Creative 3-D Christmas cards were the order of the day, earlier this week – Below you can see some of the pupils designs and above you can see a video tutorial, should you like the idea of making your own (or another one).
Maths skills were needed, in the activity, to help the pupils measure each section of their creation, as well as appreciate the concept of 3-dimensions.
It was great to see so many nice messages to family and friends, too!
Great job everyone!
The beginning of this week saw Phase 3 pupils take to the field – the battle field – for a duel between each other and the houses: Water house took the spoils in the end, but it was a close battle!
Last week, the classes learnt how to draw Celtic knots (click here), a symbol of unity and love – these were something that the Celts, from the period before Christ and the Roman invasion of Britain, decorated their battle shields with. This week, the pupils took their designs and added them to shields, measuring up their braces (the handle of the shield) to fit their hand – before entering into a battle with a difference.
The battle itself was a silent and non-contact one, with pupils performing a dance: changing levels and speed to add drama without noise – silence is, after all, a menacing thing. The faces pulled were enough to fill their opponents with fear.
Fab job everyone.
This week has also seen Phase 3 very busy engaging in their continuous provision activities – These are learning activities that the pupils engage in independently, choosing what to learn/do at each station. The stations are dotted around the classrooms and school, and offer pupils the chance to explore different curriculum subjects: Can you work out the subject areas on offer here?
This week has seen pupils involved in piano play, Hit The Button, jigsaw building, building with blocks, taking a bike ride and writing prayers – to name a few.
The pupils prayer, which was added to the class prayer book, can be seen below.
Thank you for protecting our family
Thank you that we are alive in this World
Thank you our God – We will learn to serve you
Thank you for the lovely people in this World
We will worship you and love, and sacrifice ourselves in your need
Amen
(BB and HD)
This term we will be starting our new topic ‘Are the Arts what make us Human?’. Have a look at all the exciting learning we have in store for Phase3.
Today in Maths we linked our learning to our wider curriculum, we have designed our own pizza and will make these later on this week.
We weighed, measured and mixed our ingredients to make the dough. we used weighing scales to weigh the flour in grams and a measuring jug to measure the warm water in millilitres. We then timed the dough and left it to rise at a set temperature using a thermometer, a different scale.
After our successful afternoon of food tasting, today we looked at analysing our data! We used a tally chart to measure each pupil’s favourite food of the afternoon, then we plotted these on a bar graph. Some of us made our own bar chart (with different axis!) while some of us worked as a group and created a physical pictogram. Have a look at the graph below, are there any surprises?
This week, in Phase 3, we’ve been finding out about each other – One activity saw the pupils capturing a profile of themselves on a 2-D shape net, before turning it into a 3-D cube.
The pupils set about cutting out a 2-D cube net – scissors skill were excellent! Then they covered the faces of the cube in things about themselves: words and drawings. They shared their favourites, such as food, along with there hobbies and the people they cared the most about. Once they’d finished they folded the net to form the actual cube.
Of course we could not miss the opportunity to mathematically explore the parts of a cube as well – Do you know the difference between faces, edges and vertices?
Yesterday saw the whole of Phase 3 developing their understanding of how to draw angles – some of the pupils, across the learning groups, became ‘experts’ and taught their peers ‘how to.’ This was a joy to watch – pupils helping others to achieve: explaining and reasoning was the order of the day once more. Thanks to their peers, the progress made was brilliant and clear to see.
Could you draw an angle using a protractor?
Could you draw an acute, obtuse and even a reflex angle? If you’re not sure then ask one of the pupils in Phase 3 to show you how.
maths@stpauls 