Year 3 Newsletter

What a shock we had in year 3 last week! As part of Global Goals Day, we found out that in the UK, we throw away between 30 and 50% of all food we buy!  And if this food doesn’t go in our food waste, it goes to land fill!  We felt really unhappy about this as there are so many people in our country and around that world that don’t have enough food to eat.

As a result of this, we undertook a survey of the school to see what we already do with our food waste.  We found out that, although only a few classes collect food waste from the snacks, we do have a food waste bin in the dinner hall and in the school kitchen which is great!  This food waste is collected by the council and is used to make compost.  We also observed how much food is thrown away in year 3 during our break times. We decided that we would like food waste bins for the playgrounds and for those classes not collecting food waste already, so we have written letters to Mrs Moore.  Part of our research was to find out how much food is thrown away in the dinner hall so we weighed it at the end of lunch.   We were quite surprised that it was 10kg which is heavier than one of our boxes full of our exercise books!  Mrs Osborne, one of our fabulous lunchtime staff, told us in an interview that actually Fridays are the days when we have the least food waste!  We dread to think what the wastage is like on other days then!  So to help reduce how much food we throw away, we have also made posters to encourage our pupils to eat a bit more of their dinners.  We'll keep you updated!

 

In English, we have been continuing our narrative unit on Fables and the children have been fantastic in their drama activities!  They have thought deeply about their use of voice and body language to convey character and personality.  This will help us when writing our own fables in a few weeks’ time.  In maths, we have built on our understanding of place value in three-digit numbers.  The children have not always this easy but have persevered and shown great open-minded attitudes! 
 
Skeletons was the theme of our science lesson this week and we now know what the role of the skeleton is!  Ask your child to explain to you!  We sorted some pictures of animals into those with skeletons and those without.  Lots of us thought that a ladybird would have a skeleton, but it hasn’t.  There are some animals that don’t have a spine and therefore are invertebrates.  Some of these like a ladybird have an exoskeleton to protect them though unlike the poor worm!

 

We were so proud of all the children in our Harvest Festival too!  They performed the song, Living and Learning, with enthusiasm and passion and the children who performed our Harvest Basket poem, did so with feeling and great use of voice. Well done to all of Year 3, you were fabulous!