinating effects that magnets can have on a paperclip by making one hover in the air!
Science
The children worked in pairs to test the strength of a variety of different magnets and many were surprised to find that the largest magnet size wise was not the strongest.
Science
Working in groups, the children investigated the effect that friction has on a toy car moving down a ramp!
Maths
The children have used cubes and counters this week to support their understanding of multiplication as the addition of equal groups.
Stone Age Residential Trip – Day 1
Year 3 have had an amazing time on their overnight trip to the Kingsway centre.
They started off by making up their beds and competing for the tidiest room!
Lunch time!
After lunch we explored a local woodland discussing what it would have been like to live back in the Stone Age and where the best place to build a shelter would be. We also all had a go at fire lighting!
Making Stone Age bread!
Toasting marshmallows and cooking our Stone Age bread!
Dinner time!
Our evening Stone Age quiz winners!
Stone Age Residential Trip – Day 2
After a good nights sleep we went for a hike up a nearby hill to visit a Stone Age burial site.
Lunch!
All ready to head back to school.
D.T
The children enjoyed creating their own electronic flip books.
D.T
The children used their models from last half terms art project to create their very own short stop animation films!
Autumn 1
Art
We have started the new school year by creating our very own sculptures based on the work by the fit for life artist Keith Haring. First we created a wire skeleton and covered it with coloured plasticine. The wire frame means that we can move our sculpture and put it into different poses. This will be useful when we use them in our D.T. project next half term to create a short stop animation film.
Story Time
The children enjoy listening to a story at the end of each day.
P.E.
In P.E. we are developing our throwing and catching skills to improve at our core task of three touch ball which is an adaptation of netball.
Science
The children have enjoyed investigating different types of rocks and have created some fantastic questions to investigate during our topic of rocks and soils!
Maths
The children have been using place value counters to aid them in adding 3-digit numbers together.
Science
The children enjoyed completing their first science experiment this afternoon where they were testing the drainage of different soil types. They created a hypothesis, equipment list and method before working in groups to record the amount of water that drained through the soil each minute for 3 minutes. They recorded their results in a results table.
Computing
This week the children have been developing their coding skills using the programme scratch. From this we looked at how to use the same coding skills to complete different Minecraft challenges on code.org. They have also had the opportunity to programme microbots to display different messages and images!
Judo
We were lucky enough to take part in a Judo taster session which the children thoroughly enjoyed!
Bikeability
The children had a fantastic session on their bikes completing a range of different challenges designed to improve their confidence and ability on their bikes.
