News from 3G

Term 2 has been a very busy one for Year 3 Gold. After a very unusual start to the term, 3 Gold have settled beautifully back into everyday school life, taking changes and challenges in their stride. They are to be commended for they way they have shown great persistence, resilience, kindness and care for one another over the last few weeks.

Since our return to school, we have had so much fun learning together. Here is just a taste of what 3 Gold have been up to:

This term, one of the texts we have focused on is Junk Castle by Robyn Klein. We used this novel to inspire our Informative writing focus. Students conducted extensive research into medieval castles, finding out information such as:

• When and where were medieval castles built?
• Who built the first medieval castles?
• What were these castles constructed from?
• Why were they built and what were they used for?
• Who lived in them?
• Outline special features of medieval castles.

We then used this research to construct our own information reports on medieval castles. Below is a sample of students informative writing:

Castles are a large building. The first castle was built by William the Conqueror. The castle was called The White Tower. The Normans also began building castles in 1066. They were very clever builders. Castles were home to kings or queens or an important person, but invaders would try to get in and try to take over the castle. Some of the features of the castle stop invaders trying to get in the castle like an arrow slit the archers would shoot their arrows through. – Byron Schmidt

Castles were built 1,000 years ago and the first castle lasted 500 years. The biggest castle is called Malbork Castle located in Poland. One day I would like to visit Malbork castle. Castles were homes to many people including kings, lords, royals and their families. Servants also lived in the castle like a cook, cleaner and a farmer. The cook would cook all the food for the king to eat, the cleaner would clean all the rooms in the castle and the farmer would grow all the food for the cook to use. Finally, dogs and cats would roam the castle to eat all the vermin that come in to eat to the food, – Hannah Webber

Castles have a lot of protections such as battlements, moats and arrow loops. They protect the people inside the castle from oncoming invaders. Also, these protections were not self-running. The people that operated them were called knights; they operated the protection forces. Most castles were built on natural obstacles such as cliffs, mountains and by the ocean. They were normally constructed out of lead, spikes and stone. The first castles were built out of wood and timber, but people found they could easily be destroyed by fire. - Darcy Williams

Throughout the novel, the characters build their very own castle from recyclable materials. 3 Gold were set the challenge to do the same. In small groups students had to design their own castles that included a variety of the specific features we had learnt about within our research. The class had just two days to work in their group, unassisted to build their castles. We think you will agree that they did a fantastic job. Here are some of our completed castles.

In Mathematics we have been learning about angles. Here are some of our learnings:

An angle is made when 2 lines meet. The lines of an angle are called arms and the point where they meet is the vertex – Ari Assopardi-Johnson

There are lots of different types of angles. We have been learning about acute, obtuse and right angles – Cooper D’Andilly

An acute angle is smaller than 90 degrees. It’s easy to remember because it is small and cute – Amalia Sculli

The obtuse angle is bigger than 90 degrees, but smaller than 180 degrees – Chloe Webber

The right angle was the most common angle that we found in our classroom and on the playground – Olive Mulley

3 Gold took their investigations to the playground, where they found examples of all 3 angles.

Over the last few weeks, the whole school has been participating in skipping games and activities to support the Student Council lead initiative. 3 Gold have been enthusiastic participants in this competition, skipping with great determination and persistence. We have had a lot of fun being a part of this challenge.

During our Science lessons this term we have been investigating solids, liquids and gases. We have had a terrific time investigating the different melting rates of chocolate. We were like real scientists during our freezing of water experiments. We were able to experience how experiments sometimes fail if we don't have the correct conditions. It took us a few days to get our bottle of water to freeze but our persistence paid off. We also enjoyed creating our very own insulators to stop ice from melting.

Lots of enjoyment was had during our Creative Art lessons this term. We viewed artworks by artists Fernand Leger. We looked at how humble 2D shapes can be used to create interesting cityscapes and self-portraits. We also studied the British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy who showed us how art can be of a temporary nature. Year 3 used objects found in our playground to make our very own nature inspired sculptures. Some students in Year 3 also entered their nature-based artworks into a Virtual art gallery competition.