Year 3 are certainly enjoying their Mandarin Music lessons with Lulu this term. We are making super progress with the songs for our upcoming performance whilst having a little fun learning and singing the familiar song of ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ with actions!
Category : Year 3/4
Year 3 this term have been considering the concept of ‘Leadership’ and the qualities an individual needs to possess to be considered a ‘good leader.’ Upon lots of discussion, the children agreed that a leader (Religious or Non-Religious) should be kind, fair, honest, trustworthy, respectful and compassionate to name a few. From this, the children then compared some key religious figures who have been described as ‘Founders of their Faith.’
Firstly, Jesus (Founder of Christianity) and Saint Paul (a man who converted to Christianity) were compared.
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- Jesus was the Founder of Christianity
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- Saint Paul was a man who converted to Christianity and became a Saint after he had died due to his religious cause. to teach others about Jesus
The children found that whilst Jesus was a kindhearted, well respected, caring and forgiving man throughout his whole life that in contrast Paul was quite indeed the opposite until he converted to Christianity upon hearing Jesus’ voice call to him. This allowed the children to identify that people can change their ways and turn their lives around for the good of themselves and others.
Further comparisons were made between the founders of Buddhism and Sikhism including the life of the Prophet Muhammed (Pbuh) who was a follower of Islam.
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- Prince Siddartha was the Founder of Buddhism and became known as The Buddha
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- Guru Nanak was the Founder of Sikhism
The children learnt the Prince Siddhartha, who lived a privileged life, naively believed everyone lived like him and had wealth in abundance, the richness of good health and the ability to live forever. However, upon leaving his palace walls he saw that this was not the case and that people were suffering from illness, old age, homelessness and that life did not go on forever. His findings resulted in him leaving his rich lifestyle as a Prince to live a simplistic lifestyle as a monk meditating until he became enlightened. Siddhartha changed his name to Buddha, Founder of the Buddhist Faith and finding his reward in helping and teaching others to understand that we should be happy with what we have, help others where we can and not want for more.
In comparison, the children found that Nanak, as a young boy, was very inquisitive and wanted to know what the world would be like without all the fighting and suffering that was going on and why people argued and had differing opinions of God and religion. He wanted to find a better way to live so that everyone could get along better together irrelevant of their race, gender, religion and beliefs. He became enlightened as a young man upon his own meeting with God which saw him give up all his wealth and sharing it with those who were less fortunate. Nanak soon became known as Guru Nanak, the Founder of Sikhism (Guru meaning Teacher) travelling and sharing God’s message which is that God sees everyone as equal and that wealth, gender and age does not matter and that people should live peacefully in our world together.
We then explored the life of the Prophet Muhammed (Pbuh), who as a follower of Islam, is believed to have been chosen by Allah as his Prophet because he was a respected, wise and fair man who cared deeply for his people. During the Islamic Festival of Ramadan, Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) would take himself off to the mountains to think about his people, wondering why they argued amongst themselves and why some of his people were rich whilst others were poor.
After listening to each of the stories of these three key religious figures, the children in Year 3 concluded that despite Prince Siddhartha’s earlier naivety, they were all kind, selfless, caring religious leaders who put others before themselves and wanted the world to be a better place for everyone.
Year 3 were very luck to take part in a carbon monoxide workshop thanks to The Children’s University.
We found out lots of information about how dangerous carbon monoxide can be and what we should do if we suspect carbon monoxide is effecting anybody.
Carbon monoxide can make people feel dizzy, sleepy, give them headache, make them feel sick or make them confused. We found out about all of the different things in our homes that can cause carbon dioxide. We discovered that things like the cooker or boiler that we use every day can leak carbon monoxide into our home. We saw how a carbon monoxide detector can save people from the danger and we discovered where the best place in the house is to place this. Carbon monoxide detectors should be on every floor of a house and should be near appliances that could leak carbon monoxide to ensure we are as safe as possible.
We finished our session off with a quiz, we were really good at recalling all the information we had just learnt.
In our Jigsaw Piece of ‘Dreams and Goals’ this term Years 3 and 4 have read some inspirational stories which have enabled the children to identify that we can achieve the Goals we set ourselves and achieve our Dreams…
The children in Year 3 have explored the story ‘Me Jane…’ by Patrick McDonnell, which is the lovely story about the lifelong dreams and goals of Jane Goodhall to care for and work with animals in Africa. From an early age, Jane had a wonderous love of nature and animals and a curiosity that was endless. She read lots of books about creatures of the world and studied hard until one day her lifelong dream and goal came true! This enabled the children to agree that if you believe in yourself and work hard at the goals you set yourself that your dreams can come true. Below are a few of our Year 3 children’s ‘Dreams and Goals‘.
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- To be an Artist
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- To be an Electrician
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- To be in the Army
In Year 4, the children have explored the term ‘resilience’ through reading about the lifelong Dream of Michael Jordan the great American Basketball player who the story ‘Salt in His Shoes’ by Delores Jordan is based upon.
We found that despite Michael’s journey to being a basketball player being faced with some challenges, we found that he never gave up as the people around him, his family, friends and teachers, all believed in him, supported and encouraged him to be resilient. From this we identified that being resilient was not giving up at the first hurdle and that if we want to achieve the goals and dreams that we have identified for oursleves (To get married; Own a House; Have children; Learn to Drive; Be a Teacher; Be rich; Go to University…) that we too, like Michael Jordan, need to be resilient, believe in ourselves, persevere and keep on trying.
Year 4 this term have been learning the song ‘Looking in the Mirror’ with lyrics that help us to reflect upon not only our own lives but of those of our ancestors and the historic changes that have been made to enable our lives to be a little better today. To accompany this wonderful piece of music, we have been creating a little improvisation with our recorders and playing notes we have learnt in previous Music units of work in our own unique compositions.
Bravo Year 4…Encore!!!
As part of Safer Internet Day, Year 3 created posters to remind each other about staying safe.
We talked about what it means to be safe online and the things we can do to keep ourself safe.
We knew lots about who we could talk to and who can help us is we don’t feel safe. We know how important it is to keep information private and safe when we are online.
We also talked about the many different ways we are online such as on our computers, games consoles, phones and even our TV’s.
We know how to stay safe and can remind our friends to do the same.
This week Year 3 have started our length unit in math.
We have been looking at different units of measure including millimeters, centimeters and meters.
We have used rulers and meter sticks to measure objects around our classroom and we have been concerting these measurements into equivalent measurements.
We are able to measure objects in centimeters and convert its size into millimeters.
We know there are 10 millimeters in each centimeter and that there are 100 centimeters in each meter.
This knowledge has helped us measure our objects accurately
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Y4E…(and Miss Stewart) are thoroughly enjoying developing and applying their netball skills in P.E this term. The children have been refining the skill of passing and receiving the ball utilising the ‘chest-pass’ firstly with a partner then in a 5v1 possession game with a defender to create a little pressure. In practicing and utilising their knowledge of space, the children have further worked upon the skill of moving the ball up the court with a view to creating a shooting opportunity into the net of a real goal. We have recently introduced the position of Goal Shooter (GS) in our mini-games of 5v5 Flier Netball with a view to including the positions of Goal Keeper (GK), Goal Defence (GD) and Goal Attack (GA) as we progress further.
Today, Mr Morgan’s class started their chess tuition sessions. Funded by Chess in Schools, Christopher Matthews will be coming in on a Tuesday to deliver an hour of chess, followed by an after school club.
The children have loved their first session where we began to learn about the individual pieces and how they moved, as well as getting the board set up.
Chess is not only great for the mind, teaching tactics and problem solving but also great for social skills. Honesty, self-belief and respect are huge parts of the game of chess and it was great to see all children start and end their games with a handshake.
Jayden and Brooke learning to use pawns.
Freddie and Rebecca got their board set up correct first time!
Tommy and Rubin set up and ready to play.
This week, for our new music unit, Year 3 have been learning to sing in Mandarin.
We begun by harmonising with notes being played on the keyboard.
Once we had harmonised we learnt some words in Mandarin.
Once we knew these words we put them to the harmonies and added actions.
In our music lesson we also discovered lots of information about the Chinese culture. We were all very excited to find out lots about Chinese New Year. This year is the year of the rabbit. Lulu told us about how her and her family would be celebrating and the types of food they would be eating. We found out that lots of Chinese families eat dumplings as these are made together as a family.
We can’t wait for our next music lesson.