Mrs Barker and Class 3 in the Abingdon Herald

Have a look at this article in the Abingdon Herald.

Newsletter- week ending 24th April

Dear parents/carers,

I hope that you had a lovely Easter break. The children have returned to school rested and ready to work hard this summer term.

In English this week we have looked at information texts as an introduction to our Australia topic. In pairs, the children have researched an aspect of Australia (from wombats to clothing) and created their own information book about it. They’ve done a wonderful job, including titles, subtitles, introductory sentences, photos and captions. I was really pleased that they avoided using any story language and wrote in a very factual tone. Next week we will be starting a new topic looking at an author and their work, as well as giving our recommendations and book reviews.

In maths this week he have looked at partitioning- that’s splitting larger numbers up into more manageable chunks. We’ve also briefly looked at rounding and estimating. Next week we will be looking at solving number problems, using some nifty IWB software which we have just purchased.

I have sent out some homework sheets this week- I know this isn’t my usual modus operandi, but I had some aspects of both maths and English that I wanted to check. The year 2 children have three pieces of homework- one short piece of writing about a character, a quick maths paper (to be done on their own please) and a maths challenge. I’ve told the children that if they can’t do any of the questions on the maths paper to skip them. Year 3 children also have the maths challenge, as well as a sheet about rounding, because I just wanted to check that they are all secure with this. The maths challenge is to create the biggest cube possible from one piece of A4 paper. I’ve given the children the cube problem as I am looking to run a maths club over the rest of the year, which will be investigating problems like this, and I’m looking for some likely candidates! Please feel free to give your child a hand with this if they need it. As always, if there are any problems please let me know. All of the maths homework is due in next Friday, the 1st of May.

I will be setting the next homework project early next week, based around our science topic about habitats. More information will be available soon!

Please don’t forget that we are going on our class trip to the University of Oxford Botanic Gardens next Wednesday. There will be no swimming that day so I will be doing outdoor PE a couple of times that week to make up for it. Please make sure that your children have PE kits in school.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:
1 What sort of things do you find in information books that you don’t find in story books?
2 How can you identify the trees on the school field?
3 What do you already know about Australia? What would you like to know?

Mrs Barker on the radio

It was very exciting being interviewed live on the BBC Oxford breakfast show on Monday morning. If you weren’t able to tune in, here is a link to an MP3 of my interview. Be warned, it’s nearly 8MB so it’s quite a large file to download.

Please tune in…

to BBC Radio Oxford on Monday morning at about 10 past 9. I will be interviewed about being a regional finalist in the BECTA Next Generation teaching awards!

Newsletter- week ending 3rd April

Dear parents/carers,

This week in English we have continued with our grammar and writing work based around Myst. After looking at extended noun phrases last week, we’ve looked this week at identifying and improving the verbs in our work. The children have picked a lot of this up very quickly indeed, and I think that this is partly due to the rich, immersive visual and aural aspects of the game. The children have also completed some completely independent writing, so that I can see whether this teaching has been effective in improving their descriptive writing and sentence structure. After Easter we’ll be looking at information texts, and creating our own class information text as an introduction to our work on Australia.

In maths this week we’ve turned multiplication on its head and studied division. We’ve looked at halving/diving by 2, quartering/dividing by 4 and dividing by 3 (I always want to call this “thirding” but I’m sure that’s not right!). The children have also been playing an interactive computer game to test their knowledge of multiples. We’re doing very well with 2, 5 and 10, but 3 and 4 are proving to be a little more challenging!

In science this week we have been looking at science information texts, and looking at how information texts are different from stories and fiction. The children have also carried out a shadow experiment, to see how shadows change during the day. Unfortunately our shadow experiment was run over by the council’s mower!

As part of our work on Mars roamers and ICT, we have been looking at some simple programming, using either the roamer or LOGO. The children have enjoyed programming the turtle to create spirograph type patterns. This is the link to the online version of LOGO that we have been using:
http://www.mathsnet.net/logo/turtlelogo/index.html
Try something like repeat 100 [fd 101 rt 101] for starters!

Next term our topic will be Australia. We’ll be linking this in with our work on habitats in science, as well as looking at the culture and geography of Australia. I’m very interested in the different habitats in Australia, and how they support a range of plant and animal species. A friend of mine is a photographer in Tasmania, involved in the fight to protect the ancient rainforest there, so I’m hoping that his photographs will help to explain to the children how destructive we can be.

I hope that you all have a fantastic Easter break with your children!

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:
1 How can you tell which word in a sentence is a verb?
2 What’s you favourite method for division, and why?
3 What happens to shadows during the day? Why do you think that?

Mars Projects

The children have done a fantastic job this term on our “Mission to Mars” projects. Based around an idea for a suite of lessons developed by NASA, we have looked at our community, decided what is important to us and found out what life would be like on Mars. The children have also planned and built their own Mars bases, which have taken into account the atmospheric and weather conditions on Mars. In the final part of the project the children have created these PowerPoint presentations to share their projects with you. I gave the children about 5 minutes in front of the interactive whiteboard showing them very briefly what PowerPoint could do, and then the rest was up to them. I was surprised at how readily they took to PowerPoint, but it just shows how children’s ICT skills are progressing at a startling rate. The children have worked very independently on the presentations and the project in general.

WARNING: Some of these files are rather large, despite being compressed! Fern, Harriet, Martha and Isabella’s project is over 10MB, and Toby, Jack and Harry’s is over 8MB. This shouldn’t be a problem on a broadband connection, but if you’re on dial-up please be prepared for the file to take a while to download. The rest of the projects are 3MB or less.

Click here to download the presentation by Claudia, Naomi, Amelia and Elizabeth.

Click here to download the presentation by Emily, Lexi, Caitlin and Evie.

Click here to download the presentation by Fern, Harriet, Martha and Isabella.

Click here to download the presentation by Rhian, Katy, Ella and Andi.

Click here to download the presentation by Rhys, Elliot, Joe S and Joe B.

Click here to download the presentation by Toby, Jack and Harry.

Click here to download the presentation by William, Matthew, Mark and Bradley.