Year 3 & 4 Class News

Amazing Writing!

It’s lovely when people send in their learning – as teachers, we really want to see it!

Thanks to these superstars who have sent in their writing recently. There’s lots of things I love about these pieces – pay particular attention to the impactful vocabulary and the varied sentence starters. Well done, everyone!

3,4 NV Class News

Hi everyone,

I hope that you are all keeping happy, healthy and safe. It has been great to hear from so many of you through our zoom chats and phone calls home. Well done to those of you who have emailed me your work. I know you are all working really hard at home – keep going, you’re doing an amazing job!

Keep up with the fabulous efforts on TTrockstars and Numbots. I am checking weekly to see who is using it! Why not have a go on it today?

Here are a few pictures from some of our home learners over the last couple of weeks.

Take care,

Mrs Wadsworth

Newsworthy writing

From Mr Catherall, who is leading the Y3,4 home learning writing sessions…

Hi everyone

I hope you’re all happy, healthy and safe. I wanted to share with you – and celebrate – some of the awesome writing that’s been sent in by children across our federation. Home learning is tough. There are many challenges, for children and adults, but these superstars have been ready, resourceful and resilient learners. (Can you remember the other 8Rs for learning?)

In the Y3,4 phase, we spent last week building up to writing our own news report about a (made-up) volcanic eruption. This links to our geography and science learning.

Here are a small selection of the wonderful examples we’ve been sent in from all three schools. If you’d like to send yours in, I’d love to see it (send me an email – olliecatherall@spherefederation.org).

From my class at Scholes (Elmet)… I love the varied sentence starts in this one (Late on Friday night, On Saturday, In the escape).

We’ve got a budding journalist at St James’ CE… I really like the news report structure here.

Back to Scholes (Elmet) for some another great piece… This time, I really like the main news section (the first paragraph in bold) because it’s exactly like you’d read in a newspaper or online.

Some amazing writing from Moortown… I love the expanded noun phrase (the orange, glowing liquid) and the vocabulary (predicted, nightfall, terrified) in this one.

Another super piece of writing from my class at Scholes (can you tell I’m proud?!)… There’s a lot to celebrate here – particularly the vocabulary (menacing, catastrophic, awoke, ear-splitting, historic)…

Back at Moortown for another great example of journalistic writing… I particularly enjoyed the use of questions to engage the reader and the way this writer has presented their news report in the style of a newspaper.

Another impressive report from Scholes… In this one, I love the vocabulary (citizens, fled on foot, vast amount).

Whatever writing you’ve managed to do at home, well done! After the last lockdown, writing was one of the few areas that we noticed children hadn’t progressed in. Try to help by completing at least one of the writing lessons each day (and always keep a focus on handwriting).

Three Peaks in eight weeks – walking challenge!

The Sphere Year 3/4 Team would absolutely love you to be part of this awesome challenge this February and March. We want to get you walking or running (or scooting!) as much as you can over the next two months.

Every time you do a walk or run, add the distance completed (and your time taken to complete this) in your chart. We will be adding up everyone’s distances each week to see how many of us can ‘climb’ the National three peaks. In topic this week and next, we will be learning about some mountains in the UK, so what could be better than a virtual mountain climbing challenge!

The three mountains in the challenge are the highest in each country in the UK:

• Snowdon, in Wales (1085m) Distance: 7 miles / 11.75 km

• Scafell Pike, in England (978m) Distance: 5.5 miles / 9 km

• Ben Nevis, in Scotland (1345m) Distance: 10.75 miles / 17km

You can record your steps taken (paces). The whole route is 37.75 kilometres long, and the average human step (or pace) is 0.75 metres. So you have to take 50,333 steps in total to complete the Three Peaks. Recording steps (paces) taken is easy – you can use a Fitbit, pedometer or just count your steps. A phone can track how many steps you take and how far you walk all by itself, if you walk with an adult who has a phone.

The idea is to make this as much fun as possible, to motivate you to get outdoors and maybe encourage as many of your family and your friends to do the same thing.

You don’t have to do the whole route. Maybe you can choose to ‘walk’ just one mountain, or two – it’s up to you and what you can achieve.

Throughout the month, we will share photos and graphics of the distances you’ve travelled. From this, we can show who has travelled up the peaks and what location we can reach together. Hopefully, we can find ways to help you during this challenge and through this you can share stories, pictures and videos with those joining in this challenge. All ‘Three peaks in eight weeks’ challenge walkers will receive certificates for effort and participation:-

Mountain 1 = Bronze; Mountain 2 = Silver; Mountain 3 = Gold.

recording steps chart

Children’s Mental Health Week

Children’s Mental Health Week is taking place on 1-7 February 2021. This year’s theme is Express Yourself.

Here are some activities and ideas for you and your child(ren) to complete at home together.  You can also download it here.

Expressing yourself is about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity. It is about finding a way to show who you are, and how you see the world, that can help you feel good about yourself.

As parents and carers, you play an important role in your child’s mental health. Check out the free resources.  

Don’t forget to email your teachers with any photos or messages of your activities about Children’s Mental Health Week.

Thank you!

Awesome Writing

Check out these great examples of the main news section of a news report (from our writing: texts lessons this week). We looked at these, and celebrated these, during our daily Zoom yesterday. I’m sure you’ll agree they’re pretty impressive!

Wow! You could read either of those in a paper or online – well done!

This news post might remind us of two really important things:

1. Your class teacher wants to see your learning – particularly your writing. Send it in to us so we can give you feedback, either individually or during our daily Zoom.
2. Don’t forget to join our daily Zoom. It means you can share / celebrate your learning, get feedback about some learning you’ve completed at home or, perhaps most importantly, catch up with your friends. If you join in, I guarantee you’ll feel happier, healthier and more motivated.

Volcano Alert!

Volcanoes

This week, we’re really enjoying our Natural Disasters topic work on volcanoes.  Children have been reading First News articles in reading skills lessons, and creating their own volcano news article in writing lessons.

In topic, we’ve been learning about the layers of the earth and how volcanoes are formed.

Some families have made their own volcanoes from paper mache and real-life lava!

If you want to try this at home as a fun, craft activity, follow these links:

Make the volcano 

Make the lava

We love to see what you’re doing – please email your teacher with photos or messages of your creations. Thank you for your continued support!

Happy Home Learning!

Hello everyone!

We’ve had some lovely messages from pupils and parents that I wanted to share. Teachers really enjoy receiving pictures, poems and photos of everything that you’ve done at home.  Keep up with the hard work everybody – you’re all doing  a fab job!

Here are just some examples of children’s work at home:

Emotions homework – 3/4E

The emotions homework this week was very popular with pupils- the most popular this school year! In fact, I was blown away by the children’s enthusiasm for this homework, and the learning we’ve done in school. Well done and a big thank you to everyone who sent in your homework.

We had poems, posters, photo-posters and rhymes.

Here they are:

Emotions emotions we all have emotions.

Emotions emotions can make you feel nice,

Emotions emotions can make you feel right.

Emotions emotions when you feel good or bad,

Emotions emotions when you feel happy or sad.

Emotions emotions in all different ways,

Emotions emotions can brighten your days.

Emotions emotions we all have emotions.

By Esmae.

03 December 2020 homework – photograph emotions

3/4 NV Christmas dance