Welcome to Badgers Class!
We are Year 3 and 4 in the mornings and in the afternoons Year 3 become Explorers and Year 4 become Pioneers!
Miss West is our class teacher.
Every day starts with a story followed by a daily 10 maths warm-up and some spelling work. We are using the fabulous Literacy Tree to guide us through our reading and literacy.
We share wonderful texts in reading sessions; this term we have read The Firework Maker's Daughter by Philip Pullman and are currently looking at poetry in 'I am the Seed That Grew the Tree'. We will be moving on to Jackie Morris's 'White Fox'. In these sessions we dive into exploring a text and developing our reading skills alongside the pleasure of finding another book we all love and can talk about. In our literacy sessions, we follow books from Writing Roots, spending 3-4 weeks on a book learning writing and grammar skills from the story that lead to a final outcome published write. This term we have worked with ' The Mermaid of Zennor' to write a narrative, 'The Tear Thief' to write a Newspaper report, 'The Barnabus Project' to create a brochure and 'Black Dog' to write a Suspense Narrative.
In maths, we follow White Rose small steps. We start our sessions with a flashback and are this term working on Multiplication and Division, Length and Perimeter, Fractions and Decimals.
We have weekly spelling and Times Table tests, and we read books from our Accelerated Reader level daily for 15 minutes.
Children need to practice their times tables regularly 5-10 minutes a day at home, Times Tables Rock Star logins are provided to help, this will ensure the speed and fluency needed are achieved. They also need to read their own AR books several times a week and enjoy being read stories by other adults.
This term
EXPLORERS are learning the Geography based Topic 'Rocks, Relics and Rumbles all about the earth's tectonic plates, earthquakes and volcanoes. They have been doing rocks, fossils and soils in science and are now working on Forces and Magnets, They have used different media to look at ammonites and exploring moving mechanisms for DT. On alternate Fridays the whole school does Outdoor Learning.
PIONEERS are learning a Geography based topic 'Sow, Grow and Farm' and on 21st March we will have a farming visit day. In art we have looked at line drawing, light and dark to create our own pen and ink pieces. We are now looking at Eating seasonally for DT. We are exploring the Hindu festival of Holi in RE and learning about school in French. In Science we have about Earth and Space and now Human Reproduction and Ageing.
Our PE is delivered by coaches, Caja and Plymouth Argyle on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
Miss West teaches History, Geography, Art and DT and Mrs Jeffery teaches Science and Music
RECOMMENDED READING
Books and Authors we have loved...
Arthur and the Golden Rope and books by Joe Todd-Stanton
The Wild Robot series by Peter Brown
Poetry and illustrations of Jackie Morris and Robert MacFarlane
Leon and the Place between and Winter's child - Books by Angela McAllister
Grahame Baker Smith
Wolf Brother by Michele Paver
Odd and the Frost Giants and books by Neil Gaiman
